◆ Cheltenham · Rotunda Terrace · family-run since 2010

A 2026 British Book Awards shortlist. A homepage that says so.

A free, fully-built proposal site for Rossiter Books, the Cheltenham branch at 7 Rotunda Terrace, Montpellier Street, Cheltenham GL50 1SW. Founded in Ross-on-Wye by Andy and Victoria Rossiter in 2010, now seven shops along the English-Welsh border counties. Three findings on the current site, then a live HTML rebuild of the proposed Cheltenham homepage at /preview/.

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

Branch · Cheltenham (4th of 7), opened 12 March 2022 Founders · Andy and Victoria Rossiter, since 2010 Phone · 01242 373 815

◆ Shortlisted 2026

7 Rotunda Terrace · Montpellier · Cheltenham

The Cheltenham shopfront as Marisa Giannasi painted it. Open the live preview ↗

Current vs proposed · the Cheltenham branch page

What changes between the current Cheltenham page and the proposed Astro rebuild.

Captured 25 May 2026. Current build is WordPress with the Flatsome 3.19.4 theme. The full Cheltenham rebuild is browsable at /preview/. The proposal addresses three of the six findings I noted while reading the live site; the other three (event-page navigation, OG-image specificity, and image weight) ship as part of the same rebuild without needing their own pricing line.

Stack and gaps inventory, 25 May 2026

Current ↗ rossiterbooks.co.uk

Platform: WordPress + Flatsome theme 3.19.4
Hosting: WordPress shared (default), Apache
SEO: Rank Math; BookStore JSON-LD present but with brand-wide hours
Email: cheltenham@rossiterbooks.co.uk + 5 sister-branch boxes
Hours: Conflicting: schema says Mon-Sun 09-17; Google says Mon-Sat 09:30-17, Sun 11-16
OG image: Generic 1200x630 caption-stuffed; same for every branch page
Cheltenham page: Stock photo lead; no address, no hours, no events filter
Events: 11 events in next 4 months; no per-branch filter

Proposed

Framework: Astro static site (Astro 6), deployed Vercel edge
Hosting: Vercel edge network, sub-100ms first-byte across the UK
SEO: BookStore JSON-LD per branch with correct per-branch hours + brand Organization + FAQPage + award field
Email: Existing inboxes kept; Cheltenham contact form routes to cheltenham@
Hours: Per-branch hours, single source of truth, schema and visible HTML match
OG image: Per-branch og:image (Cheltenham shopfront painting), absolute URL
Cheltenham page: Shopfront painting lead; address, hours, three next events, two book groups, directions
Events: Per-branch event filter; ICS download per event; "Book Group: next pick" callout

Three findings, in order of revenue impact

What the current Cheltenham branch page is leaving on the table.

A walk-through of rossiterbooks.co.uk/cheltenham/ on 25 May 2026, against the publicly verified facts about the branch.

01

A 2026 British Book Awards shortlist with Waterstones and World of Books, nowhere on the homepage.

Observation: On Wednesday 18 March 2026 Rossiter Books was named as one of the finalists for Book Retailer of the Year at The British Book Awards, sponsored by Penguin Random House. The shortlist alongside Rossiter includes Waterstones and World of Books. Andy Rossiter has been quoted in the Ross Gazette: "Our aim has always been to build a chain of quality independent bookshops on local high streets sitting at the centre of the community. We are delighted to have been shortlisted." Winners are announced Monday 11 May 2026. The Cheltenham branch is one of the six shops that earned that shortlist. As of today, the homepage shows a stack of upcoming author events and the Shortlisted badge sits inside a slider rotation, not above the fold and never with the words "Book Retailer of the Year" rendered in HTML.
Revenue impact: A national-level shortlist alongside the two largest book retailers in the UK is the single most powerful trust signal an indie shop can put on a homepage. Visitors arriving from a Cheltenham Google search, a Cotswolds literature-festival weekend, or a "is this just a small local chain" suspicion check are deciding within five seconds whether to trust their next book purchase to a name they have not heard of. Surfacing the British Book Awards line above the fold (rendered as text so Google can index it, not buried inside a slider image) is a one-line lift in trust that costs nothing and earns every other section the time of day.
Cause: Flatsome theme defaults to a sliding hero. The British Book Awards graphic is one slide of several in rotation, so on first paint a visitor might land on a different image. The shortlist itself is treated as a news item, not as ambient credentialing. There is no "Shortlisted 2026 British Book Awards" line in the header, the footer, the meta description, or the JSON-LD.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a permanent gilt rule above the hero reading "Shortlisted, 2026 British Book Awards. Book Retailer of the Year." Rendered as text, indexed by Google, present on every page including the branch pages. The shortlist line also lifts into the Cheltenham JSON-LD as a `award` field so the Knowledge Panel can carry it. The Shortlisted graphic stays on the news index where it belongs.

