★ Hand-crafted on High Street · free Chocolate Museum · Thursdays and Fridays

A two-day week, a six-foot Chocolate Man. A homepage that says so.

A free, fully-built proposal site for Ilfracombe Chocolate Emporium, the High Street chocolatier and free Chocolate Museum at 6 High Street, owned by Jeannette Cann. Three findings on the live ilfracombechocolateemporium.co.uk, then a working rebuild at /preview/ you can click through.

Open live preview ↗ Read the three findings Reply to the proposal

Address · 6 High Street, Ilfracombe EX34 9DF Founded · 2019 by Jeannette Cann Hours · Th 09:00 to 15:00, Fr 09:00 to 15:00

6 High Street · Ilfracombe · since 2019

Hand-crafted chocolates, a free Chocolate Museum, and a six-foot Chocolate Man. Open the live preview ↗

Three findings, in order

What the eccentricity is currently leaving on the table.

A walk-through of the live ilfracombechocolateemporium.co.uk on 18 May 2026. The free museum and the two-day trading week are the hooks. They want the homepage.

01

A two-day trading week and a free Chocolate Museum are the High Street hooks, and neither appears above the fold.

Observation: The Emporium opens on Thursdays and Fridays only, 9am to 3pm. On the premises is a free Chocolate Museum with a six-foot Chocolate Man, a chocolate dog, a giant Easter egg, and a window into the working kitchen where Jeannette tempers Belgian couverture. The current homepage opens on a Shopify product carousel; the two-day trading week is a small line in the footer area and the museum is behind a nav link rather than on the landing screen. Visit Ilfracombe describes the museum in more detail than the shop’s own homepage does.
Impact: A walker dropping down High Street from the parish church towards the harbour is not browsing for chocolate, they are browsing for a reason to step inside a shop. "Free museum, six-foot Chocolate Man" is the reason. "Open Thursdays and Fridays only, watch the chocolatier in the kitchen" is the reason. Burying both means the visitor reads the homepage as a generic Shopify chocolate shop rather than as the eccentric High Street destination it actually is.
Cause: Default Shopify theme architecture optimises for product grid above the fold. The shop’s editorial hooks (museum, kitchen window, two-day week) live in body copy and in a separate About page.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a hero stating "Hand-crafted on High Street, open Thursdays and Fridays only" with the free museum named immediately under it. The six-foot Chocolate Man photographed and captioned in the fold. The trading-week pattern stated as a feature, not an inconvenience: this is the only week the chocolatier is at the slab.

02

No JSON-LD, so Google cannot tell anyone the shop is a Store and the museum is a Museum at the same address.

Observation: A crawl of ilfracombechocolateemporium.co.uk surfaces no schema.org markup beyond Shopify defaults. No Store with the Thursday-Friday-only openingHours. No Museum subtype at the same postal address. No FAQPage on the two-day-week question. No Person reference to Jeannette Cann. The fact that one premises is simultaneously a chocolate shop and a free chocolate museum is the strongest schema attribute the business has, and it is invisible to crawlers.
Impact: Searches for "free museum Ilfracombe", "chocolate museum Devon", "chocolatier North Devon", "chocolate workshop hen party Devon" are increasingly answered by Google rich results and AI assistants that read structured data first. A generic Devon chocolate chain with cleaner markup can outrank a one-of-a-kind High Street museum-shop simply because its schema is well-formed. The Emporium’s eccentricities should be a moat, not a tell.
Cause: Default Shopify schema is Product and Organization at best. No Store + Museum dual-type, no openingHours array carrying the Thursday-Friday-only quirk, no FAQPage. The story lives in HTML body text and the tourist-board listing.
After rebuild: After rebuild: Store and Museum schema on the same node, foundingDate 2019, founder Jeannette Cann, openingHours ["Th 09:00-15:00", "Fr 09:00-15:00"], hasMap link, telephone, email, FAQPage covering the museum-is-free, two-day-week, workshop-by-appointment, dietary-options questions. Google rich snippets begin citing the Emporium on the Devon chocolate-museum query set within weeks of launch.

03

The six-foot Chocolate Man, the chocolate dog and the working kitchen window are buried below a product grid.

Observation: Visit Ilfracombe writes: "Browse the exhibits and mementoes in our free chocolate museum, including our six-foot ‘hunk’ of chocolate, giant Easter egg, and adverts and chocolate boxes from yesteryear, even a real chocolate dog. You can watch a video of chocolate being made and, if the chocolatier is in the kitchen, you can view her making chocolate for sale." None of that copy is on the shop’s own homepage. The chocolate man and the dog are not photographed above the fold; the kitchen window is mentioned only on the About page.
Impact: These three details are the reason a coach party stops outside 6 High Street. They are the reason a hen party books the upstairs room on a Monday. They are the reason a North Devon coastal-path walker steps inside on a Thursday morning rather than walking past. Leaving them off the landing screen costs the shop the very visitors who would have come for the eccentricity.
Cause: Theme architecture again: the editorial belongs on a dedicated landing block, not in the About menu. The museum has no dedicated route and no photo carousel; the kitchen window has no callout.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a dedicated free-museum block on the homepage with the six-foot Chocolate Man photographed in full, the chocolate dog called out, and a "Watch the chocolatier" panel pointing at the kitchen window. The Becky Craven product photography (already on the site, already paid for) carries the chocolate range. The museum carries the visit.

