Everything we know,
written down.
These are complete guides, not teasers. If you follow one and never call us, it worked. We'd rather be the people who told you the truth about what this costs than the people who kept it vague.
Do it yourself
Complete, unhedged guides. If you follow one and never call us, it worked.
3 guides
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The tools we would actually use if you were building it yourself
An opinionated toolkit for building your own small-business website: editor, fonts, colour, images, hosting, and where AI helps versus where it hurts.
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WordPress, Wix or Squarespace: which one is actually right for you
An honest comparison of WordPress, Wix and Squarespace for a small business, what each genuinely costs over three years, and the question that decides it.
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How to build and host a website for free, and what it actually costs you
What free website hosting actually covers, the free-domain trap, what shared hosting costs after the intro price, and when your time becomes the cost.
Don't get taken
How this industry actually bills, and how to check what you already own.
7 guides
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I get all my work from word of mouth. Do I need a website?
An honest answer for trades who get every job by referral: what a website changes, what happens after your name is passed on, and when the answer is genuinely no.
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What a website actually costs, and what you are paying for
Real price ranges for a small-business website, what drives the number up, the four costs a quote leaves out, and how to tell a fair one from a bad one.
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How long a website actually takes, and what makes it late
Realistic timelines for a small-business website, stage by stage, the four things that actually cause delays, and what to do before you hire anyone.
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Website accessibility, and the lawsuit letters going to small businesses
What ADA website claims target, why overlay widgets do not protect you, and the seven fixes that cover most of the real problem on a small site.
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Custom or template: what the difference actually buys you
When a template is the right call, the three situations where custom earns its cost, and the sales tactics used to push you to the expensive answer.
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The redesign checklist, and how businesses lose their traffic overnight
Why redesigns lose traffic, the measurements to take before you start, and the launch-week checklist that keeps the rankings the old site had earned.
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Who built your website, and can you still reach them?
How a cheap website build turns into an outage nobody can fix, and the questions that prevent it, whether you hire a freelancer, a student or an agency.
Make the phone ring
Practical local-business work, useful whether or not you hire anyone.
6 guides
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Licensed, insured, and able to prove it
Which credentials a customer actually checks and in what order, why a licence number beats the word licensed, and what to put on the page when you started last year and have none of it.
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The gmail address is costing you work
What a free email address signals to a builder and a homeowner, the practical risks nobody mentions, and how to move to your own domain without losing anything.
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What your site should say to a builder, and what it should say to a homeowner
Most contractors serve both builders and homeowners and their websites address neither properly. What each one is actually checking, and how to serve both without running two sites.
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Getting found when someone nearby searches for what you do
How local search decides who gets called: Google Business Profile, reviews, consistent details, and the job your website actually does in that chain.
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The nine things a local service website needs, and what most are missing
The nine things that decide whether a local service website produces enquiries, and the two most important ones that most sites are missing entirely.
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Landing pages, and why sending ad traffic to your homepage wastes it
What a landing page is actually for, the seven parts that make one work, and the mistakes that quietly waste paid traffic before anybody notices.
Under the hood
How we build, with the numbers attached — including our own mistakes.
4 guides
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What a page builder costs, measured on a real restaurant site
A page-weight teardown of a real WordPress and Divi restaurant site against its rebuild: 4.36 MB of HTML, 115 inline style blocks, and 80% unused code.
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We measured 300 Chicago small-business websites. One in nine did not load.
Original research: we loaded 300 independent Chicago-area business websites on a phone and measured speed, accessibility, and whether they worked at all.
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Mobile-first is not a layout decision, it is where your customers are
What mobile-first actually means, why local businesses feel it hardest, and the four failures we found most often when we measured 300 local sites.
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What a 731 KB homepage costs you, measured on our own site
A page-weight teardown of our own old WordPress site: 731 KB of HTML, 543 KB of inline CSS, 44 scripts, 5.5s to first byte, and how to measure yours.
Something we haven't covered?
Ask the question. If it comes up twice we write it up properly, and you get the answer either way.