How we work

How I build your website.

Five clear steps, from the first chat to going live. Fixed price agreed up front, and unlimited revisions between the first and final draft, so we do not move forward until you are happy with how it looks. No stage where you are left wondering what is happening.

Every Werehouse Media project runs through the same five stages: plan and design, build and test, your private preview, final checks, then launch and aftercare. The homepage concept is reworked until you are happy with it before anything else gets built, then two structured rounds of feedback follow on the build itself. How long that takes depends entirely on the size of the project, how much custom interactivity it needs and how quickly content comes back, so you get a realistic date at quote stage rather than a number invented up front. What makes a project run late is almost always waiting on photos, text and sign-off, not the building.

A realistic date at quote stage Fixed price, in writing One person throughout

Pick a step. See exactly what happens.

Step one · Plan & design

We plan it, then design it

We start with a proper conversation about the business: what you sell, who buys it, what a good enquiry looks like, and what you want more of. Then, before any design, I map what people actually search for, because that decides how many pages the site needs and what each one is called.

Then I design the homepage first, in the browser, at real sizes, with your real words in it. You see it early and tell me what you think while changing it is still cheap.

A friendly kick-off call, no jargon
Keyword and intent map agreed
Page structure signed off before design
Homepage designed first, in the browser
Unlimited revisions until you are happy
One visual system for every page

Step two · Build & test

I build it and test it properly

Once you are happy with the design, I hand-code the site. No page builder, no theme, no forty plugins fighting each other, which is what keeps the pages light enough to open fast on a phone.

I write and place your copy, size and convert every image, wire up your forms, set up tracking, and add the structured data that tells Google what the business is. Then I test it on real devices, not just a desktop browser window made narrow.

Hand-coded, static or Astro
Copywriting written from our interview
Images converted, sized and lazy-loaded
Forms, tracking and schema wired in
Tested on real phones and tablets
Keyboard and screen-reader checked

Step three · Your preview

You see it, and tell me what you think

You get a private link to the real site, not a picture of it, the actual thing, on a real URL you can open on your phone in the van. We walk through it together so I can explain why things are where they are.

Then you send your list. Anything that is wrong, I fix. Anything you want moved, I move. This is the round where being fussy is genuinely helpful.

A private preview link, just for you
Walked through together on a call
Your feedback written down, not remembered
Changes made and shown back to you
You give the go-ahead in writing

Step four · Final checks

Everything checked before it goes live

The unglamorous stage that decides whether a launch is boring or a disaster. I deploy a draft copy on its real hosting and run the checks against that, not against my laptop, because localhost lies about redirects, fonts and speed.

If you had an old site, every old address gets pointed at its new equivalent, so the rankings and links you already earned come with you instead of turning into 404s.

Old URLs mapped one-to-one to new ones
Every link and form tested on the draft
Performance budget met on mobile
Accessibility scan clean
Analytics, Search Console and sitemap live
Backups and SSL in place

Step five · Launch & after

It goes live, and I stick around

I put it live, then watch it closely for the first fortnight. That is when anything odd shows up. You get a short handover so you know how to do the things you will want to do yourself.

After that it is your call. A care plan covers hosting, updates and small changes if you want one. Plenty do not, and that is fine: the site is yours either way, and nothing stops working if you walk away.

Watched daily for the first two weeks
A handover walkthrough, recorded
Care plan optional, from £49/month
You own the domain, code and content
A real person to call, not a ticket queue

Your side of it

What I need
from you.

Honestly, not much, and the slow part of most projects is not the build, it is waiting on these four things.

One hour

A proper conversation

I interview you about the business and record it. That call becomes your copy, so the site sounds like you rather than like a web designer.

Whatever you have

Photos of real work

Phone photos of actual jobs beat stock photography every time. If you have nothing usable, say so early and we will plan around it.

Between drafts

Unlimited revisions

Currently a live offer: as many rounds as it takes between the first and final draft. Everything in one list still beats a fortnight of drip-fed texts.

Ten minutes

Access, or permission to get it

Domain, existing hosting, Google Business Profile. If you have lost the logins, very common. I will help you recover them.

Timings

What happens at each stage, and where does the time actually go?

The order is always the same. How long each stage takes moves a lot with the size of the build, so treat the durations below as a rough shape rather than a promise: you get a real date at quote stage, once I know what the site has to do. The price is fixed in writing before anything starts: from £495 for a single page, £1,795 upwards for a multi-page site. There is a fuller answer on timescales in the FAQ.

