Town Tourism Websites
Four market towns run on TownStack. Each has its own site, and each feeds a regional guide that carries its events to a far bigger audience than the town could reach alone.
- Four
- market towns live on the platform today
- Six
- South West counties covered by The West List
- One
- console runs every site, so an event is only ever typed once
A town website is not a brochure. It is where a visitor checks what is on this weekend, where to eat, where to stay and what to walk, and where a local business gets found. TownStack is the platform we build them on. The West List is the regional guide that carries a town's events well beyond its own boundary.
How the regional guide and the town site fit together
The West List is the parent. It is a what's on guide for six South West counties: Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, and Bristol and Bath. Each town site is a child of it. The two are not separate products you have to keep in step by hand. An event is entered once and lands in both.
- An organiser sends it in. They email a photo of a poster or a flyer, or fill in the form on the town site. There is no account to create and no system to learn, which is the only reason small organisers actually bother.
- AI drafts the listing. It reads the poster, pulls out the date, time, venue, price and description, and writes the entry ready for review.
- A human approves it. Every listing goes through a moderation queue before it publishes. Nothing reaches a live site unchecked, so a poster that is wrong, or a submission that is spam, does not become your problem in public.
- It publishes in both places. The event appears on the town site and in the regional guide, filed under its county and its town.
- The guide sends readers back. The West List has its own weekly email and social channels. Someone three counties away finds the event there and clicks through to the town site, and from there to the pub, the shop and the room for the night.
We run every site from one console, so a change is made once rather than four times, and a town is never waiting on us to copy something across.
What a town site includes
- The tourism site itself. Built on Next.js, designed around the character of the place rather than a template, fast on a phone halfway up a hill with one bar of signal, and with a CMS the clerk can actually use.
- Heritage trails. Interactive walking trails with maps, audio and historical content. More on these below.
- AI event listings. The pipeline above, so the what's on page is current without anyone typing it in.
- A shops and services directory. Searchable and filterable, with opening hours, contact details and a map, so a visitor can find the butcher and the butcher can be found.
- A jobs board. Local vacancies, listed by the businesses themselves.
- Festival and event sites. A dedicated site for a festival or fair, built alongside the main town site at a fraction of what a standalone build costs, with trader and sponsor sign-up forms behind it.
- Accommodation. Where to stay, and on larger sites a booking integration.
Heritage trails
A trail is the part of a town site that gets people out of the car park and walking, and it is the part that lasts longest. It is a route, told properly, that works in a visitor's hand on the street.
- An interactive map with GPS, so the walker knows where they are and what is next.
- Audio guides, for the people who would rather listen than read while they walk.
- QR markers on the street, so someone who has never heard of the website joins the trail at the point they are standing.
- Real historical content and images, researched and sourced properly, not a caption under a stock photo.
- It works offline once loaded, which matters in a valley, inside a church, and on a rural tariff.
- Accessibility first, including an honest description of the terrain, so a trail never promises a walk somebody cannot take.
Trails are also the easiest part of a town project to fund and to sponsor. The National Lottery Heritage Fund exists for exactly this kind of work, and a trail takes a single named sponsor far more naturally than a website ever does.
How a town site pays for itself
Start with the part nobody likes saying out loud. There is a build fee, and it is payable up front. Advertising and sponsorship fund the running of the site and can return a surplus to whoever commissioned it, but they do not pay for the build, and a town that starts out believing otherwise ends up with no site at all.
Once it is live, these are the income routes we build in. Which ones a town switches on, what it charges, and who collects the money are settled before we start rather than afterwards.
- Directory listings. A free basic entry for every business in the town, with a paid tier for the ones that want photographs, a longer description and a higher position.
- Advertising and sponsorship on the site. Sold by the town, to the town, at rates the town sets.
- Trail sponsorship. A named sponsor for a heritage trail, which is an easier conversation with a local business than a banner ad has ever been.
