How it works.

What happens between the first phone call and the day it goes live — and what's actually in the box, without the jargon.

The process

From first hello to sign-off.

Eleven steps. You'll know which one we're on at any given moment, and nothing moves to the next until you're happy with the last.

A conversation
Free, and you're not committing to anything. What the business does, who you want walking through the door, and what the site actually has to achieve — enquiries, bookings, or just looking like a real company when someone checks you out before calling.
A written quote
A fixed price and a plain-language list of what's included, as a PDF you can keep. No hourly estimate that drifts, and no line items you need a developer to interpret.
A deposit, and a spot in the schedule
A deposit books the work in. You'll know when it starts and roughly when you'll see something.
Gathering the content
Copy, photos, your logo files, hours, service areas, the details that only you know. This is the step that decides how fast the rest goes. If writing it is the part you've been dreading, say so — that can be part of the job.
Design
You see a real page in a browser, on your own phone, not a flat picture of one. That's deliberate: a mockup can promise things the web can't deliver, and it hides how the design behaves when the screen is small or the text is long.
Your review
Changes are cheapest here, before anything is built on top of the design. Tell me what's wrong in whatever words you have — "it feels cold" is useful information.
Build
The rest of the pages get built out, forms get wired up and tested end to end, and everything gets checked on real devices rather than a desktop browser squeezed narrow.
Testing and a report
Accessibility, performance, and search basics all get checked before launch, not after. You get the Lighthouse scores and I fix what needs fixing — the list further down is what's being checked against.
Launch
Domain and DNS pointed, HTTPS on, and — if we're replacing an existing site — the old page addresses redirected to the new ones so the rankings and links you already have don't get thrown away.
Handover and sign-off
You get the code, the accounts, and the domain in your own name. If we part ways tomorrow the site keeps working and someone else can pick it up. Sign-off is you saying it's right, not an invoice arriving.
After
Changes are quoted as they come. There's no retainer and nothing that auto-renews. When you need something, you call a local number and a person answers.

What you get

Everything below is in every build.

Not an upgrade tier, and not a list of things that get quietly dropped when the deadline tightens. Where something is genuinely out of scope, it's named at the bottom of this page rather than left vague.

It works for everyone

Built to WCAG 2.2 Level AA — the accessibility standard most public bodies and larger clients ask about, and increasingly a legal expectation rather than a courtesy.

Text you can actually read: Colour contrast is measured against the standard's minimum, not judged by eye. Pale grey on white fails; it just doesn't look like it fails to whoever picked it.
Works without a mouse: Every link, button and form field can be reached and used from the keyboard, and you can always see where you are on the page.
Works with a screen reader: Real headings in a sensible order, form fields with labels attached, and images described — so software reading the page aloud makes sense of it.
Respects "reduce motion": If a visitor has asked their phone or computer to cut down on animation — often because it makes them ill — the site listens.
Survives being zoomed: Text can be enlarged without the layout collapsing or content disappearing off the side.

It's fast

Speed is the one thing every visitor notices and nobody compliments. It also feeds directly into where you rank.

Plain files, served directly: No database being queried and no page assembled from scratch on every visit. There is less to go wrong and less to wait for.
Measured on the three things Google counts: How quickly the main thing on screen appears, whether the page jumps around while it loads, and how fast it reacts when you tap. Those three are Core Web Vitals, and they are part of how you rank.
A Lighthouse scan before launch: Google's own audit tool, run on the finished site. You get the scores — performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO — rather than being told it went fine.
Tested on a bad connection: Not just on office wi-fi. Most people will meet your site on a phone with two bars in a parking lot.

Images that behave

Photographs are usually the heaviest thing on a website and the easiest thing to get wrong.

Modern formats: The same picture at a fraction of the file size, with an older format kept as a fallback for anything that can't read the new one.
The right size for the screen: A phone gets a phone-sized image instead of downloading the full desktop version and shrinking it.
No jumping while the page loads: Every image reserves its space before it arrives, so text doesn't shift under your thumb just as you go to tap it.
Loaded only when needed: Pictures further down the page wait until you scroll towards them.

