About Us

Hey,

I’m Ben Hughes, the Founder of Web Design Essex.

Welcome to the most boring page of our website!

Let’s face it – Who reads these pages anyway?

Since you are here, I will do my best to make it a bit more exciting than your usual “About Us Page”.

It’s late January 2011, I’m 17 years old, and I’m walking to sixth form.

I would say it was typical English weather but it was actually heavy snow.

I remember just wanting to do what kids do, and enjoy it!

Instead, I was on my way to sixth-form to sit in a class room and talk about “How technology has changed our world”

So I’m standing outside the gates about to walk in and something hit me.

No, not a snow ball (although that would have been funny).

I just could not walk past those gates anymore. I was done.

So after a few conversations with my parents and landing myself in the sh*t… We move.

A year later, I graduated from an IT apprenticeship and got my first role in IT at, wait for it…

Tower Hamlets College. Another college…

This time, it was different.

I loved my role, I was actually learning valuable skills every-day.

Apart from the odd occasion, I was treated like a staff member majority of the time.

Although, I don’t blame them as I still looked at about 10…

To be 17 years old, working at a college, getting paid £80k a year…

I was flying…

Relax, I am joking!!

It was more like £10 an hour. Still, not bad…

btw, If you’re hoping for an overnight success story, you won’t find it here.

So fast forward a few years… I am now in the big city.

The city of London, the square mile, the old smoke!!

By this time, I had been working in IT for 6 years. I considered I knew my job pretty well, and I was still young.

I’d worked my way from the bottom of the IT helpdesk to the top, looking after a small helpdesk team at 2 different companies.

One thing was for sure… At this age, I was not ready to manage other people’s problems as well as my own.

I wanted to do my work and go home.

So, I decided to start contracting.

I wasn’t in the role long before I realised this wasn’t enough…

I wasn’t as fulfilled as I thought I would be.

Ultimately, I wanted to make more of an impact on people’s lives.

So, in my spare time, I started building websites.

I could earn a bit more money whilst helping people start their businesses.

You can imagine how poor my first websites were. But we have to start somewhere.

As I type this, I can hear my team member laughing, saying, “I am still poor, which is why I have them”

I remember being so excited that I helped a local business owner get his first website up and running, and I earned £600 from it.

This was the beginning.

As time went on, I continued to improve, practising between work hours, any downtime, and the evenings.

After helping a few businesses with their website they would come back asking “If I can help get them more leads and revenue from the site“.

After all, this is what they wanted it for in the first place.

So challenge accepted, and back to the books I went…

The first type of marketing that made sense to learn was SEO (Search engine optimisation).

If I could create a website, there would be no reason I could not optimise it for Google and help the clients generate more leads.

After months of studying and learning SEO from various courses, books, and online educators, I started to implement what I had learnt.

As I continued to refine my skills, word of mouth started to spread.

Business owners were thrilled with the results I was delivering, and I began to see the real impact of my work.

Clients weren’t just getting more leads—they were growing their businesses in ways they hadn’t imagined.

That feeling of knowing I was making a difference drove me to take things to the next level.

Fast forward to today, I’m the founder of Web Design Essex, a leading digital agency helping local businesses achieve real growth.

From doubling and tripling revenues to increasing website leads by over 1000%.

We’ve worked with small local businesses and some of the UK’s industry leaders.

Our unique selling points include combining best practices and the most up-to-date SEO techniques with modern web design and the power of AI integration and large language models (LLMs).

We stay ahead of the trends, using advanced tools that cost thousands each month to ensure our clients dominate their industries.

Whether it’s optimising for search engines, leveraging AI-driven insights, or designing websites that convert, we’re committed to delivering exceptional results.

It’s been a journey filled with challenges, growth, and success.

But one thing has remained constant: our passion for helping businesses thrive
.

Today, my team and I are proud to be the go-to agency for companies that want to turn their websites into their most powerful business asset.

Now, if you have reached this point then you know what is coming…

We don’t work with anyone and everyone.

So if you are serious about your business and looking to increase your revenue.

Get in touch with the team to organise a call.

We may just be a good fit to work together.

We take clients on board on the 1st and 18th of the month for SEO and Pay-per-click marketing and any time for websites.