WEBSITES
I build the site first.
You look at it before you pay anything.
It does not matter whether you have a site that has quietly gone stale or no site at all. Either way I build three versions first, you look at them, and you decide after.
A finished site for a hypnotherapy practice in BC. Live and online.
How it works
Two ways in, one result.
Path 1
You have a website already
I read what your current site says about your business and build three new versions of your homepage from it. You get one link, no charge, and there is nothing you need to prepare or send me first.
Path 2
You do not have one yet
I send you a link that asks a few questions: what the site is for, what you want it to do for the business, and any design preferences you have. From your answers I build the same three versions, and from there it works exactly like a redesign.
01
You see it before anything else happens
However you arrive, you get three versions of your homepage behind one link. No charge, and you do not owe me anything for them. If none of the three is for you, that is a perfectly fine place for it to end.
02
Pick one, $300
Tell me which, or which parts of which, because people usually want the header from one and the layout from another. I build the finished site from that, point your domain at it, and put it live. And if you like the idea but none of the three is quite it, the same $300 works the other way: I build six more directions from your notes and you choose from those.
03
$25 a month after that
Hosting, the security certificate, and a round of text or photo changes each month. No setup fee and no contract, so you can stop whenever you want.
What the $25 covers
One $25 bill replaces your hosting and whatever you currently pay somebody to change a phone number.
- It stays online, and it stays quick
- The security certificate, renewed for you
- A round of text or photo changes each month: hours, a phone number, a staff photo, a price list, a paragraph
- Your domain stays pointed correctly, and you keep owning it
- Email forwarding on your own domain, so info@yourbusiness reaches your inbox
What it is not
Worth knowing before you spend any time on this, rather than three weeks in.
- It will not be WordPress
- I rebuild it as a fast static site. If staying on WordPress matters to you, I am the wrong person and I would rather say so now.
- Booking and card payments cost extra
- They are add-ons rather than part of the $300. Almost every site that takes bookings or card payments runs it through a separate service that sits inside the page, and I can set that up for you the same way. What it costs depends on which service and how much of it you need, so ask me and I will price it before you commit to anything.
- A full online store or a customer login is a different build
- A catalogue with a cart, or accounts your customers sign into, is a bigger job than this one. Worth a conversation, but it is not what the $300 buys.
- Bigger changes are quoted separately
- New pages, restructures, anything that is really a rebuild. $75 an hour, half an hour minimum. I would rather quote that than have you counting.
Who this tends to suit
Owner-run businesses with a site that was fine when it was built and has quietly stopped being fine. A copyright date that stopped a few years ago. A layout that fights back on a phone. A page that still lists a price you no longer charge, because changing it means emailing somebody who takes a week.
It works badly for anyone who needs a full online store or customer logins. That is a real build with a real budget, and pretending otherwise wastes both our time. Booking and card payments are a different matter: those get added on top of a site like this one all the time.
FINISHED BUILDS
Two I have built end to end
Click into either one and you will find the three homepage designs it started from, including the two that did not get picked.
Transformations Now
Hypnotherapy practice, British Columbia
See the three designs →
H Anne Photography
Equestrian show photography, Alberta
See the three designs →
EXAMPLE SITES
Where the photographs come from
If you got a homepage from me, most of the pictures on it are already yours. I go through your current site first and use the photographs you have published, because a page about your business should show your business. What I will not do is put a stock photo of somebody else's premises on a page with your name at the top and leave you to assume it is yours.
Some businesses have nothing usable online, and then the page ships with stock that is labelled as stock. The examples below are the same treatment filled in. Every business in them is invented, so nobody is misled about whose clinic that is: the names, the prices and the credentials are blanks, and the photographs stand in for the ones you would send me. Your room, your yard, your horses, your finished work.
Massage & manual therapy clinic
Treatments, the room, hours and booking
Open the example →
Boarding & lesson barn
Board rates, lessons, what is actually in the barn
Open the example →
Welding & fabrication shop
What you do, what is on the floor, how a quote works
Open the example →
Fishing lodge & cabins
Cabins, rates, guided days and getting there
Open the example →
Six decent photographs off your phone is enough to swap any placeholder out, if you want to. If you never send any, the page still looks finished. That is what the placeholders are for.
Ask me anything about it
If something on your current site is broken and you are not sure what it means, call and ask. I will tell you either way, including when the answer is that you can fix it yourself for nothing.
Rick Raymond. Pacific time.