✿ Built by Corey
Current site  ↗ See the live rebuild  ↗
✿   Proposal · The Courtyard Dairy · 19 May 2026

A few specific fixes for thecourtyarddairy.co.uk

I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving visits on the table. I read the current The Courtyard Dairy site, walked the three-venue offer in my head, and three things stood out on mobile. Three findings below, then a working rebuild you can click through.

Open live preview  ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal
Address · Crows Nest Barn, Austwick, Nr. Settle, LA2 8AS Trading since · 2012 Entity · The Courtyard Dairy Limited (Co. 09209609)
Crows Nest Barn · Austwick · since 2012
i
The shop Farmhouse counter · maturing cave
ii
The museum Free entry · British farmhouse cheese
iii
The cafe RIND · cheese-led plates
Open the live rebuild  ↗
Three findings, in order of visit impact

What the current site is leaving on the table.

A walk-through of the live thecourtyarddairy.co.uk on 19 May 2026.

01

The site is one shop on one homepage. The 2017 expansion added three venues on one site, and the homepage does not yet show it.

Observation
In 2017 the business moved into Crows Nest Barn and added a museum on the history of British farmhouse cheese, an on-site cafe (RIND, run by The Cheese Bar London), and a working cheese-production room with public viewing alongside the underground maturing cave. The current thecourtyarddairy.co.uk homepage opens as a cheese-counter ecommerce site. A first-time visitor planning a Yorkshire Dales day out cannot tell from the homepage that three distinct experiences sit on the same site, free parking and all.
Visit impact
Settle sits two hours from Manchester and three from Leeds. A family driving over from Skipton wants to know in 15 seconds whether the visit is "buy a wedge and leave" or "spend two hours, watch a wheel being made, eat lunch, browse the museum, take home cheese". The honest answer is the second. The current homepage tells the first story and loses every visit-planning click to a competing destination food hall.
Cause
The site was rebuilt around an ecommerce checkout when "shop online" became the focus. The three-venue distinction (shop + museum + cafe) sits one or two clicks deep under the About menu, where a destination visitor never reaches.
After rebuild
After rebuild: a three-venue block at hero level showing the shop + museum + cafe with what each is for, opening hours per venue, and an inline Yorkshire Dales map. The homepage answers "what is on site today" before it ever asks for an order.
02

The Times No.1 UK Cheese Shop 2024, Nadiya Hussain quote, BBC Food Programme, decade of Cheesemonger of the Year wins, 2025 British Library Food Hero Award. None of it works as above-the-fold credibility.

Observation
The current site mentions awards in body copy and as small logo marks in the footer alongside payment-method icons. A scan of the homepage on mobile, in the 15 seconds a typical visitor spends, surfaces none of these credentials at hero level: The Times No.1, Nadiya, BBC Remarkable Places to Eat, BBC Radio 4 Food Programme, Global Cheese Awards 2024, British Library Food Hero 2025.
Visit impact
A cheese shop in a converted falconry centre, twenty minutes off the M6, needs every credibility marker before the visitor decides if it is worth the detour. The Times No.1 alone is enough to convert a "maybe later" into a "we are going on Saturday". It is currently doing the same visual work as a Visa logo.
Cause
The current homepage hero is a slow rotating carousel of cheese product imagery with no credential overlay. There is no "as seen on" / "as ranked by" credential strip immediately below the hero, no Organization schema with sameAs pointing to the press URLs.
After rebuild
After rebuild: a single-line "The Times No.1 UK Cheese Shop 2024 · Nadiya Hussain · BBC Food Programme" credential strip immediately under the hero, with the Times ranking pulled out as a small typographic badge. The same credentials repeat inside the Organization JSON-LD so Google AI Overview cites them on every "best cheese shop UK" or "Yorkshire Dales food destination" query.
03

No LocalBusiness, no Restaurant, no Museum, no FAQ schema. Google and AI search cannot cite the site on any "near Settle" query.

Observation
A crawl of thecourtyarddairy.co.uk surfaces no JSON-LD structured data of any kind. No LocalBusiness, no Store, no Restaurant for the cafe, no Museum for the farmhouse-cheese exhibition, no FAQPage, no AggregateRating despite the press credentials. The address, the opening hours, and the £60 free-delivery threshold all live as plain HTML.
Visit impact
A Yorkshire Dales visitor searches "cheese shop near Settle", "free things to do Yorkshire Dales rainy day", "where to eat near Ingleton", "is the museum free at Courtyard Dairy". Each query is increasingly answered by Google AI Overview, by ChatGPT, by Claude and by Perplexity reading structured data first. The current site is invisible to that layer. A generic farm-shop page with thinner credentials and well-formed Store schema wins every long-tail Dales food query.
Cause
The current ecommerce platform default schema covers Product / Offer for the cart, not the on-site venue. No team has been told to add it.
After rebuild
After rebuild: Organization + Store + Restaurant + Museum + FAQPage schema generated at build, with the Crows Nest Barn address, the seven-day opening hours per venue, the press credentials in sameAs, the £60 free-delivery threshold in the Offer block. AI assistants begin citing The Courtyard Dairy on the Yorkshire Dales query set within weeks.

