★ Roker, Sunderland · north of the water · Fri-Sun only

A few specific fixes for rokerrecords.co.uk.

I rebuild small-business sites in my spare time when I can see they are leaving conversions on the table. Three things stood out on mobile when I read the current rokerrecords.co.uk. Three findings below, then a working rebuild you can click through at /preview/.

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

Address · 164a Fulwell Road, Roker, Sunderland SR6 9QS Founded · October 2025 by Iain Wakefield Hours · Fri-Sat 09-16, Sun 10-15

Roker Records shopfront at 164a Fulwell Road, Roker, Sunderland

164a Fulwell Road · since October 2025

Iain Wakefield, two books and a podcast on record collectors, opened the only independent record shop in Sunderland north of the water. Open the live preview ↗

Three findings, in order of priority

What a Fri-Sun coastal vinyl shop is currently leaving on the homepage.

A walk-through of the live rokerrecords.co.uk on 18 May 2026. The shop\'s strongest credentials sit on /pages/about. The visitor never gets there.

01

The Friday-to-Sunday opening hours are the whole positioning, and the homepage does not say so above the fold.

Observation: Roker Records opens Friday and Saturday 09:00 to 16:00 and Sunday 10:00 to 15:00. Three days a week, deliberately. Iain works as a Landscape Architect Monday to Thursday, so the shop is positioned for the weekend on purpose. The current homepage carries no opening-hours block above the fold. A visitor has to click through to /pages/contact before learning the shop is closed Monday through Thursday. For a coastal-facing shop catching weekend-music traffic from Roker, Seaburn and the wider coast road, the weekend-only trading pattern is the single most important fact on the page.
Impact: A customer driving up the A19 on a Tuesday lunchtime detours to Fulwell Road, finds the shutters down, and goes home. A Roker Beach Saturday-morning walker who would have wandered in does not know to come Saturday until they have read four pages of the site. Visit Sunderland editors building a "what to do in Roker" trail do not learn the shop trades only at weekends.
After rebuild: After rebuild: a Friday-Saturday-Sunday hours badge above the fold and a separate Visit / hours card with the deliberate weekend-music-rituals framing. Closed Monday to Thursday explained as intentional, not absence.

02

Iain authored two books and runs The Record Collectors Club podcast. Neither appears on the homepage.

Observation: Iain Wakefield, the owner, built a personal record collection of more than 5,000 LPs, wrote two books on vinyl collectors (World Records: Conversations with Record Collectors in 2021, 450 pages, 700+ photographs, and The Record Collectors Club Volume One sold by Piccadilly Records in Manchester), and runs The Record Collectors Club Conversations Podcast (54 episodes and counting; latest on Apple Podcasts in February 2026). The Sunderland Echo opening-day piece carried the headline "I had queues down the street as I opened my new record shop in Sunderland". None of this appears on the homepage. The strongest credential a seven-month-old independent record shop in Britain has is buried on /pages/about.
Impact: A visitor landing on rokerrecords.co.uk learns Roker Records sells vinyl. They do not learn that the person behind the counter has spent years asking other collectors what they wish a shop would do differently. That is the entire reason to drive to Roker rather than browse Discogs. The author-and-podcaster credential is what differentiates Roker from any other small vinyl shop on the coast.
After rebuild: After rebuild: an above-the-fold lede that names Iain, names both books with their year and length, names the podcast and its episode count, and surfaces the Sunderland Echo headline as a press quote. A specialism block on collector-to-collector buying. A link from the homepage out to the podcast and the two books.

03

It is the only independent record shop in Sunderland north of the water, and the homepage never says so.

Observation: Sunderland's other record shops sit south of the River Wear (Hot Rats Records around Stockton Road, plus small dealers in the city centre). The Vinyl District called it on opening week: "the second independent record shop in Sunderland and the only one located north of the river". Roker Records is geographically alone on Fulwell Road, ten minutes from Roker Beach. That is a clean local credential. It does not appear anywhere on the current homepage. The shop's most defensible local positioning is invisible.
Impact: A Sunderland local searching "record shop Roker" or "vinyl Fulwell Road" or "record shop near Seaburn" sees a generic Shopify Refresh page that could be any independent vinyl shop in Britain. The Roker / Fulwell / coastal / north-of-the-river identity does not appear. Visit Sunderland and any local-coverage editor writing the shop up have no on-page hook for the local angle.
After rebuild: After rebuild: the local position named in the hero eyebrow ("Roker, Sunderland, north of the water, since 2025"). A Visit block built around the coast-road geography, walking distance from Roker Beach, parking on Fulwell Road. JSON-LD MusicStore + LocalBusiness schema so the shop wins the "record shop Roker" query set on Google and on AI assistants.

