Awards. Animations. Three-second hero videos. The portfolio looks great. The conversion rate is 1.4%. The bounce rate is 67%. The pipeline doesn’t move. We build for the metrics that move it.
Yours can move too.
Isn’t Making You Money.
None of these show up on the design review. All of them show up on the conversion report. Most sites we audit have at least four happening at once.
It loads in five seconds. Half your mobile visitors are already gone.
Speed is the first conversion factor. Every second over two costs roughly 11% of your conversion rate. By five seconds, the bounce probability is 90% higher than at two. Most agency-built sites land somewhere between four and seven. The dashboard calls it bounce. It’s people leaving before they saw anything.
Your homepage doesn’t say what you do.
Or it says it in language only your team uses. A visitor lands. They scan the hero. They scan the first scroll. If nothing makes the offer clear in eight seconds, they leave. The agency built a beautiful hero animation. Nobody read the copy underneath it because nobody made it past the animation.
Every page treats visitors the same.
A first-time visitor needs proof. A returning visitor needs friction removed. A pricing-page visitor needs reassurance. Most sites push the same CTA to all three with the same urgency. The result is a site that converts everyone the same. Which is to say, badly.
Your CTAs are vague, buried, or both.
“Learn More” buttons. Contact forms in the footer. No CTA above the fold on the pages that matter most. The visitor wanted to act. The site made them work for it. Most don’t bother.
The mobile experience is an afterthought.
Built desktop-first. Tested on the developer’s laptop. Designed by people who never actually used it on a 6-inch screen with patchy signal. Sixty to seventy percent of your traffic is mobile. The conversion gap between desktop and mobile is the part nobody on your team is tracking.
No analytics, no heatmaps, or analytics installed and never opened.
A website without measurement is a guess. You can’t fix what you can’t see. Most sites we audit have GA4 installed and abandoned, no heatmaps, no funnel tracking, and no idea where visitors are actually dropping off. The agency promised “we’ll add analytics next quarter.” That quarter was 2022.
Each of these costs you revenue every day the site is live. Most agencies don’t fix them because they’re already paid. We fix them because that’s the job. The audit shows you which six are leaking your traffic and roughly how much each one is costing.
Costs 11% Of Your Conversions.
Most sites load in four to seven seconds. The math compounds every visit. The dashboard doesn’t surface it because nobody on most teams owns it. Here are the six places your seconds go.
Hosting
Cheap shared hosting adds one to two seconds before your site even responds to the request. We host on infrastructure that responds in under 200 milliseconds.
Theme
Most WordPress themes ship with code bloat that adds two to three seconds before content paints. We use lightweight themes (GeneratePress, Astra) or custom-build where the project earns it.
Plugins
Each plugin adds JavaScript, CSS, and database queries to every page load. Sites with 30 plus plugins are normal. We keep the stack tight and audit every plugin’s weight.
Images
Most sites serve images at three to five times the size they need. Properly compressed and properly served, they load 50 to 80% faster. Most agencies don’t bother.
Scripts
Marketing tags, analytics, chat widgets, ad pixels. Stacked together they add two to four seconds. We audit the stack and defer or gate anything that doesn’t earn its weight.
Database
WordPress databases accumulate revisions, transients, and orphaned data over time. A bloated database slows every query. We clean and tune it during the build, not as a year-later afterthought.
Every cause is fixable. Most sites have four or five of them stacked. The audit shows you which ones you’re paying and roughly what each is costing in conversion rate.
Site Actually Takes.
Eight workstreams. None of them optional. Skip any one and the site that ships looks finished but doesn’t perform.
Audit And Strategy
We start with the current site if one exists, plus your analytics, conversion data, top traffic pages, and what’s actually generating leads or revenue today. The build decisions follow the data, not the design preference.
Information Architecture
Sitemap, primary user flows, content hierarchy. The structure visitors will move through before they ever see a wireframe. Most agencies skip this step and design pages in isolation.
Conversion Architecture
Where CTAs go, what they say, how trust signals stack, where social proof appears, what the scroll depth strategy is for each page type. The visible craft beneath the design.
Design
Visual design that supports conversion, not the other way around. Typography that reads on a phone. Color hierarchy that directs attention. Imagery that earns its weight against load time. If brand identity isn’t defined before the build, design decisions get made by default.
Development
Clean code on WordPress or Shopify. Lightweight theme as the foundation. Custom blocks where they earn their place. Plugin stack kept tight. Mobile-first responsive build. Cross-browser tested.
Performance Optimization
Speed work isn’t a final-pass cleanup. It runs throughout the build. Image pipelines configured. Caching set up correctly. JavaScript deferred. CSS inlined. Database tuned. Launches under two seconds.
QA And Testing
Cross-browser. Cross-device. Real phones, not just dev tools. Forms tested. Checkouts tested. Edge cases hunted. Most agencies skip the actual phone test. We don’t.
