Web design

Web design built backward from the sale

Most web design projects open with "what should it look like?". I open with a different question: what does a customer need to see before they call you? A homeowner in suburban Atlanta comparing three remodelers wants a price range, the counties you cover and photos of similar jobs. A patient searching for a dentist after work wants insurance details, hours and a booking button. The look of the site follows from those answers, not the other way around.

That's why every project starts with structure and copy. After a short interview I write the headlines, service descriptions and answers to typical objections myself. Only then do I draw a wireframe and the final design. The result is a website where every screen has a clear job and a next step.

How I build: hand-coded or a custom CMS

There are two ways I build, and neither involves a page-builder plugin or a theme bought for $59. Either I write the site by hand, or I build it on a small CMS made for that one project. Whichever fits, you get the same five things:

• One payment for the work. No platform plan billed monthly; hosting and domain are agreed individually.
• Pages that open fast on a phone in a basement parking garage, because nothing unused gets loaded.
• Search settings under control. Titles, headings, schema and redirects are written the way Google reads them.
• Leads routed directly to your CRM, email or a text alert, with no chain of connectors to break.
• Your name on everything: the domain, the repository, the content.

Pick a hand-coded website when the site changes a few times a month. Pick a website on a custom CMS when your staff publish every week and need their own admin.

Which website do you actually need?

Not sure which row is yours? The free 30-minute call exists for that. I often talk owners down rather than up: one sharp landing page and a single ad campaign can test an offer within a couple of weeks, and the bigger site gets built once you know what sells.

What US websites need to get right

A few topics come up on almost every American project, so I plan for them from the first sketch rather than bolting them on later:

• Accessibility. The ADA is widely applied to business websites in lawsuits, and WCAG 2.1 AA is the usual yardstick. I build to it by default; details on the website accessibility page.
• Privacy. There's no single federal privacy law, but California and a growing list of states have their own. Many small businesses fall under none of them, yet a clear privacy policy and an honest cookie notice are cheap insurance. Your attorney has the final word.
• Texts and email. If your form offers text updates, consent wording has to fit TCPA rules; newsletter sign-ups need to work with CAN-SPAM. I build the checkboxes, you confirm the wording with counsel.
• Spanish. I write and build in English. If your customers need a Spanish version, that copy comes from your own team or translator, and I build the structure to hold it.

Mistakes I see on new builds

The costliest one is a site that looks modern but gives no obvious next step. Others show up constantly: one generic "Services" page instead of a page per service (bad for SEO and for buyers), stock photos of strangers, no prices anywhere, and a contact form wired to an email address nobody has checked since 2021. Each is cheap to avoid during planning and expensive to fix after launch.

I don't patch sites built by someone else. If yours has these problems, I build a new one, keep your domain, move the content worth keeping and set redirects so Google rankings carry over. More on that in website redesign.

After launch: getting the phone to ring

Launch day is when the site starts needing visitors. I can run Google Ads, work on local SEO and set up a CRM so you see which click turned into which paying job. Scopes and prices sit side by side on the website pricing page. Or fill in the short website brief, and you'll get a plan with a timeline.