Current Shopify Refresh setup and the gaps

Current ↗ rokerrecords.co.uk

Platform: Shopify (Refresh theme, theme store ID 1567)
Hosting: Shopify storefront (~£25+/mo plus app fees)
Identity: Default Refresh theme. No Roker / coastal / north-of-the-water positioning.
Story: About page only. Owner name and books not on homepage.
Schema: Default Shopify product schema. No MusicStore / Organization / FAQPage / Person.
Open Graph: Generic. `og:title` is "Roker Records", `og:description` is "Roker Records", no shop photo.
Hours: Buried on /pages/contact. Friday-Sunday-only pattern invisible on the homepage.

Proposed

Framework: Astro static site for the content + Shopify Buy Button (or full Shopify storefront retained for product pages)
Hosting: Vercel edge network for the marketing surface, Shopify retained for cart and checkout
Identity: Bone-cream + Roker-brick + Wear slate-sea + brass amber. Fraunces serif. Coastal-Sunderland register.
Story: Hero names Iain, the two books, the podcast, the 5,000-record personal collection, and the Friday-Sunday trading pattern.
Schema: Organization + MusicStore + LocalBusiness + Person + FAQPage at build time. Opening hours block. Founder credential.
Open Graph: Real shopfront photo. Description names Iain, the books, the podcast and the Roker location.
Hours: Fri-Sun trading framed as intentional weekend-music-rituals positioning, named in the hero badge and in the Visit block.

Pricing

Fixed price, no hourly billing, no surprise upgrade tier.

One-off fee for the full rebuild, optional monthly care plan, optional chatbot add-on. Source code handed over on day sixty. You own everything.

Build

Full Astro rebuild with the Roker / Fulwell / books-and-podcast story above the fold

New homepage anchored on Iain Wakefield, the two books, the podcast, and the Fri-Sun coastal positioning. Organization + MusicStore + LocalBusiness + Person + FAQPage schema. Real Open Graph card. Shopify retained for cart and checkout where wanted.

£2,000

fixed · one-off

Care

Hosting and ongoing care

Vercel hosting, automatic SSL renewal forever, monthly Recommendations shelf updates, podcast episode additions, schema maintenance, monthly analytics email.

£150

/ month · cancel any time

Optional

Embedded chatbot, trained on the FAQs

Answers the genres / hours / collection-buying / shipping questions in the corner of the page. Hands off to email for anything it does not know.

£50

/ month · optional

No retainer. No contract. No in-person visits, 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

Timeline · phased rollout

Three phases. The story lands on day one.

Phase 1 · Week 1

The story above the fold

● New homepage anchored on Iain Wakefield, the two books, The Record Collectors Club podcast, and the Roker / north-of-the-water position.
● Friday-Saturday-Sunday hours badge above the fold. Weekend-music-rituals framing in the Visit block.
● Organization + MusicStore + LocalBusiness + Person + FAQPage schema. Founder credential surfaced to AI assistants and rich-results.
● Real Open Graph card with shopfront photo and Iain-and-the-books description.

Phase 2 · Weeks 2-3

The shop's own depth

● Specialism block on collector-to-collector buying. Iain's 5,000-record collection and the interview-author background named.
● Visit block with real Google Maps embed at Fulwell Road, walking-distance notes to Roker Beach and Seaburn Metro.
● Recommendations shelf built into the homepage. Roker Recommendations as a curated row, refreshed monthly.

Phase 3 · Week 4+

Podcast and content

● Podcast surface on the site. Latest Record Collectors Club episodes linked, with MusicGroup / PodcastSeries schema.
● Editorial layer for Iain's notes on collections, pressings, condition. Brings the books and podcast voice onto the shop site.
● Optional: full migration off Shopify Refresh onto Astro + Shopify Hydrogen, if the marketing-on-Astro split feels half-and-half.

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 north-east independent builds this quarter. First confirmed wins the slot. If I do not hear back by 28 May 2026, the proposal site comes down.

Reply to the proposal Open live preview ↗

See the live rebuild

A working preview you can click through

Opens in this tab. The hero, the books-and-podcast block, the Fri-Sun trading badge, the Visit map at Fulwell Road, the FAQs.

Open live preview ↗