Torquay is a working town and a holiday town at once. A cafe on the Strand serves regulars on a wet Tuesday in February and 200-cover days in August. A boutique on Fleet Walk competes with the chains for local spend and with the Babbacombe gift shops for the holiday pound. A B&B in Wellswood needs to be on the first page of Google for "Torquay B&B" all year, but it really needs to be there in March when people book their summer week. A website built for that pattern looks different from a generic small-business template. This post sets out what actually works for the six types of Torquay business we hear from most often.
Cafes and restaurants
Torquay's food scene runs from harbourside fish-and-chips to the Michelin-recognised places out toward Maidencombe. What every one of them needs from a website is, in order: a menu that loads instantly on a phone, opening hours that are correct, accurate Google Maps directions, and — for the ones doing it — online table booking. The number of visitors who decide where to eat while standing on the seafront is enormous, and they are deciding on a phone with a poor 4G signal. A site that takes seven seconds to load has already lost them. A site with a menu hidden behind a PDF download has lost them too.
If you take bookings, integrate ResDiary, OpenTable or Bookingfor directly. If you do takeaway, a WooCommerce shop with sensible postcode-restricted delivery (TQ1, TQ2, parts of TQ3) handles the orders and gives you the customer data. Photos of actual plates, not stock images, do more for conversion than any other single change.
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Contact HereBoutique shops
Independent retail in Torquay survives on character that the chains cannot copy and on reach that goes beyond the people walking past the door. A boutique website should do two jobs at once. It should function as an online shop window that gives somebody who saw a dress in the window the night before a way to come back and buy it the next morning. And it should sell to the wider catchment — the second-home owners in TQ4 who shop in London but want a Devon piece, the Exeter shoppers, the holiday visitors who want to order something they saw on holiday and have it sent home. WooCommerce handles all of that, and click-and-collect from your physical shop is genuinely useful for the local half of that audience.
Bed and breakfasts
Torquay's B&Bs and small hotels live or die by online bookings. A website that does not let somebody book a room at midnight, on a phone, in a few taps, is leaking revenue every night. The practical setup is a booking widget from a channel manager (Little Hotelier, Beds24, SiteMinder) embedded directly on the homepage, room-by-room photo galleries with honest views (sea views from a Wellswood B&B should be photographed from the actual room, not a generic Riviera shot), a clear cancellation policy, and a Google Business Profile with up-to-date check-in details. We have built sites for Devon B&Bs that increased direct bookings 30–40% within a season simply by replacing a brochure-style site with one that took the booking on the same page.
Health and wellness
Yoga studios in St Marychurch, beauty salons on Belgrave Road, sports therapists in Chelston, dental practices, physios — these all share the same problem. The customer wants to book at 9pm on a Sunday when the salon is closed. Online booking is the single biggest improvement most of these businesses can make. We typically integrate Fresha, Booksy, Timely or simple Gravity Forms-driven calendars depending on price point, and we link the booking flow directly into Google Business Profile so somebody searching "massage Torquay" can book without ever visiting the website.
Local artisans and craftsmen
Cockington Craft Centre, the makers around the harbour, the studios up at Babbacombe — Torquay has a substantial population of independent makers whose entire problem is reach. The right website here is part portfolio, part shop, with a strong Instagram and Pinterest tie-in. Etsy is fine as a sales channel but Etsy owns the customer; a WooCommerce site with a Stripe checkout owns the customer relationship and the email list. We typically advise running both for the first year and migrating volume to the owned site as the audience grows.
Professional services
Accountants, solicitors, surveyors and consultants in Torquay sell trust before they sell expertise. A professional services site needs three things to do that work: clear service pages that explain what you do without jargon, real photos of real people (not stock), and a frictionless contact path — Gravity Forms with a clear "we reply within one working day" promise, plus a click-to-call mobile button.
What this means for your site
The thread running through all six is the same. Mobile-first, fast, with the practical action — book, order, call, enquire — visible on the first screen. Built on WordPress and Divi 5 so you or your team can update it. Hosted on UK servers so it loads quickly for the locals and the day-trippers. Local SEO that targets TQ1 to TQ4 and the Torbay search radius rather than the whole of the South West.
We are based in Newton Abbot, fifteen minutes up the road, and we have been building Devon business websites for over 26 years. Sites start from £250. Call or WhatsApp 07887 988780 if you want a straight conversation about what your Torquay business actually needs online.