Independent web developer based in Annemasse. I design the websites of the industrial SMEs, tradespeople and shops of the Arve valley — including the technical sites most agencies do not know how to write.
From Bonneville to Cluses by way of Marnaz, Scionzier and Marignier, the Arve valley holds one of the densest concentrations of bar turning and precision engineering in France. Hundreds of small and medium firms machine parts here for the automotive, aerospace, medical and luxury sectors — often as subcontractors, often for export, almost always B2B.
And yet a large share of those businesses have a website that does no justice to what they can do: three generic pages, no photograph of the shop floor, not a word about the machine park, nothing in English. When a German or Swiss buyer is looking for a subcontractor able to hold a given tolerance, that site teaches them nothing and reassures them about nothing.
The website of an industrial firm does not have the same job as a retail site. It is not there to sell online: it is there to qualify. To prove technical capability, to show certifications, to give enough detail for a buyer to recognise a serious counterpart — and, increasingly, to attract candidates in a valley where recruitment is the first bottleneck.
Who for
Three kinds of project shape local demand, and they have almost nothing in common.
A site that qualifies: machine park, materials worked, tolerances, batch capability, certifications, sectors served. Plus a recruitment page worthy of the name. It is a site written with your team, not from a template.
Timber framing, joinery, earthworks, renovation. The site shows real jobs, names the towns covered from Bonneville to Sallanches, and keeps the phone number within thumb’s reach on every page.
Town-centre shops, restaurants, garages, services. Here the logic is purely local: an impeccable Google listing, correct opening hours, directions, and a fast site that holds up on an average connection.
A bar turning firm is not trying to come up on “bar turning Bonneville”. Its customers do not search like that. Industrial search follows another logic, and that is what makes it accessible: hardly anyone is working on it.
A buyer searches for “CNC turning small batches stainless steel”, “high precision brass bar turning”, “5-axis titanium machining aerospace”. Those queries carry little volume but are extremely well qualified: whoever types them has a real need and a budget. One page per technical capability, written in the real language of the trade, is worth a hundred generic “our services” pages.
If you work with Germany, Switzerland or Italy, some of your prospects search in English. A real English version — translated, with its own hreflang tags and its own URLs — doubles the catchment area. An automatic translation button produces nothing: Google does not index it, and a technical buyer spots machine translation within one sentence.
Frequently asked
Not on my own, and that is exactly why I do not do it on my own. I work from an interview with the person who knows the trade — usually the owner or the technical manager — and I write from what was said. You read it back and you correct it. It takes longer than a generic text, and it is exactly the difference between a site that qualifies and a site that decorates.
It is not there to sell, it is there to pass the first filter. A buyer given your name looks at your site before calling you, and what they find decides whether they consult you. On top of that comes recruitment, which in the valley has become a challenge at least as heavy as prospecting, and which is also settled online.
The technical structure of bilingualism is a modest share of the budget; the real cost is translation and writing. The quote separates them explicitly so that you can decide: professional translation, in-house translation by your own team, or a French start with English added later onto a structure already built to take it.
Elsewhere in the region
Annemasse sits at the centre of the basin. I cover the French Genevois, the Chablais, the Arve valley, Annecy and the canton of Geneva.