02

The Cheltenham branch page leads with a stock photo of a woman in autumn leaves, no hours, no address, no events.

Observation: The current /cheltenham/ page on rossiterbooks.co.uk shows a 640x427 stock photograph of a young woman in a felt hat reading a book in a wood, with no caption explaining what it is doing there. The shop's actual address (7 Rotunda Terrace, Montpellier Street, GL50 1SW) is not on the page. The opening hours (Mon-Sat 09:30 to 17:00, Sun 11:00 to 16:00 per Google and the Find-Open directory) are not on the page. The 2026 author events programme is on a separate /events/ page with no Cheltenham filter, so a visitor cannot see which of the eleven summer events are at the Cheltenham branch and which are at Hereford or Monmouth or Malvern.
Revenue impact: Cheltenham is the branch most likely to convert tourist and Literature Festival traffic in the chain. A visitor arriving at the Cheltenham branch page expects to see the shop on Rotunda Terrace, the opening hours, the address, and the next event taking place inside this specific shop. Instead they see a stock photograph that could be the cover of any inspirational quote on Pinterest. The trust signal degrades visibly. For the largely-non-existent tourist conversion path during Cheltenham Literature Festival weekend (October), this is the page that should be doing the heaviest lifting in the entire site.
Cause: Flatsome page-template default uses a wide feature image at the top of every page. The Cheltenham branch page was set up with the closest stock image to hand at the time and never replaced. The hours and events live in separate templates and the integration was never wired.
After rebuild: After rebuild: the Cheltenham branch page leads with the watercolour shopfront painting Marisa Giannasi already commissioned for the all-six-stores strip, the bright teal-blue awning on the Regency stone, identifiable in one glance as the actual shop on Rotunda Terrace. Below: the address, opening hours, phone, "directions from Promenade and Montpellier Gardens" line, the next three Cheltenham author events with Buy Tickets links, and the two monthly book groups with the next book pick. Every fact on the page is sourced from research notes, not boilerplate.

03

JSON-LD says open Mon-Sun 09:00-17:00; Google says Mon-Sat 09:30-17:00, Sun 11:00-16:00. Google believes JSON-LD.

Observation: The current site emits an `openingHours` property in the JSON-LD that declares the whole brand as "Monday,Tuesday,Wednesday,Thursday,Friday,Saturday,Sunday 09:00-17:00". The Cheltenham branch on Google, on Visit Cheltenham, and on Find-Open is published as Mon-Sat 09:30-17:00 and Sun 11:00-16:00. The two numbers disagree by half an hour on weekday open, by two hours on Sunday open, and by an hour on Sunday close. A visitor who trusts the Google Knowledge Panel and turns up at 09:05 on a Wednesday finds a closed door. A visitor who trusts the Knowledge Panel and turns up at 17:30 on a Sunday finds a closed door. Either failure mode is a lost sale and a lost trust.
Revenue impact: Google does not just consume your schema, Google trusts your schema. When the schema disagrees with the directory hours, Google may render either, and the Knowledge Panel may show the wrong hours in search results. The cost of one wrong-hours visit by a tourist who walks back to their hotel and tells the next two parties is harder to model than the cost of a wrong-hours visit by a local. Both are real, both are unforced errors.
Cause: Rank Math (the SEO plugin) generates a single brand-level openingHours from a single field. The plugin's default field doesn't allow per-branch hours, so a single time-window was chosen for the whole chain. The branch pages all inherit it. The Cheltenham branch page never gets a chance to declare its own actual hours in schema.
After rebuild: After rebuild: each branch page (Cheltenham, Hereford, Leominster, Malvern, Monmouth, Ross-on-Wye, Ledbury) emits its own `BookStore` JSON-LD with the correct hours for that specific branch, the correct address, the correct phone, the correct geo. The chain Organization schema lives at the brand level. Google's Rich Results test then renders the right hours for the right branch.

Pricing

Fixed price. No retainer. No surprise upgrade tier.

Single fixed fee for the rebuild plus a monthly care line. Optional chatbot tier if you want the events programme answerable by typing.

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland. One round of revisions before launch. DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain in your name). 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost. Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything).

Build

Full Astro rebuild · six branch pages · per-branch schema

Homepage with British Book Awards shortlist above the fold. Cheltenham branch page with shopfront painting, hours, address, three next events, two book groups. Equivalent for Hereford, Leominster, Malvern, Monmouth, Ross-on-Wye plus a Ledbury placeholder. Per-branch BookStore JSON-LD. Events page with per-branch filter. 3-week turnaround.