Web stack and gaps inventory, May 2026

Current ↗ ilfracombechocolateemporium.co.uk

Platform: Shopify, default-theme variant
Hosting: Shopify monthly fee
Hero: Product carousel, two-day-week buried
Museum: No homepage block; no dedicated route
SEO: No Store + Museum JSON-LD; no FAQPage; no openingHours array
OG image: Not set on the home document head
Workshops: Booking sits below product grid; hen-party / kids’-party hook is single-line text

Proposed

Framework: Astro static site (Astro 6)
Hosting: Vercel edge network, sub-100ms first-byte across the UK
Hero: "Hand-crafted on High Street, Thursdays and Fridays" above the fold
Museum: Dedicated /museum route, six-foot Chocolate Man hero, kitchen-window panel
SEO: Store + Museum + FAQPage + openingHours specific to Thursday and Friday only
OG image: Absolute URL to Becky Craven hero on ilfracombe-chocolate-emporium.builtbycorey.com
Workshops: Dedicated /workshops route, hen-party and kids’-party blocks, group enquiry form

Pricing

One fixed price. No hourly billing. No surprise upgrade tier.

Single fixed fee for the full rebuild, plus a small monthly care plan. The Shopify cart and checkout stay live behind a Buy-online button so nothing the shop relies on goes away.

Build

Full Astro rebuild + Museum + Workshops + Visit pages

Hand-crafted-on-High-Street homepage. /museum, /workshops, /visit, /faq routes. Store + Museum + FAQPage schema with Thursday-and-Friday-only openingHours. Becky Craven photography reused. Shopify cart kept behind the Buy-online button. 2-3 week turnaround.

£2,000

fixed · one-off

Care

Hosting + ongoing care

Vercel hosting, SSL renewal (automatic, forever), monthly content updates, new-flavour additions on the chocolates grid, museum exhibit refreshes, schema upkeep, monthly analytics email.

£150

/ month · cancel any time

Optional

Embedded FAQ chatbot

A small chatbot trained on the museum-is-free, two-day-week, dietary-options, workshop-booking questions. Answers in the shop’s voice. Only if you want it; the FAQPage block alone covers the regular questions.

£50

/ month · optional

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits unless you want one; fully remote from Switzerland.

• One round of revisions before launch
• DNS cutover handled (you keep the domain in your name)
• 30 days of post-launch tweaks at no extra cost
• Source code handed over on day 60 (you own everything)

FAQ

Four questions the chocolatier on High Street actually asks.

If any answer needs a follow-up call, reply with two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

The shop is on Shopify today. Are you proposing to take the online ordering away? +

No. Shopify can stay as the back-end for online ordering and stock. The rebuild replaces the storefront (homepage, museum page, workshops page, visit page, FAQ) with a custom Astro front. The Shopify cart and checkout stay live behind a "Buy online" button. Nothing the shop relies on goes away; the marketing surface becomes the eccentric High Street destination it should be.

How does the two-day trading week get treated on the new site? +

As a feature, not a footnote. The hero states "Open Thursdays and Fridays, 9am to 3pm" in the largest type on the screen. JSON-LD openingHours marks Thursday and Friday explicitly so Google rich results show "Open today" only on those days. Mon-Wed the homepage carries a "Workshops upstairs, by booking" callout rather than going dark. Sat and Sun the homepage points at the 43 Artisan Gallery on Fore Street so the visitor still finds the chocolate.

You mention a free Chocolate Museum block. Do you want photos of the six-foot Chocolate Man and the chocolate dog? +

Yes. Becky Craven’s existing photography covers the chocolates and the kitchen. The museum exhibits (the six-foot Man, the dog, the giant Easter egg, the chocolate-box adverts wall) want their own dedicated photo session if you have an afternoon free between Thursday and Friday opening hours. I can shoot it on the build trip, or you can take a phone roll and send it across; either works.

What happens to the existing About / Workshop / dietary-option pages? Is there content to migrate? +

Yes, all of the existing copy reads true and gets reused. The Visit Ilfracombe blurb (the "six-foot hunk of chocolate" line, the chocolate dog, the kitchen-window line) gets pulled into the museum page verbatim with attribution. The dietary-option page becomes a filter on the chocolates grid rather than a separate route. No copy gets thrown away; the editorial moves up the page.

Next step · one email, one decision

If the proposal lands, two or three 20-minute slots in the next ten days.

I take on three South West independent builds this quarter, and first confirmed wins the slot. If I don’t hear back by 28 May, the proposal site comes down. If it doesn’t land, one line of feedback so I don’t pitch the same idea again.

See the live rebuild ↗ Reply to the proposal

See the live rebuild

A working preview you can click through

The hand-crafted-on-High-Street homepage, the free Chocolate Museum page, the workshops and visit pages. Opens in a new tab.

Open ↗