Websites you can actually change

Something you can go and check

This is a website I built for a cat.

Percy is a small black cat who lets himself into other people’s houses. There is a page on his site called Sightings, which is photographs of him doing exactly that, sent in by neighbours.

The neighbours add them themselves. They tap a link, choose a photograph from their phone, write a line, and send. It arrives for the owner’s approval and goes up when they say so. No email chain, no developer, nothing to install.

Which means the page keeps growing without anyone rebuilding it. Every time he turns up somewhere new, it is on the site the same evening.

Go and press the buttons: wearepercy.com/sightings

It is a cat. It is also the thing a website has to do if it is going to keep up with a life that is still happening.

There are five more, and what each one had to solve, on the work page.

How it works

Five steps. The second one matters most.

A short conversation, free. Twenty minutes to work out whether I am the right person for this. No preparation, no obligation, and if I am not the right fit I will say so.
Then we sit down properly. We look at what you have and talk about what is working and what is not, and I ask a lot of questions. Less about how you would like it to look, more about what you want it to do, who it is for, and what feels most true about your work right now. That conversation shapes everything that follows.
I design and build it. Properly, to fit you, not dropped into a template that a thousand other people are also using.
I hand you the keys. You get a plain login. Words, photographs, prices, hours, new pieces of work. You change them from your laptop or your phone, and the site updates. You cannot break the design by accident, because the words and the design live in different places.
I sit with you until you have changed something yourself. Not a video you watch alone. You do it once, in front of me, and you keep a short guide written for your site so you have it later.

What it costs

Said plainly.

A conversation first

Twenty minutes, no charge and no obligation. We work out whether I am the right person for what you need. If I am not, I will say so and probably tell you who is. Nothing to prepare.

Free · book a time →

The build

It starts with a long conversation, because that is where the site really gets made. Then designed for you, built, launched, and handed over so you can edit it. Usually two to three weeks.

$2,500 to $4,000, agreed before I start

Keeping it alive, if you want it

Hosting, the domain, backups, and someone to call when something breaks. Not a fee to change your own words, because you can do that yourself. That is the whole point.

$60 to $100 a month, cancel whenever

If you already have a site and something about it is wrong

You do not need a rebuild to find out what. I will go through the site you have, measure it, and send you a written report of what is actually causing the feeling, ranked, with the evidence for each finding. How that works.

$333, and it comes off the build if you go ahead

If you want the thinking but not the website, I will do that on its own: a session and a written plan for what your site should be, yours to take to anyone. $400.

No hourly billing, and no invoice you did not see coming. If something is outside what we agreed, I tell you before I do it, not after.

Questions people actually ask

The things you might be worrying about.

What if my work is hard to explain?

Honestly, I can relate. I have struggled with this in my own work for years.

The good news is that your work does not have to fit into a traditional website structure. We can make something that actually reflects you and what feels most important to communicate right now.

Usually I start by listening. I will ask you a lot of questions about what you are doing, what is moving you, what feels most alive, and what might be underneath the different pieces of your work. I will reflect things back, throw out ideas, and we will begin to notice what belongs together.

We do not have to know the shape before we begin. We listen for what is actually there and let the site take shape from that.

I already have a website. Do we have to start over?

Not necessarily. We can work with what you already have, or build something new.

I would start by looking at your current site with you. What do you love about it? What still feels true? What do you want to keep? And where does it feel like you have outgrown the structure that is there?

If we decide to rebuild, starting over does not mean throwing everything away. We can carry over the writing, images and ideas you still love, and reshape them around where your work is now. Sometimes that is the cleanest way to give an existing body of work more room to breathe.

If you want to keep the site you have, I will look at how it was built and what is possible within that structure. I do not want to decide that before I have seen what we are working with.

Will I really be able to change it myself?

Yes. And if technology makes you nervous, I completely understand.

We will build the site so that the things you will actually want to change are simple and safe to update, without worrying that one wrong click is going to wreck everything.

I will explain things as we go, and when we are finished you will have a short guide made specifically for your site, so you know exactly how to change what you need to change.

And I am not going to hand you the keys and disappear. You will always have my details if you have a question or want me to walk through something with you.

The goal is for the site to feel like yours, not like something you are borrowing from the person who built it.

How involved do I need to be?

You do not need to arrive with a finished vision, written copy, all your images, and a hundred decisions already made. That is part of what I am here to help with.

What I do need is enough time with you to really understand what you are trying to communicate. We will talk about your work, what matters to you, who you are trying to reach, and how you want the site to feel. If you already have writing, photographs or anything else that feels like you, that helps enormously.

From there I can do a lot of the heavy lifting: shaping the language, finding images, exploring colours, organising the information.

Then we shape it together. I send you something you can actually see, you tell me what feels right and what does not, and we keep going until it feels like yours.

You do not need to know how to make a website. You just need to be willing to be part of the conversation.

What happens after it is finished?

It is yours.

You do not have to keep working with me, or paying me, in order to use or change your own website. I will make sure you know how to look after the things you will want to change.

If you would rather have ongoing help, that is $60 to $100 a month depending on what you need. And if you are perfectly happy on your own and then something comes up a year from now, just get in touch. We can pick up whenever you need me.

I want support to be available to you without your website depending on me in order to keep living and changing.

Will people be able to find it on Google?

Yes. I will make sure the site is built so search engines can find and understand it, and I will take care of the setup Google needs in order to discover it.

What I cannot promise, and nobody honestly can, is exactly where Google will rank you for a particular search. That depends on what people are searching for, how competitive your field is, what is on your site, and a number of other things.

What I can do is give you a strong foundation. A site that is technically accessible to search engines, clearly organised, and written so that both people and Google understand what you actually do.

If being found through search matters a lot to your work, we will talk about that from the beginning and build with it in mind.

A website you can actually change.

The best thing about you is on page three.