How it works
No stage of this is a surprise. Here is the order it happens in, what I need from you, and what becomes of the site, the form and the email you already have.
I find a business whose site looks like it has not been touched in a while, and I run the audit on it — the same checklist published on the Work page. That takes a few minutes and produces a list of things that are specifically wrong, not opinions about your logo.
Then I build your homepage. Your real services, your real reviews, your own colours taken from your van or your sign. It is not a template with your name dropped into it, which is why it takes an afternoon rather than five minutes.
One email, from a real address, with a link to the site I built and a short list of what I found wrong with your current one. No attachments, no tracking pixels, no follow-up sequence.
If you do not reply, that is the end of it. I do not send a second one.
Open the link on your phone. That is where most of your customers will see it, so it is the honest test. Show it to whoever you show things to — a partner, your office manager, the person who built your last site.
Nothing is due at this stage and there is nothing to sign. If it is not for you, saying so costs you one line of email.
Half an hour on the phone, usually. I want your service list in your own words, your hours, the areas you cover, and anything the demo got wrong — I will have guessed at some things and some of those guesses will be off.
This is also when I ask for photos. Originals off your phone, not ones sent through a messaging app, because those come through at a quarter of the size and look soft on a big screen.
If you have someone who looks after your website or your email, this is the call to have them on. It is much easier than relaying it afterwards.
The rest of the pages, your photos framed properly, the contact form wired to your inbox, and the markup Google reads to get your details right.
You see it at a preview address before anything goes live. Changes at this stage are expected — that is what the stage is for.
This is the only genuinely delicate part, and it is about your email rather than your website. See below.
Once it is live I hand over every login and you own the lot. I do not keep a copy of your passwords, because I never had them.
The practical questions
These are the ones that stop people replying, so they are answered here in full rather than left to a phone call.
Nothing, until you say so. It stays exactly where it is and keeps working while yours is being built, and it is still there the whole time you are deciding.
When the new one goes live we point your domain at it. The old site is not deleted by me — it stays with whoever hosts it now, and you can cancel that hosting whenever you are satisfied. I would leave it a month.
It does not move — it gets replaced, and that is the good news. There is nothing to migrate and no password for you to dig out.
Almost every old contact form is one of two things: a small script sitting on your current host, or a plugin inside a system like WordPress. Neither of them travels, and neither holds anything worth taking. If yours posts to a service like JotForm or Wufoo, that account is yours and it keeps working — I can simply put it back on the new page.
Your new form goes through a form service, registered on your own email so the account is yours from the first day. Messages land in whichever inbox you already read. There are no SMTP settings to copy, no mail server to configure, and nothing for me to be trusted with — I never ask for a password to your email, and I do not need one.
Worth doing before the old site goes: if your current form saved enquiries somewhere — inside WordPress, or in a form-builder account — export them. That history is yours, and it disappears with the old system rather than with the new one.
Same rule. If it is a third-party thing you already pay for — a booking calendar, a scheduling tool, a survey — it keeps working and I re-embed it, because that account is yours and nothing about it changes.
If it is something custom that runs on the old host, tell me what it has to do and I will tell you honestly whether I can rebuild it or whether it needs a tool you should be paying someone else for.
No, and I would rather work with them than around them. They usually know things nobody else does — where the domain is registered, who receives the form, which email address has been quietly forwarding for six years.
Put them on the call. If they would prefer to make the domain change themselves, that is genuinely fine — I will send them exactly what to set and they can do it on their own schedule.
It is the right thing to worry about — breaking a business’s email is far worse than any website problem, and it is the one part of this that can do real damage.
So it is handled carefully. Before anything changes I take a full record of your current settings, including the ones scanners routinely miss. When the domain moves, your mail records are copied across exactly and left alone. We then send a test message and receive one, both, before I hang up.
Your website and your email are separate things that happen to share a domain name. Moving the website does not require touching the mail — the only risk is carelessness, which is why the record gets taken first.
You own it. The domain is in your name, the hosting is your account, the form is your account, and the site is plain files inside it.
If you want a change, ask and I will quote it or just do it if it is small. If you would rather someone else did it, they can — there is no framework to learn and nothing of mine to work around. That is the point of building it this way.
Still unclear?
If something here does not cover your situation, email [email protected] and ask. I would much rather answer a difficult question before you decide than have you find the answer afterwards.
There is also a plain-English summary of what you would actually be agreeing to on the terms page — worth two minutes before you commit to anything.
Tell me the business and I will build the homepage and send you a link. No cost, no meeting, no obligation to like it.