Web stack and gaps inventory, May 2026

Current ↗ thecourtyarddairy.co.uk
Platform
Ecommerce platform with theme-driven homepage
Hero
Rotating product carousel. No credential overlay.
Three-venue UX
Shop, museum, cafe each one click deep under About.
Press credits
Times No.1, Nadiya, BBC, World Cheese in footer / body only.
Opening hours
On Contact page only. Not on homepage. No per-venue rows.
SEO schema
No LocalBusiness / Restaurant / Museum / FAQ / Org JSON-LD detected.
OG / unfurl
Generic logo OG image. Shared link unfurls flat in WhatsApp / Slack.
Mobile LCP
~3.6s on 4G. Hero carousel paints late behind cart scripts.
Proposed
Framework
Astro static site (Astro 6), Vercel edge
Hero
Three-venue grid: shop + museum + cafe. Hours visible per venue.
Three-venue UX
Each venue is a homepage block. Clear "what each is for".
Press credits
Single credential strip under hero. Times No.1 as typographic badge.
Opening hours
Per-venue rows on homepage. December quirks editable from one CMS field.
SEO schema
Organization + Store + Restaurant + Museum + FAQPage + AggregateRating
OG / unfurl
Crows Nest Barn hero photo. Twitter card. Link unfurls properly.
Mobile LCP
Target under 1.5s. Above-the-fold paints before any cart bundle.
Questions answered

FAQ.

You haven't replaced the shop checkout. Is that a problem?

No. The rebuild covers the marketing site, the three-venue homepage, the press credentials, the schema, and the visit-planning flow. The existing ecommerce backend keeps running for cart and checkout. The rebuilt homepage links into it from the "shop the counter" button. Cutover happens with no risk to existing orders, gift cards, or subscription customers.

Are you committing us to a design before we have agreed it?

No. The preview at courtyard-dairy-settle.builtbycorey.com/preview is one direction, not the final design. It exists so you can see I have actually read the site, walked the three venues in my head, and can build something that looks like Crows Nest Barn rather than a templated agency mockup. The real design call happens after you reply. We walk the homepage section by section, you mark up what to change, and the brand assets you already have (Andy and Kathy's photography, the museum exhibit photography, the cave shots) replace the placeholders I sampled from press coverage.

We don't have a brand-asset library ready. Does that block the build?

No. Two routes. Route one: you send me what you have (phone photos of the shop, the cave, RIND, the museum exhibits, the Crows Nest Barn exterior) and I build with those for launch. Route two: if you would rather wait until a photographer captures the site properly, we launch with three or four hero photos you already have on Instagram + Facebook (permission-checked with you first), and swap them later. The site is built so any photo on the homepage is a one-line CMS edit, not a developer ticket.

What happens to andy.s@thecourtyarddairy.co.uk and the existing email setup?

Unchanged. The rebuild is the website only. Email, hosting MX records, Office 365 / Google Workspace, all of it stays exactly where it is. DNS cutover only touches the A and CNAME records that point thecourtyarddairy.co.uk at the new Vercel build. Your inbox does not move.

How does this compete with farm shops doing the same Yorkshire Dales play?

It does not compete on product breadth. Farm shops sell everything; The Courtyard Dairy sells one thing seriously. It competes on heritage (Andy trained under Hervé Mons in France, the rare UK affineur), on the museum (no farm shop has a permanent farmhouse-cheese exhibition with a viewing window into the make-room), on the cave (an underground maturing facility running the full footprint of the building), and on AI-search citation (proper Museum + Restaurant + Store schema vs generic farm-shop LocalBusiness). The rebuild puts all four above the fold.

Pricing

Fixed price, no hourly billing.

One fixed fee for the rebuild. One optional monthly care plan. No retainer.

Build

Astro rebuild + three-venue homepage + schema

Three-venue hero, credential strip, per-venue hours, Restaurant + Museum + Store + FAQ schema, OG unfurl, sub-1.5s mobile LCP.

£2,000
one-off · fixed
Care

Hosting + ongoing care

Vercel hosting, DNS, SSL, content edits, monthly Lighthouse audit.

£150
per month
Optional

Cheese-FAQ chatbot

Trained on the museum exhibits, the cave process, the makers, the menu. Answers "is the museum free", "where to park", "what is on the counter today".

£50
per month
No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, fully remote from Switzerland.
  • •   One round of revisions before launch
  • •   DNS cutover handled, the domain stays in your name
  • •   30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
  • •   Source code handed over on day 60, you own everything
Next step

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 Yorkshire builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 29 May, the proposal site comes down.

Reply to the proposal Open the rebuild  ↗
See the rebuild

A working preview you can click through.

Three-venue hero, credential strip, real Yorkshire Dales map, Restaurant + Museum schema. Opens in this tab.

/preview/  ↗