Findable in search

The basics, done properly. Nobody can promise you a position on a results page, and anyone who does is guessing.

A real title and description on every page: What shows up as the blue link and the grey text underneath it in search results — written deliberately, not auto-generated from the first sentence.
Headings in a real structure: Search engines read the outline of a page the way a person skims it. A page where everything is bold and nothing is a heading reads as mush.
A sitemap and a crawler file: A machine-readable index of every page, and instructions for what should and shouldn't be crawled.
Structured data: Your name, phone, region and services published in a format search engines read directly, so the business details in the listing come from you rather than a guess.
Old addresses redirected: If we're replacing a site, every old page address points at its new home. Skip this and the reputation those pages built up over years is thrown out on launch day — it is the most common way a redesign loses traffic.
Consistent details everywhere: The name, address and phone on the site match your Google Business Profile and directory listings. Mismatches quietly hurt local ranking.

Legible to AI assistants

More people now ask an assistant than open a search engine. That is a different problem from ranking, and it needs different work.

Facts written as answers: Structured so an assistant can quote a straight answer about your hours, service area or pricing rather than paraphrasing a marketing paragraph.
A plain-text summary for machines: An llms.txt file describing the business and pointing at the pages worth reading.
A crawler policy that names AI crawlers: An explicit decision about which assistants may read the site, rather than whatever the default happens to be.
An honest caveat: Nobody can make an assistant recommend you. What this does is make sure you're legible and quotable when one goes looking.

It looks right when shared

A link posted to Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp or a group chat either shows a proper card or a bare grey URL. That is set in the page, and it is invisible until the moment it matters.

A title, description and image per page: So the preview says something useful instead of repeating the domain name.
Sized for the platforms: The image is built to the dimensions the big networks crop to, so heads don’t get cut off.
Checked before launch: Previewed with the same tools the networks use, because the failure mode is silent — you only find out when a customer shares it.

On every device

Most of your visitors are on a phone. The desktop version is the afterthought, not the other way round.

Designed for small screens first: Then opened up for larger ones, rather than a desktop layout crushed down until it fits.
Tap targets you can actually hit: Buttons and links big enough and far enough apart for a thumb.
Checked on real hardware: Including older phones, which is what a lot of people are actually carrying.

It's secure, and it stays up

Unglamorous, and the part people only think about once it has gone wrong.

HTTPS: The padlock. Without it browsers warn visitors away, and search engines mark you down.
Forms that actually arrive: Tested end to end to a real inbox, with spam filtering so the enquiries you care about aren’t buried.
No passwords in the code: Credentials stay out of the files and out of version control.
Nothing that quietly expires: No plugin licences or subscriptions holding the site hostage. If something does need renewing — your domain, your hosting — you’ll be told exactly what and when.

It's yours

The part that matters most if you ever want to work with someone else.

The code, in a repository you own: Handed over, not held. Any competent developer can pick it up.
Domain and hosting in your name: On your accounts, paid by you, so nobody can hold the address to ransom.
A written handover: What everything is, where it lives, and how to get into it.
No subscription to me: You are not renting your own website.

Being straight with you

What isn't included.

Every quote that only lists inclusions is hiding this section somewhere.

Hosting and domain fees: Paid by you, directly to the provider, usually a small annual cost. Kept in your name on purpose.
Ongoing content updates: Quoted as they come rather than bundled into a monthly fee for work that may not exist.
Photography and copywriting: Can be arranged or quoted separately — just say so early, because it affects the schedule more than anything else.
Legal pages: If the site collects personal information through a form, you likely need a privacy policy. I'll tell you when that applies; the wording should come from someone qualified to write it.

Start a project

How it works.

From first hello to sign-off.

A conversation

A written quote

A deposit, and a spot in the schedule

Gathering the content

Design

Your review

Build

Testing and a report

Launch

Handover and sign-off

After