Launch And Migration
Redirects mapped for every changed URL. Search Console reconfigured. Analytics validated. SEO equity preserved. Old hosting decommissioned only after the new site is stable for two weeks.
Every site we ship has the same internal QA. speed score, mobile experience, conversion architecture, redirect map, analytics validation. If any of those isn’t passing, the site doesn’t launch.
And Shopify. Nothing Else.
Two stacks. Two clearly defined business models. We don’t build on anything else because nothing else is a better answer for the kind of business that benefits from this kind of work.
WordPress
The most flexible content management system on the internet. Powers 40% of the web. Developers available everywhere. Plugin ecosystem for almost any feature. We build on it because it gives you full ownership, real performance when built right, and zero vendor lock-in. For businesses serving customers in specific cities, WordPress handles local SEO page architecture better than any other platform. Our default base is GeneratePress with custom blocks where they earn it and a tight plugin stack we maintain.
Shopify
The best ecommerce platform on the market. Handles payments, inventory, shipping, taxes, and fraud out of the box. We use it when you’re selling products because every alternative involves rebuilding plumbing Shopify already gave you. We build themed Shopify sites by default and headless setups for clients whose traffic and engineering capacity justify it.
Why we don’t build custom.
Custom development sounds appealing on the call. It costs three to five times more, takes twice as long, and creates a maintenance liability you’ll regret in 18 months. The businesses that should build custom are at a scale where the ROI justifies it. If you’re reading this page, that’s probably not you. And if it is, you don’t need an agency. You need an in-house engineering team.
Why we don’t build on Webflow, Wix, or Squarespace.
Each one trades flexibility and performance for ease. They work for a specific kind of small business. They break the moment you need real conversion optimization, real performance tuning, real plugin integrations, or anything outside the platform’s worldview. Vendor lock-in is real. Migrating off these platforms later costs more than building on WordPress would have cost in the first place.
The stack decision isn’t about taste. It’s about matching the tool to the business and to the work that will follow. Sometimes the answer is “you don’t need a new website.” We’ll tell you that on the audit call if it’s true.
From Kickoff To Launch.
Tight phases. Parallel workstreams where they don’t compromise quality. Here’s the cadence.
Stakeholder interviews. Analytics review. Competitor analysis. Sitemap drafted. Content audit. Conversion architecture mapped. We don’t draw a single design until we know what the site is supposed to do.
Homepage and primary template designs. Mobile-first. Reviewed and approved at the design stage, not after development when changes cost ten times more.
Theme built. Custom blocks coded. Pages built out from approved designs. Plugin stack configured. Content loaded. Performance optimization runs in parallel. Weekly demo and review.
Cross-browser testing. Cross-device testing on real phones. Speed tuned to under two seconds. Accessibility checks. Forms tested. Redirect map finalized.
Site goes live. Redirects activated. Search Console resubmitted. Analytics validated. Monitoring runs continuously for the first two weeks. Old hosting decommissioned only after verification.
Smaller marketing sites can compress to four weeks. Complex ecommerce with heavy integrations can push to six. We commit to the timeline before we start and we hit it.
Anyone promising three weeks is either cutting work that matters or shipping a template with your logo on it. We don’t.
Starting State.
The build phase ends at launch. What happens after is a separate engagement and a separate decision. If you sign on for ongoing work, the engagement covers five areas. If you don’t, we hand off cleanly: documentation, clean code, analytics already configured.
Conversion Optimization
Heatmaps live from day one. Scroll depth monitored. Form drop-off tracked. CTA performance measured. Every month we look at what’s converting, what isn’t, and what to test next. The site that launches is rarely the site that performs best.
Performance Monitoring
Page speed tested weekly across every key template. Core Web Vitals tracked. When a plugin update, a content addition, or a new marketing tag slows the site, we know inside the week and we fix it.
Content Updates And Additions
New service pages. New case studies. Blog posts that earn their place. Copy updates when the business pivots. The site treated as a living asset, not a static one.
Security And Backups
Daily backups. Plugin updates tested before deployment. Security monitoring for malware and unauthorized access. Most agency-built WordPress sites are quietly compromised because nobody is watching. We watch.
Analytics And Reporting
Monthly report that connects site behavior to business outcomes. Not “you got 4,000 visitors.” Instead: “Pricing page traffic is up 30%, conversion on it is flat, here’s what we’re testing next.”
Post-launch is where conversion lift compounds. Agencies that disappear at launch were only ever paid for the build and have no incentive to do this work. We offer ongoing engagement because that’s where the real performance gains happen. The decision to sign on is yours. We don’t pressure it because the build itself is worth it on its own.
Conversion. Lower Bounce.
Three rebuilds. Three different stacks. Three sets of numbers that moved.
Load time from 6.2 seconds to 1.8.
B2B services site rebuilt from a bloated WordPress install to a clean GeneratePress base. Plugin count reduced from 41 to 12. Image pipeline rebuilt. Hosting migrated. Same traffic. Conversion rate from 1.4% to 3.9%. Nearly triple the leads inside the first quarter.
