★ Exmouth's independent optician · since 1984 · Victoria Road

42 years on Victoria Road. A homepage that says so.

A free, fully-built proposal site for McAusland Optometrists, founded 1984 by the McAusland family at 3 Victoria Road, Exmouth. Three findings, fixed pricing, and a working HTML rebuild of the proposed homepage at /preview/.

Open live preview ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal

Address · 3 Victoria Road, Exmouth, Devon EX8 1DL Founded · 1984 by the McAusland family Principal · Keval Sejpar, since 2014

Est. 1984 · Exmouth

42

years on Victoria Road,
same name above the door.

Open the live rebuild ↗

Three findings, in order of priority

What 42 years of practice is currently leaving on the table.

A walk-through of the live exmouth-eyecare.co.uk on 18 May 2026. Three things stood out on mobile, all visible to a first-time patient in under two minutes.

01

McAusland has been running OCT retinal scans since 2011 and now uses the Heidelberg Spectralis OCT2, but the homepage never says so, never shows the scan, and never names Keval Sejpar above the fold.

Observation: On exmouth-eyecare.co.uk today, the homepage opens with the practice name and a stock-feeling tagline. The OCT capability (in the practice since 2011, upgraded to Heidelberg Spectralis OCT2 with GMPE in July 2021) is buried two clicks deep on the Expertise page. The Optomap ultra-widefield retinal photograph, the front-of-eye dry-eye imaging, the BlephEx and ZEST blepharitis treatments. All of it sits behind the navigation, not in front of it. Keval Sejpar's name, his AIO Council chairmanship since 2024, his trail through City University London and the Oxford independent scene before he moved to Exmouth in 2014, are introduced on a /team page that the prospect has to click twice to reach. There is no JSON-LD structured data so Google does not see any of it either.
Impact: A new patient choosing between McAusland and the chain on Exeter High Street decides in under 30 seconds. "Independent optician in Exmouth" is a category claim every shop on Victoria Road makes; "OCT retinal scanning since 2011, Heidelberg Spectralis OCT2 with GMPE since July 2021, principal optometrist sits on the AIO Council" is a specific argument no chain can copy. The current homepage flattens 42 years of accumulated specialism into a single line of justified body copy. The visit-to-booking journey takes four clicks even when the patient already knows they want a 45-minute eye examination.
After rebuild: After the rebuild: a hero block that opens with "42 years on Victoria Road, with the Heidelberg Spectralis OCT scanning the retina at 20 kHz." Keval named in the lede. A specialism block with a sample OCT cross-section as the visual motif, and three measured technical specifics that prove the depth (Spectralis GMPE module, Optomap without dilation, MGX meibomian-gland expression). Optometrist + LocalBusiness JSON-LD. FAQPage schema for the questions patients actually ask. Phone CTA in the sticky header so a new patient is one tap from the reception desk.

02

The frame wall holds Tom Davies, Silhouette and Maui Jim, but the live site lists them in a paragraph of justified body copy with no logos, no photographs of the wall, and no styling-team faces.

Observation: The /eyewear page lists "longstanding links with companies such as Essilor, Zeiss, Maui Jim, Silhouette and Tom Davies" in a single sentence buried inside a body paragraph. There is no photograph of the 1,000-frame wall, no logos of the designer-led houses, no individual frame imagery, and no introduction to Sarah Fletcher (joined 2024 from Wiltshire, frame stylist with the colour-palette eye) or Emma Cooling (Frame Stylist since 2019, who took over from her mother Gaye after 26 years on the bench). Stylish, individually-chosen eyewear is the second pillar of the practice, alongside the clinical work, and the site treats it like a footnote.
Impact: Tom Davies is a London bespoke house, Silhouette is the Austrian rimless brand that flew on the moon with the Apollo astronauts, Maui Jim is the Hawaiian polarised-lens standard. These are the names that justify the price difference between McAusland and the Specsavers two-pair offer. Burying them inside a sentence of body copy gives the price-comparison customer no reason to pause. The frame wall is also the part of the practice that earns repeat visits in between two-yearly eye examinations: a customer who has had their colour palette read by Sarah Fletcher comes back when the next collection arrives. That story is invisible on the current site.
After rebuild: After the rebuild: a dedicated eyewear strip with a real photograph of the dispensing floor, the six designer-house names called out as a styled brand grid (Tom Davies, Silhouette, Maui Jim, plus the Essilor and Zeiss lens labs), and a styling-team block that names Sarah and Emma alongside their headshots. The 20 percent loyalty discount on spectacles for Eyecare Plan members surfaced in the same strip, rather than buried two clicks away on the Plan page.

03

The McAusland surname is forty-two years of Exmouth's eye-test memory, but the homepage never states the 1984 founding year, and the practice trades from a domain (exmouth-eyecare.co.uk) that quietly buries the family name.

