Guides
The practical side of having a website built: what it costs, what takes time, and what to ask before you sign a quote.
The words that sit in the quoteIt is twenty to midnight and you are on the second page of the quote, the one that says what the number buys. Scope, prototype, staging, acceptance, change request. Here are those words in a sentence each, along with the ones a designer says beside a draft and the ones that arrive in the yearly domain letter. And the single word that costs the most.Read more
"Price on request" is not a priceA reader came to your site with one question and left without an answer. Hiding the price does not filter by budget, it filters by patience. Four honest ways to put a number on the page when you have no price list, and one uncomfortable reason it usually does not happen.Read more
Why your website is still not finishedThe quote was signed in spring, it is autumn now, and the site has been almost finished for four months. Four things actually hold a website project up, and none of them is the technical work. Three of the four sit with the client, and one chapter here is about our own mistakes.Read more
"Welcome to our website" and other sentences that do nothingThe first screen says "Welcome to our website", and below it "Quality and reliability since 2011". One test you can run today: if a sentence stays true with a competitor's name in it, delete it.Read more
Someone is selling you an AI agent. How do you tell if it is real?You have surely been offered an AI receptionist, a chatbot or a missed-call text-back. The same technology is sold for a handful of euros a month by one seller and for several thousand by another. Five questions and three warning phrases that tell you which offer is real, without you needing to know anything about AI.Read more
Do you actually need an online shop?An online shop is not a website with a basket on it. It is an operation, and the website is the cheapest part of it. Three honest options, the costs no quote contains, and the questions that separate a real quote from a cheap one.Read more
Why nobody gets in touch through your websiteMore visitors than last year, the same quiet inbox, and two expensive conclusions waiting at that fork. The enquiry is usually lost in the last thirty seconds of a visit, and almost everything broken in there is small and boring.Read more
A slow website costs you customersA visitor will never write to tell you the site was slow. They just leave. Where the speed goes, what it costs you, and what you can fix today.Read more
What a website costs, and why quotes differ so muchThree quotes for the same job, and the highest is four times the lowest. Usually nobody is cheating: three people read the request three different ways. What you pay for, and what to put in the enquiry.Read more
A logo is not a brandThe new logo has been delivered, six months have gone by and nothing else has changed. A brand has five parts and the mark is the last of them: here are the other four, in the order in which they actually decide things.Read more
Your customer looks at your website with one thumbThe site was designed on a 27-inch screen and is read one-handed in a shop queue. Most of what is broken in there adds up to about an hour of work. One thing does not, and that difference is worth knowing.Read more
Who actually owns your website?The domain, the hosting, the site itself and the accounts around it are four separate things, and they can have four separate owners. How to find out in half an hour whose hands your keys are in.Read more
The web words nobody explains to youYou nodded through a meeting about A records and TTL. The invoice says "unlimited", the report shows a red LCP. Here are those words back, in groups and a sentence apiece, every abbreviation written out. Including the three that actually cost money when they go wrong.Read more