Shopify store revenue per visitor up 62% in 90 days.
Direct-to-consumer brand on a stock theme. Rebuilt with a custom theme tuned for speed and a checkout funnel designed around their actual customer behavior. Same traffic. 62% more revenue per visitor. Cart abandonment dropped from 78% to 61% in the first 60 days.
Mobile bounce rate from 71% to 34%.
SaaS company with a beautiful desktop site and a broken mobile experience. We rebuilt mobile-first, restructured the hero, moved the primary CTA above the fold on every page. Mobile traffic was 64% of total. Lead volume from mobile doubled in two months.
Numbers vary by stack, by traffic mix, by how broken the previous site was. The pattern doesn’t vary. Speed up. Bounce down. Conversion up. Revenue follows.
Refuse To Make.
The web development industry is full of decisions that look reasonable on the kickoff call and create problems for years. Here is what we won’t do, regardless of how easy it would make our quote.
Build it on Webflow, Wix, or Squarespace.
They lock you in. They cap your performance. They make any custom integration painful. They make migration later cost more than building on WordPress would have. We will tell you this on the audit call.
Use a bloated multi-purpose theme.
Avada. Divi. The big drag-and-drop themes. Each one ships with hundreds of features you won’t use, all of which are loading on every page. Our default themes load in under 200 KB. Theirs load in over a megabyte. The difference shows up in your conversion rate.
Install 30 plugins because each one solves a small problem.
Plugin stack discipline matters more than plugin count. We use the fewest plugins required to deliver the functionality. Each one is audited for code quality, performance, and security. If something can be done with 20 lines of custom code instead of a plugin, that’s how we do it.
Skip the actual phone test.
Real phones. Real signal. Real thumbs. Cross-browser tools and dev simulators are useful and not sufficient. Most agency-built sites have never been opened on the device 65% of visitors will use.
Hand off at launch and disappear.
A new website is the starting state of conversion optimization, not the ending state. We stay on the site after launch because the work that produces the lift is the work that happens after launch.
Charge for “maintenance” that’s actually just hosting.
Some agencies sell monthly maintenance plans that consist of WordPress core updates and a backup nobody verifies. We bundle ongoing work into a real engagement: conversion optimization, performance monitoring, content updates, and analytics review. If you only want hosting, we’ll point you to a hosting provider.
Slow load. Unclear path. Buried CTA. They leave. The next visitor leaves. The day produces almost no leads. Your dashboard shows traffic. Your pipeline shows nothing. Both are true and both are connected.
Before They Sign A Build.
Same questions every audit. They live here now.
WordPress or Shopify, how do we decide?
Selling products with a real checkout: Shopify. Everything else (services, lead gen, marketing sites, content-heavy businesses): WordPress. Some businesses need both, ecommerce on Shopify and marketing content on WordPress, connected. We make the call on the audit and explain why.
What if we’re on Webflow or Squarespace and want to migrate?
We migrate clients off these platforms regularly. The process takes the same eight to twelve weeks as a fresh build because we’re essentially rebuilding, not porting. The good news: you’ll own the result, you won’t be locked in again, and the performance ceiling lifts.
How long does a build actually take?
Eight to twelve weeks for most sites. Faster on small marketing sites with clean content. Longer on ecommerce with complex catalogs or integrations. Anyone promising six weeks is either skipping work or shipping a template with your logo on it.
Will you do custom code if we need it?
Yes, inside WordPress or Shopify. Custom blocks, custom plugins, custom Shopify sections, custom checkout flows. What we don’t do is build entirely custom platforms from scratch when WordPress or Shopify would serve you better.
What happens to our SEO during the rebuild?
Protected. Full redirect map for every changed URL. Search Console resubmitted with the new sitemap. Schema markup carried over. Site structure preserved where it earns its place. Most SEO drops during rebuilds come from skipping these steps. We don’t skip them.
What about content migration?
Included. We migrate existing content from your current site, clean it up where needed, restructure it for the new information architecture, and load it into the new build. If you want new content written, that’s scoped separately.
Will you maintain the site after launch?
Yes, but maintenance isn’t what we mostly do. Real engagement is conversion optimization, performance monitoring, content updates, and analytics review. If you only want WordPress core updates and a backup, you don’t need an agency. You need managed hosting.
What about hosting?
We recommend the host and configure it. We don’t resell hosting because we don’t want the conflict of interest. Hosting fees go directly to the provider. We just make sure you’re on the right one for your traffic and stack.
How much does this cost?
Fixed project fee for the build, quoted after the audit. Depends on the stack, the page count, the integration complexity, and whether content needs to be written. Ongoing post-launch work is a separate monthly fee. We tell you both numbers in writing before anything starts.
Who actually does the work?
The person you meet on the audit call leads the build. Designers and developers we’ve worked with for years execute under that lead. No junior project managers between you and the people building your site. You can talk to the person responsible for the work, when the work needs talking about.