Small business web design and development: A website built to bring in calls and quote requests.
Small business web design the way it should be done: designed for your business and coded by hand. No templates, no WordPress. The SEO and the speed are handled before launch, you go from signed contract to live site in 14 days, and you get a login to edit it yourself.
Build patios, landscapes or backyards? See the system built for your trade
- Signed contract to live site
- 14 days
- Templates. Every site starts from a blank file
- 0
- Checks before a site goes live
- 145
- Edit your own text and photos
- 1 login
01The job
What does a small business website actually have to do?
Five things, in the order a customer meets them. A site that looks good and does none of these is an expensive business card.
- 01
Get found for the searches that turn into jobs
One target keyword per page, chosen by search demand, built into the title, the H1 and the copy. The page structure mirrors your Google Business Profile so Google reads the two as one business.
- 02
Load fast on a phone in a parking lot
Static HTML, images compressed and sized for the screen, fonts served from your own domain. Core Web Vitals have to pass before launch because they are the page-experience numbers Google measures.
- 03
Make the call or the quote the obvious next step
A phone number that taps, a quote form that takes a minute, a sticky bar on phones, and every one of them sending an event to analytics so you know what works.
- 04
Prove you are real before anyone calls
Your reviews, your photos, your towns and your people. Never stock handshakes, never a founder photo that is not the founder.
- 05
Feed your follow-up
Forms land in your CRM, tagged by page, so the first text goes out while the customer is still on your site.
02How it's built
How is a website built the right way?
Six steps, two weeks. The search plan comes before the design, and the checking takes longer than the drawing. That order is the whole difference.
- 01
Discovery
A 30-minute call. What the site has to do, who it is for, what you have (logo, photos, reviews) and what has to be created. You leave with a fixed-price quote.
- 02
Keyword map and page plan
Semrush demand for every search your customers make. Each page gets one target keyword, and the pages mirror the services on your Google Business Profile. This is decided before any design.
- 03
Design discovery
We tear down the top-ranking sites in your trade for structure, never for their words, and lock a direction from real references. Your brand, laid out on a phone screen first.
- 04
Build
Hand-coded in Astro: static HTML, no page builder, no theme. Schema, canonicals, Open Graph, the sitemap and analytics come from the layout, so no page can forget them.
- 05
Verify
A 145-point launch checklist, plus four automated gates that fail the build: on-page SEO, CMS safety, analytics firing, and text contrast. Receipts, not checkmarks.
- 06
Launch and handoff
DNS, redirects from the old site, Search Console and GA4 verified live, your CMS login, and the site on our managed platform from then on.
03The checks that get skipped
What do most web designers miss?
Eight of the 145 checks every site passes before it goes live. Not the obvious ones. These are the ones that ship broken on sites that look finished, and each one is logged with the command that proved it.
The trailing-slash twin
Most static hosts serve /services and /services/ as two live pages, so every URL has a duplicate the moment it launches. We set the framework and the host so one version redirects to the other.
✓ curl -I /services/ → 308 to /services
Analytics that looks installed and sends nothing
A GA4 tag can sit in the code and never fire a single event because of how the snippet was wrapped. We click-test every lead event, including phone taps, before launch.
✓ tests/analytics: 1 loader, gtag global, tel: taps fire generate_lead
One keyword per page, in the H1 and the title
The most common miss on a "designed" site: beautiful headlines that nobody searches for. A build-time check fails the site if a page has no target or its heading does not carry it.
✓ seo-check: 19 pages, 0 errors
Photos in the wrong color profile
CMYK exports from a designer or a print shop render fine and silently break Google's page-speed scoring. Every image is converted and sized before it ships.
✓ sips -m sRGB, srcset at 640 / 960 / 1200
The share preview
The image that shows when the link is pasted into a text or a Facebook post. It is tested on the preview URL before DNS moves, not discovered broken a week after launch.
✓ og:image 200, 1200×630, tested on the Vercel preview
A layout that jumps when the font arrives
Fonts are served from your own domain with a fallback measured to the same width, so the headline does not shift on a slow connection.
✓ size-adjust computed from the real font metrics, CLS 0
Text you cannot read on a light background
A brand accent that works on a dark hero usually fails on a white card. A script scores every text element against WCAG AA and prints the list, so it gets fixed instead of shipped.
✓ tests/contrast: 0 below AA
Old URLs that die at launch
If the old site ranked for anything, every URL is kept or redirected one to one before the switch. A redesign should not reset your Google history.
✓ redirect map checked against the old sitemap and Search Console
04What's included
What ships with every site, every time.
None of this is an add-on. It comes from the layout every page is built on, so no page can forget it.
SEO in the code
Semantic HTML, JSON-LD schema, canonicals, Open Graph, sitemap, robots and llms.txt.
Core Web Vitals pass
LCP, CLS and INP checked on a throttled phone before launch.
GA4 and Search Console
Installed, verified live, with every call and form as a tracked event.
Your CMS login
Edit text and photos yourself. Every page, no code.
Forms into your CRM
Wired to the follow-up, tagged by page, with a honeypot and a thank-you page that fires the conversion.
Hosting and maintenance
On our managed platform, patched and monitored, with changes made within one business day.
Privacy and terms pages
Written for your business, with the texting language if you text customers.
Phone-first layout
Designed on a phone screen first, with a sticky call and quote bar.
05After launch
What happens after the site is live?
Every site we build runs on our managed platform. We watch it, patch it and keep it fast, so you never think about a server.
Terms
A fixed price for the build, then month to month.
We quote the build once and the number doesn't move. After launch you pay for hosting and maintenance, and you can stop with 30 days' notice. Your domain, Google profile, accounts and data are in your name from day one; the code and design are yours once the build is paid for.
- 01
Managed platform
Served from an edge network, so pages load quickly wherever your customers are. We own that layer so your edits publish instantly.
- 02
Security monitoring
Automated alerts flag vulnerable code, and we patch it.
- 03
Content updates
Email us the change and we make it, or edit your own text and photos with the login you get at handoff.
- 04
Replies in one business day
Questions, changes or problems get a reply within one business day, usually sooner.
Website Grant · November 2026
Want this build for free? One business a month gets it.
The Website Grant: the same hand-coded build, free for one US business a month, picked by Jack and Tristen from the applications. Four minutes to apply, no call or purchase. Every eligible applicant gets $300 off a build for seven days from the day they apply.
14 days left to apply
06Before you book
Straight answers.
Often paired with
Do you use WordPress or a page builder?
Who owns the site?
Two weeks, really?
Can you keep my current site live until the new one is ready?
What does it cost?
Free 30-minute call
Tell us what the site has to do. We'll quote it.
Book a free 30-minute call. We scope the build with you and send a fixed-price quote, so the number doesn't move later.
No prep needed.