Custom website design
A website built around your business, not a template
We design and build custom websites for Seattle companies that need the site to do real work: explain what you do inside five seconds, earn trust from a stranger, and turn attention into enquiries. Nothing here is bought from a theme marketplace and reskinned.
- Typical build
- About 3 weeks
- Platform
- WordPress or Next.js
- Serving
- Seattle & the Puget Sound
- Starting at
- $1,850
The problem
Your site looks fine and still does nothing
Most business websites are not ugly. They are unclear. A visitor lands, cannot work out in a few seconds whether you solve their problem, and leaves to check the next result. No amount of traffic fixes that.
The second failure is structural. A site assembled in a page builder from a purchased theme carries layout rules nobody on your team understands, so every edit is a small risk and eventually nobody edits anything. The site freezes on the day it launched.
You probably recognise some of these
- People cannot tell from the homepage who you are for and who you are not for
- The copy describes your company history rather than the visitor’s problem
- Every page is the same stack of sections with different stock photography
- One contact form, at the bottom of one page
- Editing a headline means opening a builder and hoping nothing shifts
- Mobile is the desktop layout squeezed down, not a layout of its own
What is included
What you actually receive
Not a list of adjectives. These are the artefacts that exist at the end, and most of them exist before a single pixel is designed.
Strategy & structure
Weeks 1–2- A sitemap with a stated job for every page
- Page-by-page content plan: the question each section answers
- Keyword and search-intent mapping, including Seattle service terms
- A teardown of the competitors who currently outrank you
- Conversion paths — where enquiries come from and what happens next
Design
Weeks 2–4- Wireframes for every unique template before any visual design
- A homepage direction agreed before inner pages are drawn
- A component library — buttons, cards, forms, tables — not loose pages
- Mobile layouts drawn deliberately, not scaled from desktop
- Colour and type checked against WCAG 2.2 AA contrast while designing
Build
Weeks 3–7- Semantic HTML: real headings, lists, buttons and labels
- Every editable region exposed as a CMS field, not hard-coded
- Forms with spam protection, validation and a real confirmation page
- Organization, Service, Breadcrumb and FAQ structured data
- Analytics and conversion events configured before launch, not after
Launch & handover
Week 8- A performance budget enforced in CI — Lighthouse ≥ 95 on mobile
- Keyboard and screen-reader pass across every template
- XML sitemap, robots policy and Search Console submission
- 301 map from every existing URL if you have a site today
- A live training session plus a recorded walkthrough you keep
Local
Built for how Seattle buyers actually choose
We are at 550 Broadway in Seattle. That matters less for the design than for what the site has to prove.
Proximity is a trust signal, so use it
Buyers searching a service plus a city are filtering for accountability. Real address, real phone, real named people, named neighbourhoods and projects — placed where a skimming visitor sees them, not buried on an About page.
Service areas, not doorway pages
Thin city pages built from a template are a pattern Google demotes. We build a small number of genuinely different location pages and let the rest of the site carry the local signal through content and structured data.
The Business Profile does the local lifting
Rankings in the map pack come mostly from your Google Business Profile, reviews and citations — not from the words on your homepage. We build the site so it supports that work and tell you honestly where the real lever is.
Fast on a phone on a bad connection
A contractor checking three quotes from a job site is on mobile data, not office fibre. Every build is held to the same budget our own site meets: a 1.4s average LCP and Lighthouse ≥ 95.
Our process
How a build actually runs
Understand needs
We learn your business before your website
A working session on what you sell, who buys it, what they compare you against and what a good month looks like. If you have analytics and Search Console, we read them rather than guessing.
You getWritten brief, goals and success measures you sign off
Strategize
Structure and message before design
Sitemap, page jobs, search-intent mapping and the argument each page has to make. This is where a project is won or lost, and it is the cheapest point to change your mind.
You getSitemap, content plan and approved scope
Create & build
Design and engineering in one team
Wireframe, design, then build on a staging URL you can see at any point. No long silences and no reveal at the end — you review each template as it lands.
You getStaging site, reviewed template by template
Optimize & grow
Launch, then measure
Redirects verified, Search Console submitted, analytics checked against real sessions. We watch the first weeks of real data and fix what it exposes.
You getLaunch checklist signed off, first-month review
Honest scoping
Who this is for — and who it is not
A good fit if
- Your website is a real sales channel, not a brochure you were told to have
- You can give a few hours a week to decisions and content during the build
- You want to be able to edit the site yourself afterwards
- You compete on expertise and the site has to prove it
- You are a Seattle or Puget Sound business that needs to look local and credible
Not the right fit if
- You need something live next week — a custom build cannot compress that far
- The budget is template money. A good theme, installed well, beats a rushed custom site
- You are validating one offer with paid traffic — a landing page is faster and cheaper
- There is no copy and no appetite to produce any; design cannot carry an empty page
- You want the exact layout of a competitor’s site rebuilt with your logo
One more thing. If one of those describes you, say so on the call. We will tell you which of these services fits better, or that you do not need us yet.
Selected work
Projects that used Custom Website Design
Questions
Before you ask us
The things people ask about Custom Website Design before they get in touch. If yours is not here, ask directly — you will get a straight answer rather than a brochure.
Ask a questionHow long does a custom website take?
About three weeks from kickoff for a standard business site. Page count, how bespoke the design work is and how fast content and feedback come back are what move it. The schedule is agreed before we start and you see progress on a staging URL throughout, so you are never waiting on a reveal.
What does a custom website cost?
Custom design and build starts at $1,850. The number depends on page count, how much content needs writing, and whether you need commerce, memberships or integrations. We quote after the first call and tell you when a smaller scope would serve you better. See the pricing page for the current ranges.
Will I be able to edit the site myself?
Yes. Every region you should be able to change is a CMS field with a sensible label, and the ones you should not be able to break are locked. You get a live training session and a recording of it. If you would rather we handled edits, that is what a care plan is for.
Do you use WordPress or something else?
WordPress for most client sites, because it keeps editing simple for your team and it is easy to hand to another agency if you ever want to. We build in Next.js where speed, custom functionality or a large content model justifies it, and Shopify where you are genuinely running a store. We will tell you which one fits rather than defaulting to the one we prefer.
Do you write the content, or do I?
Either. Most clients supply raw material — service descriptions, past proposals, the way they actually explain things on the phone — and we shape it into page copy. Fully written content is an add-on to the scope. What does not work is designing around content that nobody has committed to producing.
What happens to my current rankings when the new site goes live?
We crawl the existing site first, inventory every indexed URL, and map each one to its new location with a permanent redirect. Expect a few weeks of movement after any restructure — that is normal — and we monitor Search Console through it. If keeping rankings is the main concern, the redesign service is built specifically around that.
Tell us what the site has to do
A 30-minute call, no deck. You describe the business and where you want it in a year; we tell you what the site needs to do to get you there, what that scope looks like and what it costs.