Stage	What happens	Rough share of the job	What I need from you	If it slips
Stage one Discovery and structure	Recorded interview about the business, keyword and intent mapping, then the page list and the name of every page agreed.	About a sixth of the project	One hour on a call, plus the domain and Google Business Profile logins, or permission to recover them.	Nothing is built yet, so a late call moves the whole schedule back day for day. This is the cheapest stage to lose.
Stage two Design and build	Homepage designed in the browser at real sizes with your real words, reworked until you approve it, then the rest of the site hand-coded around it.	Roughly half of it, and the part that varies most	A decision on the homepage design, and phone photos of real jobs if you have them.	The pinch point. Every day the homepage sits unanswered is a day nothing else can be built on top of it.
Stage three Content and review	Copy written from the interview, images sized and converted, forms and tracking wired in, then a private link to the real site.	About a sixth, plus your reading time	Two structured rounds of feedback, each sent as one list, and one named person who can decide.	Feedback drip-fed over a fortnight, or four people with four opinions, is what stalls a launch.
Stage four Final checks and go live	Draft deploy on the real hosting, old addresses mapped one to one, performance, accessibility and analytics verified, then it goes live.	The shortest stage, and never skipped	Your go-ahead in writing, and DNS access if the domain is moving.	A lost registrar login can hold a finished site for a week. Worth checking at the start, not on launch day.
Single page Start to finish	The same stages in one pass: one call, one design, one review round. From £495.	Days rather than weeks	Same call, faster answers, and your text or photos ready on the day.	There is no slack in a job this short. A day of silence is a day later, with no way to make it up.

The unglamorous bit

Where projects
actually go wrong.

Not in the design. When a project runs late, it is almost always one of these reasons, so it is worth naming them before we start.

Content that never arrives

The most common cause by a mile. It is why I write the copy from an interview instead of sending you a blank document.

Feedback by committee

Four people with four opinions and nobody who can decide. Pick one decision-maker before we start, even if the rest have views.

Scope that grows sideways

"While we are at it, could it also do bookings and a members area?" Fine, but it becomes its own quote and its own timeline, not a free extra.

Expecting SEO overnight

A new site can move quickly on brand and long-tail terms, but competitive local rankings take months. Anyone promising page one in four weeks is selling you something else.

Read this before you enquire

When this is
not for you.

I would rather lose the enquiry now than the money later. Five situations where you should hire somebody else.

You want a committee to sign off every stage

This works because one person decides. If four people need to agree on the homepage before anything moves, the unlimited revisions between drafts turn into an unlimited project, and you will be better served by an agency with an account manager whose job is chasing that sign-off.

You need a multi-page site live next week

A single page can be done in days. A multi-page build is measured in weeks, not days, and I will not hit a shorter date by dropping the search work, which is the part that makes the site earn. If you have a fixed deadline, say so on the first call and I will tell you honestly whether it is doable.

You want a stripped-down version of a bigger build

There is a proper single-page site from £495 and I will steer you to it when it is the right size for what you are doing. What I will not do is quote a thinned-out multi-page build that does half of each job, because one page done properly beats six done badly. You get told that on the first call, not after the invoice.

You need cover, a rota or a two-hour response

There is one of me, in England. I take holidays and I get ill. If your site takes bookings overnight and an hour of downtime costs you real money, an agency with a support desk is the better buy.

You want the site built exactly as you have specified it

I will argue about page structure and wording, because that is the part you are actually paying for. If you have the plan settled and want hands on a keyboard, a freelance developer will be quicker and cheaper.

Next step

Sound like a way you would like to work?

Tell me what the business does and what you want more of. You will get an honest answer and a fixed price.

Start a project → Read the FAQ

Paying for it

Three payments, and you know all three before we start.

Roughly a third of the project cost books the work, a third is due when the first draft is delivered, and the balance is due on delivery of the final draft, before the site goes live. The full price is fixed in writing before anything begins, so the final invoice matches the quote. If the scope genuinely changes mid-project, I price the extra and get your agreement before doing any of it.

How payment is staged across a Werehouse Media project
Stage	Roughly	What it buys
Booking	A third	Your slot in the schedule and the discovery call. Work starts once it clears.
First draft delivered	A third	A real draft on a real URL, not a picture of one. Unlimited revisions run from here.
Final draft delivered	The balance	Due before launch. On the final payment the site becomes yours outright, code, content and accounts.

Bank transfer or card. No retainer required to have a site built, and no subscription that switches something off if you stop paying it.