Observation: The 1984 founding year appears once on the entire site: a half-sentence on /about-us/ that reads "Much has changed since our inception in 1984". It is not on the homepage. It is not in the meta title, the meta description, the og:image, the schema, or the footer. The practice trades from the URL exmouth-eyecare.co.uk which makes commercial sense (the Eyecare Plan needs that domain) but means the McAusland name, the entire reason a multi-generation Exmouth family knows where to go for their child's first eye test, is absent from the address bar, the inbox From line, and most of the homepage above the fold. Even the page title reads "McAusland Optometrists, Exmouth's Local Independent Optician" which gives equal weight to the surname and a generic category.
Impact: Forty-two years is the strongest single credential a Devon independent can carry in 2026. Boots Opticians runs an in-store concession in Exmouth; Specsavers is a fifteen-minute drive away in Exeter; Vision Express trades the high street. None of them have been on Victoria Road since 1984. None of them are run by the Chair of the Association for Independent Optometrists. Treating the McAusland surname as a footnote, and the founding year as a half-sentence, flattens that argument into one of fifteen Devon opticians on Google Maps' results grid.
After rebuild: After the rebuild: a hero that opens with the year 1984 set in 168px italic Cardo, paired with "years on Victoria Road, with the same name above the door." A heritage block on the homepage with a 1984-to-today timeline tracing the McAusland family's founding, the 2011 OCT investment, the 2014 arrival of Keval Sejpar, the 2021 Spectralis upgrade, and the 2024 AIO chairmanship. Founded-in-1984 badge in the sticky header. Optometrist + Person + foundingDate JSON-LD so Google's rich snippet for "optometrist Exmouth" shows the year as a chip on the first search-results card.

How it ships

Three phases, four weeks, one fixed fee.

A working preview of the homepage already exists at /preview/. The plan below is what would follow on signed agreement.

Phase 1 · Week 1

Heritage and the OCT

Rebuild the homepage around the line: "42 years on Victoria Road, with the Heidelberg Spectralis scanning at 20 kHz."
Add the 1984 to today timeline (the McAusland family, the 2011 OCT, the 2014 arrival of Keval, the 2021 Spectralis upgrade, the 2024 AIO chairmanship)
Drop the i-craft theme; introduce a hand-drawn spectacle silhouette and the McAusland mark as the visual motif
Wire 01395 276 458 to a sticky thumb-reach CTA in the mobile header

Phase 2 · Weeks 2-3

Eyewear, specialism and schema

Dedicated eyewear strip with real photographs of the dispensing floor, six designer-house brand grid (Tom Davies, Silhouette, Maui Jim, Essilor, Zeiss, Lindberg)
Specialism page introducing Keval Sejpar, Dr Jasmine Smith, Sarah Fletcher, Emma Cooling and Liz Bramley by name
Full schema rebuild: Optometrist + LocalBusiness + Person + FAQPage + foundingDate 1984
Migrate from WordPress i-craft to Astro on Vercel; DNS cutover handled, exmouth-eyecare.co.uk kept in your name

Phase 3 · Week 4

Photo session and launch

Three hours on Victoria Road for a real photo set: shopfront, frame wall, OCT instrument, consulting room, the team
Replace the existing 2014 interior shot and four 2025 headshots with a co-ordinated 2026 set
Final QA, Lighthouse pass, accessibility audit, search-console submission
Launch, and 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost

Pricing

Fixed price, no hourly billing, no surprise upgrade tier.

A single fixed fee for the full rebuild, an optional monthly care plan, and a small bolt-on for an embedded FAQ chatbot if it is useful. The visit to Victoria Road and the photo session are included in the build.

Build

Full Astro rebuild, heritage page, services grid, photo set

Migration off WordPress i-craft. New homepage around the 1984 founding. /our-practice page rewritten around Keval, Jasmine, Sarah, Emma and Liz. Three-hour photo session in Exmouth. Optometrist + LocalBusiness + Person + FAQPage schema. Two-to-three week turnaround.

£2,000

fixed · one-off

Care

Hosting, monitoring and small monthly tweaks

Vercel hosting, uptime monitoring, backup, and up to an hour a month of small edits (a new team headshot, a fee change, the Christmas hours). Cancel any time.

£150

per month

Optional

Embedded chatbot trained on the practice FAQ

A small chat widget seeded with the practice FAQ, the eyecare-plan terms, and after-hours emergency routing. Only useful if reception inbox volume justifies it.

£50

per month

· One round of revisions before launch · DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain) · 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost · Source code handed over on day 60

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits beyond the three-hour photo session in Exmouth, otherwise fully remote from Switzerland.

See the rebuild

A working preview you can click through.

Hero, services, OCT specialism, eyewear strip, heritage, team, Eyecare Plan, FAQ, visit and footer. Real photographs, real team names, real prices. Opens in this tab.

Open the preview ↗

Next step

A short reply with two or three slots.

If the proposal lands, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days for a video call. I take on three Devon builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 28 May, the proposal site comes down.

Either reply directly to this email, or write to corey@builtbycorey.com. Phone fine too: +44 7884 442 651.