Built to be handed over
The most common thing we are asked to fix is a website somebody else built and nobody can now change: no source, no documentation, a page builder licensed to an agency that has moved on. So the terms here are simple and they are in the contract. You own the source code, the repository, the hosting account and the domain. You get the documentation and the deployment access. If you decide to take the work elsewhere, nothing about our build makes that harder than it needs to be.
What gets built
- Marketing sites — built for speed and for search, because a beautiful site that loads in six seconds converts worse than a plain one that loads in one.
- Customer portals — accounts, self-service, billing views, document access. Every thing a customer can do themselves is a contact that never reaches the support queue.
- Internal applications — the tools that replace the shared spreadsheet: workflow trackers, admin consoles, reporting front-ends, approval flows.
- E-commerce — storefronts, checkout work and the integrations behind them.
Performance and accessibility are requirements, not extras
Both are cheap when designed in and expensive when retrofitted, so they are part of the definition of done rather than a line item you can decline. In practice that means real attention to what the browser actually has to download, images sized and served properly, layout that does not jump as it loads, keyboard navigation that works, contrast that passes, and semantic markup that a screen reader can make sense of. It also means the structured data and metadata that search engines read — which is the same work described in SEO & digital marketing, done at build time when it costs nothing.
On page builders. We will use one when it genuinely suits the job — a small marketing site a non-technical team needs to edit daily is a reasonable case. We will say so when it does not, because the cost of a page builder is paid later, in the release where you discover the thing you need cannot be done.
How a project runs
- Scope — what it does, who uses it, what it must integrate with, what "finished" means. Written down and agreed before anyone opens an editor.
- Design — the real screens with the real content, reviewed before they are built. Changing a layout is cheap; changing a built application is not.
- Build — in visible increments on a staging URL you can open at any time. No six-week silence ending in a reveal.
- Launch — with redirects mapped from the old URLs, analytics live, and a rollback plan. Losing existing search rankings during a redesign is a self-inflicted wound and it is entirely avoidable.
- After — a defined support window, then either a maintenance arrangement or a clean handover to your team. Both are fine.
Working with the rest of the floor
Because the support and voice teams sit in the same building, we see what the product actually generates in contacts. A portal that removes the top three reasons customers call is worth more than a portal that merely looks current, and we can tell you which three those are.
Who this suits
Companies replacing a site they have outgrown, teams that need an internal tool their IT backlog will not reach this year, and businesses who want a development team without the overhead of hiring one. If you need a single landing page by Friday, a specialist freelancer will serve you better and cost less.
Common questions
Who owns the code when the project ends?
You do — source, repository, hosting account and domain, in writing, from the start. We do not hold client work hostage in an agency account, and we do not license you your own website.
What technologies do you build on?
Chosen for the job and for who maintains it afterwards, not for our convenience. A content-led marketing site does not need a JavaScript framework and is faster without one; a data-heavy internal application generally does. The deciding question is what your team can maintain after handover, and we will ask it at scoping.
Can you redesign a site without losing our Google rankings?
Yes, and it is mostly a question of doing the unglamorous parts. Every old URL is mapped to a new one with a permanent redirect, page titles and structure are carried across deliberately, and the new site goes into Search Console at launch so any crawl error surfaces in days rather than months. Redesigns that tank rankings almost always skipped the redirect map.
Do you provide hosting?
We can, but we would rather set up hosting in your own account and hand you the keys. It costs you no more, it removes us as a single point of failure, and it means you are never in the position of needing our cooperation to move.
How do you handle changes mid-project?
Small adjustments within the agreed scope are simply part of the work. Anything that changes what the thing does gets estimated as a change to scope, with the cost and the timeline impact stated before it starts. What we will not do is absorb scope silently and then explain the overrun at the end.