Blog

Notes on design, code and getting found

Plain-English articles for small business owners on websites, hosting and search.
Showing 1 - 12 of 44 Posts
Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm viewed from Winterton-on-Sea, Norfolk.

Hosting,  Running the Studio

Why we've retired our carbon neutral label

We used to call our hosting carbon neutral. Here's why we've stopped, what our suppliers really report, and what we do instead.

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A hand-drawn website wireframe marked up in pen on a desk beside a laptop showing a screenshot of an AI-generated page layout. The surrounding scene is an AI-generated image; the on-screen layout is a real screenshot.

Design & UX

Can AI design a website? What the tools do well, and where they fall short

Can AI design a website? The tools produce competent screens in seconds. What they do well, where they fall short, and what it means for your site.

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A shop front with painted offers and signage, the kind of local business still found through Google’s local map pack rather than an AI summary

Found & Ranked

The week Google stopped being a search engine

Google I/O 2026 made it official: Search is now AI Search. Here's what that means for real businesses in Norfolk, and why it's less alarming than the headlines suggest.

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Connecting Payload CMS to Claude desktop

Build & Tech

Connecting Payload CMS to the Claude desktop and web apps with OAuth

The official Payload MCP plugin uses API keys, so it won't connect to the Claude desktop or web apps. Here's the OAuth plugin that fixes it, and how to wire it up.

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A sand relief sculpture featuring surreal imagery of a man in a bowler hat, a woman, and a child floating away like balloons shaped like human brains.

The Thinking Brain

Your brain is a prediction machine, and your brand is one of its predictions

The brain doesn't passively receive reality, it predicts it. Here's what predictive processing and the expectation effect mean for branding, marketing, and your website.

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An artist’s watercolour paint palette

Design & UX

Colour in web design: choosing a palette that works

How to choose a website colour palette that looks good and works hard: contrast, guiding attention, and the common traps. A practical guide from BrainWeb.

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Found & Ranked

Does llms.txt actually do anything? An honest answer

Is llms.txt worth adding to your site in 2026? An honest look at what Google and the AI providers actually say, and whether it affects AI visibility. BrainWeb.

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A monkey typing a Shakespeare sonnet on a computer keyboard in a cluttered office, a visual metaphor for AI content generation, created with Gemini.

Words & Reach

Can AI write your content? What it does well, and where it falls down

Where AI genuinely helps with writing content and where it falls down, plus the honest truth about whether AI content gets penalised. From BrainWeb.

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AI and cybersecurity. The image shows a login screen on a tablet.

Build & Tech

What the rise of AI in cybersecurity means for your website

AI now helps both defenders and attackers find website vulnerabilities faster. What that shift means for your site, explained calmly and without scare tactics.

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The Thinking Brain

The psychology of a trustworthy website

Visitors arrive not trusting your website. Here are the psychology-backed signals, from security to social proof, that earn trust and lift conversions.

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Running the Studio

How we price our work (and why not by the hour)

Why BrainWeb prices by fixed project and retainer rather than by the hour, and the honest truth about what a website costs to run over its life. From Ric at BrainWeb.

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The Thinking Brain

Hick's Law: why fewer choices convert better

Hick's Law: the more choices you offer, the longer people take to decide, or they don't decide at all. What it means for menus, forms, and calls to action.

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