- Festival and event income. Trader stalls, sponsor packages and partner listings, taken through the sign-up forms on the festival site.
- Jobs board listings. Local employers paying to be in front of local people.
- Accommodation. Featured placement for the pubs, inns and holiday lets that want the visitor who has just read about the walk.
- Regional reach. The West List newsletter and social channels carry sponsorship of their own, and a town inside the six counties is already part of that audience.
The towns already running on it
- Visit Shaftesbury. The flagship. Heritage trails, AI events, a business directory and accommodation, for a hilltop town in Dorset. Open the site.
- Visit Hungerford. Berkshire, built around the antique shops and the Kennet and Avon Canal. Open the site.
- Castle Cary. A Somerset market town, promoting local businesses and community events to visitors. Open the site.
- Langport Life. A full town council rebuild from WordPress to Next.js, with a bespoke council CMS, hundreds of committee documents, public submissions, and a perfect 100 performance score in PageSpeed. Open the site.
- Shaftesbury Food Festival. A festival site built alongside the town site, with trader and sponsor sign-ups. Open the site.
A good fit if you
- Are a town or parish council, a chamber of commerce, a BID or a tourism group
- Have a website nobody updates, because updating it is a chore
- Want the what's on page to be right without anybody typing it in
- Want local businesses findable by the people already standing in the high street
- Need the project to be fundable, and need help proving it in an application
Not the right fit if you
- Want a brochure site with no events, no directory and nothing to keep current
- Expect advertising income to cover the build rather than the running
- Need it live next week. A trail needs its history researched and its route walked
- Want it hosted and maintained somewhere else. The shared platform is what makes the event pipeline work
Town Tourism Websites, answered plainly
Does the advertising income pay for the website?
No, and we would rather say so now than let you find out later. There is a build fee and it is payable up front. Directory listings, sponsorship, advertising, trail sponsors and jobs board listings fund the running of the site and can return a surplus to the council, chamber or BID that commissioned it. They do not pay for the build. Most towns fund the build through a grant rather than the precept, and we help with the application.
How does The West List relate to our town site?
The West List is the parent and your town site is the child. It is a what's on guide for six South West counties: Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire, and Bristol and Bath. An event is entered once and publishes in both places, so your listings reach people across the whole region and the guide sends those readers back to your town. If your town is outside those six counties you get the same site and the same tools, without the regional guide behind it until the guide reaches your county.
Who has to keep the events page up to date?
Mostly nobody. An organiser emails a photo of a poster or fills in the form, AI reads it and drafts the listing, and a person approves it before it goes live. The approval step is deliberate: nothing publishes unchecked. In practice that is a few minutes a week rather than an evening.
What is a heritage trail and do we need one?
An interactive walking route with a GPS map, audio guides, QR markers on the street, and properly researched historical content that works offline once loaded. You do not need one, but it is the part of a town site that gets visitors walking and spending, it is the easiest part to fund through the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and it takes a single named sponsor far more easily than a website does.
Who owns the site and the content?
You own your domain, your content, your data and your accounts, exactly as every other Okapi client does. The platform itself is shared, which is what makes the event pipeline and the regional guide work, so a town site is hosted and maintained by us rather than exported elsewhere.
Can you build a site for our festival as well?
Yes, and it costs a fraction of a standalone build when it sits alongside your main town site. It comes with sign-up forms for traders and sponsors, a programme, and sponsorship pages. We built the Shaftesbury Food Festival site this way.
Can you help us apply for funding?
Yes. UK Shared Prosperity Fund, the Rural England Prosperity Fund, BID levy, the National Lottery Heritage Fund for a trail, CIL and Section 106 have all paid for projects like this. We write the technical sections of the application and supply the quote it needs. Start early, because funding cycles have deadlines months in advance.
Let's talk about your business.
Twenty minutes, no pitch. Tell us what you are stuck on and we will tell you straight whether we can help. Book a free call, or have a look at what we have already built.