£2,000

fixed · one-off

Care

Hosting + ongoing care

Vercel hosting, SSL, schema upkeep, monthly content updates (events programme, book-group picks, shortlist outcome, branch hours changes), monthly analytics email. WordPress backend stays as your input surface for news.

£150

/ month · cancel any time

Optional

Events & FAQ chatbot

Embedded chatbot trained on the events programme, the book-group picks, the per-branch hours, and the FAQ. Answers "which Cheltenham events are still available", "what is the next book-group book", "do you take National Book Tokens", in plain English at any time of day.

£50

/ month · optional

Timeline · three weeks

From accepted proposal to live site, in three weeks.

Week 1

◆ Cheltenham branch page rebuild: watercolour shopfront hero, address + hours + phone, three next events with Buy Tickets, two book groups with current pick
◆ British Book Awards shortlist line surfaced in the header, the footer, the meta description, and the JSON-LD
◆ Per-branch BookStore schema with correct per-branch hours for all six existing branches plus Ledbury (opening April 2026)

Week 2

◆ Homepage hero: Shortlisted line above the fold, six-branch watercolour strip below, next four events surfaced
◆ Author events page: per-branch filter, ICS download per event, sold-out state surfaced
◆ Book groups page: monthly cadence explicit, the next three picks per group named

Week 3

◆ DNS cutover from current WordPress host to Vercel, Flatsome retired
◆ Rank Math sitemap regenerated; Search Console resubmit; Knowledge Panel hours request
◆ One round of revisions with Andy and the Cheltenham counter; launch sign-off

Cheltenham-focused, remote-first, all comms by email. Happy to visit the Rotunda Terrace shop for launch sign-off and to photograph the actual shopfront if Marisa is happy for the watercolour to be supplemented. Phone +447884442651 for anything urgent during the build.

FAQ

Five questions a seven-branch indie bookshop actually asks.

If any answer needs a follow-up call, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

Do we have to give up the WordPress admin we use for posting news and events? +

No. The proposal keeps a small CMS surface for the bits you actually edit: news posts, the events programme, and the book-group next-pick. The rest of the site (the static branch pages, the heritage, the FAQ, the schema) becomes Markdown in the repo and rebuilds when you push a change. The counter staff can keep adding events through a familiar form; the difference is what gets rendered out the other end. Practically: WordPress stays as the input surface for the bits where it earns its keep, Astro takes over rendering, the Flatsome theme is retired.

We do not have a brand or a designer. Are you going to make us commit to a look we did not ask for? +

No. The proposal page and the /preview rebuild use a palette I sampled from your existing assets: the dusty teal-blue from the Cheltenham shop awning, the Cotswolds limestone cream you already work against, the leaf-green from the apple-tree silhouette in your logo, the red from the Cheltenham door, the British Book Awards gold reserved for the shortlist line. The watercolour shopfront art that Marisa Giannasi already painted for the six-branch strip is the hero on the Cheltenham page. Nothing is invented. What you see on /preview is what you already are, presented as a 2026 designer would have presented it if you had hired one. The full design is open to a round of revisions before launch.

How do you handle the per-branch hours in schema without rewriting Rank Math? +

Each branch page emits its own JSON-LD `BookStore` block at build time, with that branch's specific opening hours and address. The brand Organization schema sits at the root and references the six BookStore entities as members. Rank Math can stay installed on the WordPress instance you keep for news posting; it just stops being the canonical schema source for the public pages. Google's Rich Results test will show the correct hours for the correct branch the day after Search Console reindexes.

The all-six-stores watercolour strip is by Marisa Giannasi. Have you confirmed she is happy for it to be used on the rebuild? +

I have not, and I want to flag that explicitly. The artist holds the rights to the painting, even where Rossiter has commissioned and is currently displaying it. Before launch, the proposal includes a one-line email to Marisa Giannasi confirming continued use on the rebuild, and either a paid extension of the licence or an attribution line in the footer linking back to her bookshops series. If the existing licence already covers continued web use, the answer is in your existing paperwork and we just confirm it. Either way the question gets asked before any image goes live.

What about Ledbury, the seventh shop opening in April 2026? +

Ledbury gets the same page treatment as the existing six branches at launch, even if the doors do not open until after the rebuild is live. The address, the opening date, the manager name when confirmed, the same BookStore schema with placeholder hours updated when the shop opens. The all-six-stores strip becomes the all-seven-stores strip once Marisa paints the Ledbury shopfront in the same style. No structural rewrite needed when the seventh shop comes online.

Next step · one email, one decision

If the proposal lands, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

I take on three Cotswolds-and-borders builds this quarter. First confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 4 June 2026, the proposal site comes down.

Open live preview ↗ Reply to the proposal

Prepared by

Corey Musa

Cardiff software developer of nine years, based in Switzerland. I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table.

Email: coreymusa1@gmail.com
Phone: +447884442651