Content model before pixels
We define the shape of your content before the layout, so the design serves the pages you will actually publish rather than the four in the mockup.
Custom Website Design
A site your team can run, search engines can read, and your marketing can actually point traffic at.
Custom Website Design
A build is only good if it survives contact with your team
Most of the sites we replace were not badly designed. They were badly handed over. The agency shipped something that looked right on launch day and required a developer for every subsequent change, so nothing changed, and eighteen months later the site was inaccurate as well as slow.
We build the opposite way round. The content model comes first — what a service page is, what a location page is, what fields your team fills in — and the front end is built to render that model. Adding a twelfth service page becomes a ten-minute job for a marketing coordinator instead of a change request.
The technical side is not negotiable either: semantic markup, real keyboard accessibility, a performance budget enforced on every deploy, and server-rendered HTML so both search crawlers and AI answer engines can read the page without executing JavaScript. For applications, the same discipline applies to state, error handling and the parts of the interface people use fifty times a day.
How we approach it
Three core principles
Performance as a budget
Speed targets are written into the build spec and checked automatically. A marketing tag that breaks the budget gets flagged before it ships, not after a ranking drop.
Handover is a deliverable
Documentation, a walkthrough recording and an editor training session. If your team cannot run the site without us, we have not finished.
- Discovery, content modelling and a written technical scope
- Custom responsive front end built from a component library
- Headless or traditional CMS setup with editor roles and permissions
- Core Web Vitals performance budget enforced in the build pipeline
- WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility pass with keyboard and screen-reader testing
- Analytics, event tracking and conversion goals configured at launch
- Third-party integrations: CRM, booking, payments, marketing automation
- Documentation, editor training and a defined post-launch support window
Process
How it works
Six steps from kickoff to a site your team owns.
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Step 01
Audit and discovery
We review the current site, analytics and search data, interview the people who field enquiries, and agree the one metric this build has to move.
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Step 02
Content model and architecture
Page types, fields, taxonomies and URL structure. This is signed off before design, because changing it later is what makes projects overrun.
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Step 03
Design system
Type scale, colour, components and states — designed as a system rather than a set of page comps, so future pages are assembly rather than invention.
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Step 04
Build
Front end and CMS in the same sprint on a staging URL. Weekly demos, and you can click the real thing whenever you want.
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Step 05
Quality assurance
Cross-browser and cross-device testing, accessibility audit, performance verification against the budget, and redirect mapping for every old URL.
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Step 06
Launch and handover
DNS cutover with a rollback plan, monitoring live before we announce, then training and documentation for your team.
Why us for this
The people who buy your traffic have seen the code
That is the whole difference. When a landing page underperforms, the person who can change the template is already in the room — and they know why the template was built that way.
Built for search from day one
Structure, speed and schema are part of the build spec, not a later project. Our SEO team reviews the content model before it is signed off.
You own everything
Repository, hosting account, domain, CMS licence, analytics. All in your name. There is no lock-in beyond you choosing to stay.
Twelve years of inherited codebases
120+ projects since 2014, many of them rescues. We know which shortcuts cost you later because we have paid for them.
FAQs
Web and app development questions
A focused marketing site is typically six to ten weeks from kickoff. Larger builds with integrations or an application layer run twelve to twenty. The written scope includes a week-by-week plan, and we tell you immediately if something slips.
Whichever fits your team. We most often use a headless CMS with a custom front end for content-heavy marketing sites, and WordPress where a client's team is already fluent in it. We will recommend, but we do not force a stack you cannot staff.
Yes. If you have a design system we build to it. If you have brand guidelines but no digital system, we extend them into one as part of the build rather than starting from scratch.
You can, and many clients do. If you would rather not, our content team writes to the model we agreed, working from interviews with your subject-matter experts. Either way, nothing launches with placeholder text.
Yes. Customer portals, booking systems, internal dashboards and app-like interfaces on top of existing APIs. Anything requiring a native mobile app, we will tell you and scope it honestly rather than pretending a web wrapper is the same thing.
Every build includes a support window — 30 to 90 days depending on the package — covering bugs and adjustments. After that most clients move to a retainer for ongoing work, but there is no obligation to.
Not if the migration is done properly. We map every existing URL, set up 301 redirects, preserve metadata and monitor Search Console daily for the first month. Rankings typically hold and then improve as the speed gains land.