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Breitloh

Website design and build

A site designed for what your organisation actually does, built to be quick on a phone, and handed over so your own people can run it. One person doing the design and the build, which is why the thing that gets made resembles the thing that was discussed.

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Records, rules, and the people allowed to act on them, in one system rather than a spreadsheet

This is for you if

  • Your current site was built for a smaller version of your organisation and it shows
  • You are working around a template rather than with one
  • You need pages that do a job, not five pages of company history
  • Someone in your team will be editing this every week and dreads it
  • You want one price and one person, rather than a rate card and a team you never meet

It is not for you if

  • You want an online shop: that is a different discipline and I will point you at someone who does it properly
  • You want a site live in a fortnight with no content ready
  • You want the cheapest quote in the pile, which is a real requirement and not one I can meet

What is included

A design that belongs to you
Type, colour, spacing, and layout worked out for your content rather than dropped into a template. You see it on a real address in the first week, on a phone as well as a laptop, so you are reacting to a website rather than approving a picture of one.
Every page built and checked on a real phone
Most of your visitors are on a phone and most sites are signed off on a laptop. Each page is built for the small screen first and checked on a real device, because a browser window made narrow is not the same thing.
Tested against WCAG 2.2 AA where it counts
The journeys that matter get tested with a keyboard and a screen reader, not just scanned by a tool. That is a legal question if you sell to the public sector and a decency question everywhere else.
An editor your team can use on the day
Content is set up around the things you publish, with your own words on the fields, and a preview before anything goes live. A typo costs a minute rather than an email to me.
Everything in your accounts, from the first commit
The domain, the hosting, the code, and the content system are yours throughout. There is no licence to keep using your own website and nothing to unpick if you ever want somebody else to take it on.

How it runs

  1. 01

    Half an hour on what it has to do

    Not a discovery workshop. What the site has to achieve, who it is for, what you have now, and what is genuinely fixed about the deadline. If I am the wrong person for it, this is where I say so.

  2. 02

    A price and a date, in writing

    One number for the site, what is in it, what is not, and a launch date beside it. Usually within three working days of the call, and written so you can hand it to whoever signs things.

  3. 03

    Design in the browser, not in a slide

    The first pages appear on a real address within a week or two, and you look at them the way your visitors will. Feedback happens on the thing itself, which removes the argument about whether the picture matched the build.

  4. 04

    Build, with a note every Friday

    Pages built, content brought in, and one short written update a week: what is done, what is next, what I need from you. No status calls that could have been two sentences.

  5. 05

    Launch, then a walkthrough

    It goes live out of hours, everything sits in your accounts, and whoever is looking after it gets a walkthrough, recorded so the person who was on holiday can watch it too.

How long it takes

A date sits beside the price from the start, and you get a note every week saying whether it still holds.

Four to eight weeks, usually
A site of ordinary size, from the first call to launch. The design stage is a couple of weeks and the build is the rest.
Content decides the rest
The part I cannot speed up is how quickly words and approvals come back. Where content is written and signed off, projects finish early. Where it is not, that is the delay, every time.
One build at a time
Working alone means your job gets full attention and there is a start date rather than an immediate one. If you need something live next week, I would rather tell you now.

Fifteen years building for the web, ten of them on enterprise platforms, mostly ServiceNow, for FTSE 100 companies, central government departments, and local authorities. That is where the discipline comes from: requirements taken properly, releases that land, and a demo you did not have to chase.

Sites that have to do a job

Where a site is more than pages, it is written up in detail on its own page: what usually goes wrong, what it has to talk to, and how I would approach it.

Questions I get asked about this

The ones that come up on almost every first call. If yours is not here, ask it and you will get a straight answer.

What does a new website cost?

It depends on how many pages there are, how much of the content exists already, and whether anything has to talk to another system. That is why there is no rate card here. You get one fixed price in writing before anything starts, and it only moves if you ask for something that was not in it. How the money works sets out the mechanism.

How long does a website design and build take?

Four to eight weeks for a site of ordinary size. The stage that decides it is content: where the words and the approvals are ready, projects land early, and where they are not, everything waits. You get a launch date beside the price and a note every week saying whether it still holds.

Do you design first and build afterwards?

They overlap, deliberately. Designing in a static picture and then building it is how sites end up different from what was signed off. The first pages go up on a real address early, so what you are approving is the actual thing on an actual phone.

Can our team edit it without a developer?

Yes, and it is the part I care most about getting right. The editor is built around what you publish rather than a generic admin screen, with a preview before anything goes live. How that is set up is a page in its own right.

Will the site be quick?

Yes, and measurably so rather than as a claim. Pages are static and served from close to whoever asked for them, there is no page builder generating markup, and the site is measured on a mid range phone rather than on a laptop. Why sites are slow covers what actually causes it.

Do you write the content?

I will structure it, cut it, and tell you plainly when a page is not saying anything. Writing it from nothing is a different job and usually better done by a copywriter or by the person who knows the subject. What I will not do is fill a page with words to make a layout look full.

What happens if we want changes after launch?

Most of them your team makes themselves, which is the point of the editor. For the rest there is a monthly arrangement with no minimum term, or you can come back for a piece of work and it gets quoted like any other.

Who owns the site when it is finished?

You do, entirely, and you did throughout. Domain, hosting, code, and content sit in your accounts from the first day. Nothing is licensed back to you, and leaving costs nothing but the goodbye.

The other three things I do

Tell me what you have now

Half an hour on a call, and a straight answer about whether this is the right job and whether I am the right person for it.

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