Website Design, Development & Conversion
Websites designed to be found and built to convert
Most websites are judged on how they look and fail on what they do. We decide the search structure and the conversion logic before the first screen is designed, then build something fast enough and clear enough to earn the enquiry.
The commercial view
Websites rarely fail because they look wrong
When a site is not producing enquiries, the cause is usually one of four things, and none of them are aesthetic. Either the right people are not arriving, or they arrive and cannot tell within a few seconds that this company serves someone like them, or the path to enquiring is longer and vaguer than their patience, or the page is slow enough on a phone that they leave before any of it matters.
A redesign that addresses only the visual layer fixes none of these. It is entirely possible — common, in fact — to spend six figures and arrive at a better-looking site that converts worse than the one it replaced.
So we start with the commercial questions. Who is this page for, what did they search to get here, what do they need to believe before they will contact you, and what is the single next step? The design work follows those answers rather than preceding them.
Before you commission anything
Rebuild, redesign, or improve what you have?
These are very different projects with very different costs, and the wrong choice is expensive. This is roughly how we work out which one a business actually needs.
| Dimension | Improve what exists | Redesign | Rebuild |
|---|---|---|---|
| Right when | Traffic is decent, structure is sound, conversion is the weak point | The site works but looks and reads like a previous version of the business | The structure cannot express what you sell, or the platform blocks the team |
| Typical work | Page-level copy, layout, forms, speed, tracking | New design system, new templates, existing structure largely kept | New content model, new architecture, new build, full migration |
| Search risk | Low | Moderate — templates and internal links change | High if handled as a design project |
| Time | Weeks | Two to three months | Three to six months, sometimes longer |
| How it goes wrong | Endless small changes with no hypothesis behind them | A visual refresh that leaves the commercial problems untouched | A migration nobody planned until launch week |
How we build
Four things decided before design starts
The search structure
Which pages need to exist, what each one is for, what it should be called and where it sits. Get this wrong and you spend the next three years fighting your own information architecture.
The conversion model
What a visitor has to believe before they will contact you, what evidence supplies that belief, and what the next step is on every page. Then the layout has a job to do instead of a mood to set.
The content model
Services, industries, locations, people and case studies modelled as separate structured things rather than pages of free text. This is what lets a site grow from thirty pages to three hundred without a rebuild.
The performance budget
Weight limits set before the first component is written, because performance is not something you optimise at the end. It is a series of decisions you either made or did not.
The project
How a build actually runs
Strategy and structure
Audience, intent, competitive review, search demand and conversion model. The output is an agreed sitemap, a content model and a set of page briefs — not a mood board.
You get: Sitemap, content model, page briefs
Design system, not pages
We design the components and the type, colour and spacing rules that govern them, then compose pages from that system. It is faster, it is consistent, and it means the site can grow without a designer being involved in every new page.
You get: Design system and key templates
Build
Server-rendered where it matters for search, with performance budgets enforced as we go and accessibility built in rather than audited afterwards.
You get: Built site in a staging environment you can use
Content and migration
Content written or migrated, URLs mapped, redirects planned, tracking configured and verified. This runs in parallel with build rather than being discovered at the end.
You get: Redirect map and signal parity checklist
Launch and watch
Launch on a day when people are available, then monitor index coverage, errors, performance and conversion closely for the first weeks.
You get: Post-launch monitoring and fixes
Standards
What every site we build has to meet
These are commitments, not aspirations. They are written into the project scope, and they are the reason some of our builds take longer than a template would.
Every build ships with
- Core Web Vitals inside Google’s published thresholds on mobile, measured on real devices
- WCAG 2.2 AA as the accessibility target, tested with a keyboard and a screen reader
- Important content in server-rendered HTML, not assembled after hydration
- A complete redirect map and verified signal parity before launch
- Conversion tracking configured and tested before go-live, not after
- Full ownership of code, content, accounts and documentation from day one
What we will not do
- Ship a hero video that ruins mobile performance because it looks impressive in a pitch
- Hide important content behind an interaction so the layout looks cleaner
- Build on a platform you cannot leave
- Treat accessibility as a post-launch fix
- Launch a redesign without a migration plan
Questions
What businesses ask before commissioning a site
Will we lose our search rankings when the new site launches?
Not if the relaunch is treated as a migration, which is what it is. Every URL with value gets mapped, redirects are planned before build rather than at the end, and internal links, canonicals, structured data and sitemaps are all carried across deliberately.
Some short-term movement after any relaunch is normal. The sustained decline that follows a badly handled redesign is not, and it is preventable.
How long does a website project take?
A focused marketing site is typically eight to fourteen weeks from kickoff to launch. Larger sites with complex content models, multiple locations or integrations run longer.
The variable that moves the date most is not development — it is content and approvals. We plan around that explicitly, and we will tell you early if the schedule is slipping because of a dependency on your side.
What do you build on?
It depends on what you need to do. For content-heavy marketing sites we favour a modern framework with a structured headless CMS, because it gives strong performance and a content model that can express services, industries and locations as separate things.
Where a business genuinely needs WordPress, Shopify or an existing platform, we work in it. We do not push a stack because it suits us to maintain it.
Do we own everything at the end?
Yes. The code, the design files, the content, the domain, the hosting account and the analytics are yours, in your accounts, from the start of the project rather than handed over at the end.
You can take the site to another team without asking our permission or paying a release fee. We think a site you cannot leave with is a commercial risk you should not accept from anybody.
Can you work with our existing site instead of rebuilding it?
Often, yes, and sometimes that is the better commercial decision. If the structure is sound and the problem is conversion, targeted work on the pages that already get traffic will produce more than a rebuild, for a fraction of the cost.
We will tell you which situation you are in before quoting for a build. A rebuild that was not needed is an expensive way to solve a copy problem.
Work out whether you need a rebuild or a better version of what you have
Bring us your current site and what it is failing to do. We will tell you which of the three projects above you actually need — including when the answer is the cheapest one.
If we don't deliver the work we agreed to deliver for reasons within our control, you don't pay for the undelivered work. Read our guarantee
Last updated · Reviewed by Zubair Afzal