Web design / St. Louis, MO
Where did you go to high school?
Elsewhere that question is small talk. In St. Louis it’s a way of placing someone: parish, neighborhood, side of town. It also says something about how people here choose who to hire. Roots count. A roofer who grew up in South City, or an accountant who’s kept the same office in Kirkwood for decades, has something a slicker competitor from out of town can’t buy, and the website ought to use it.
Usually that means a real About page in your own voice, with the names and faces of the people who’ll show up. Photos of the actual shop, trucks and staff. A sentence about how long the business has been in the family, if it has. “Trusted local experts” does nothing here; a line like “third generation, same corner of South Grand” does a great deal. If the logo is a clip-art house picked in a hurry years ago, a brand identity refresh is worth doing alongside the site.
The map is stranger than it looks
The City of St. Louis split from St. Louis County in 1876 and never rejoined, so the city is its own jurisdiction, with no county around it. The county, meanwhile, is divided into 88 municipalities in recent counts, plus unincorporated areas like Oakville and Mehlville that residents name as proudly as any town. Clayton, Webster Groves, Florissant and Chesterfield each feel like separate places, and people search that way.
Then there’s St. Charles County across the Missouri River (St. Charles, St. Peters, Wentzville) and Jefferson County to the south. A business that serves all of it needs to decide which of those places earn their own page. A cleaning company covering West County and St. Charles should write for both, with real detail; a footer listing forty town names helps nobody. We work through that list with you as part of small business web design, before the copy gets written.
The Illinois side
Across the Mississippi, Madison and St. Clair counties make up the Metro East: Belleville, Edwardsville, Collinsville, Alton. People there cross the bridges for work and games and still think of themselves as Illinoisans. If you take work over there, say so early on the page, along with any Illinois license your trade requires.
One trap is peculiar to this metro: there are two O’Fallons, one in St. Charles County, Missouri, and one in St. Clair County, Illinois, and customers mix them up all the time.
Hospitals and the businesses around them
Health care is one of the region’s biggest employers, with BJC and Washington University’s medical school anchoring the Central West End and SSM Health and Mercy based in the area. That supports a lot of smaller practices, clinics and suppliers, whose sites need to make booking, insurance and directions obvious. The medical and dental guide goes into the details.
None of this comes from a local office, and we won’t claim roots here we don’t have: the work is done remotely, video calls follow Central Time, and you can check progress from wherever you are.
Three St. Louis questions
We’re in unincorporated St. Louis County. What city do we put on the site?
Use your mailing address exactly as it appears on your Google Business Profile, which for many unincorporated addresses reads “St. Louis, MO”. Then, in the copy, name the area the way locals do. If people call it Oakville, say Oakville.
How do we make it clear which O’Fallon we’re in?
Always pair the town with the state, in the header, the contact page and the page title, and add the county once. If you serve both, give each its own page so neither crowd lands on the wrong address.
Is a Metro East page worth it if we’re based in Missouri?
Only if you’ll actually take the work. If you will, a page written for Belleville or Edwardsville customers is one of the cheaper ways to pick up jobs your Missouri competitors ignore.