I build the website first.Then you decide.
I'm Samuel. I build websites for small businesses, one at a time — mostly around Brisbane, further afield when someone asks. Usually you'd pay first and see the site afterwards.
I read these myself, and usually reply the same day.
01
Three steps. You don't spend anything until the last one.
Step 1
I build it
I find out what you do, where you are and when you're open, then build a site around that. Your photos, your wording. If I can't confirm something with you it stays off the page, and I won't put a stock photo of someone else's shop where yours should be.
Step 2
You look at it
You get a link to the finished site. Open it on your phone, press everything, put a message through the contact form. While the site is still sitting on my hosting that message comes to me, and I'll send it straight back to you so you can see what an enquiry looks like.
Step 3
You decide
If it's not right, tell me and that's the end of it. Nothing owed. If you want it, you pay once and the whole thing is handed over to you, ready to go up on your own domain. Or leave it with me: hosted as it stands for a yearly fee, or hosted with the changing included for a monthly one.
02
What it costs
One payment for the site. What happens to it afterwards is a separate question, and you can answer that later.
The thing you're buying
The website
$999 $1,400 one payment
Founding priceThe whole site, handed over as files. It goes on whatever hosting you like.
Optional, afterwards
If you'd rather I kept it running
Hosting only
$149 a year
I host it as it stands, and the contact form lands in your inbox.
Care plan
$75 a month
Hosting, and the changing is mine. Email me and small ones go up the same day.
$999 is a founding price while I'm building the first handful of sites for local businesses. After that it's $1,400.
03
What you actually get
A contact form that delivers
An enquiry lands in your email within seconds, with the customer's own address already in the reply line. I send a real message through every form I build before I call a site finished. If you host the site yourself, pointing the form at your inbox is one step at your end, and the instructions cover it. Broken forms are the most common thing I find on small business websites. Nobody tells you; the work just quietly stops arriving.
Built for a phone first
Most people will find you on a phone, one-handed, standing in a car park. That's the size I design for. The laptop version comes after.
Your photos and your words
Photographs of your actual work and your actual place. I won't generate fake pictures of your shop, your product or your staff, and I won't write claims about you that aren't true.
Fast, and hard to break
The pages are plain files, which is why they load in about a second. There's no software underneath waiting to be updated, and nothing much for anyone to break into. A small business site doesn't need a database and this one hasn't got one.
You own it, whatever happens
The site belongs to you from the day you pay. Buy it outright and you're already holding all of it. If I'm the one hosting it, you can change your mind whenever you like: the files come to you, your domain comes with you, and your next person gets whatever they need from me to put it back up. All of that is in writing, in the handover document that comes with the site.
04
Recent work
None of these businesses exist. I made them up so there'd be something to look at before the first real client. The builds are real: each site is live, and the form on it lands in my inbox.
Example build
Bowerbird Landscaping & Garden Care
Landscaping and garden care · Joyner
Prices depend on the yard, so there are none on the page. It says that outright rather than making you ring up to find out.
example-landscaping.sjdrage.com
Example build
The Rinse Cycle Mobile Dog Wash
Mobile dog wash · Joyner and around
A van, so there is no shop to photograph. The front page is the list of suburbs they go to, and you type yours in to check.
example-dogwash.sjdrage.com
Example build
Copper & Fern Hair Studio
Hair salon · Eatons Hill
Every price is written on the page, including the ones you normally have to ring up and ask for. The booking form says plainly that sending it hasn't booked the chair.
example-salon.sjdrage.com
Example build
Little Fig Espresso
Espresso bar · Warner
The hours and the parking are at the top, because on a phone that is what someone is checking. The menu is the page. The form is only for catering.
example-cafe.sjdrage.comThe page you're on now was built the same way.
05
Tell me about your business
A couple of lines is plenty. What you do, roughly where you are. If I think I can build you something good I'll go and build it, then send you the link. If I don't, I'll tell you that instead.