Process
Six stages, and the gate on each one
Website projects do not usually fail at the design stage. They fail because nobody wrote down what was agreed, or because the content never arrived and neither side wanted to say so. Each of these stages has a gate on it, and the gates are the reason a fixed price stays fixed.
The stages
We work out what the site has to do, who has to be convinced, and what would count as it having worked. You leave the call having agreed the platform and the shape of the job. The written scope and the fixed price follow inside two business days.
You get: A written scope and a fixed price inside two business days, or an honest no-fit answer.
Nothing is built and no deposit is taken until you have read that document.
One order form, one scope schedule and the schedules that go with it. Plain English, versioned, and every important condition is on the page rather than behind a link.
You get: 40% commencement invoice, and the detailed content brief the moment it clears.
Payments follow milestones you can see. Nothing is described as non-refundable by default.
You approve the facts, claims, prices and images. You create the accounts in your own business name and invite me in. I never ask for a password, a code or a card number.
You get: An account register showing who owns what, and where the recovery contact points.
The production clock starts when the content pack is complete, not when the invoice is paid.
The site is built on a branch, checked automatically, and published to a preview address only you and I can see. You review the real thing on your own phone, not a picture of it.
You get: A preview link, a review checklist, and two consolidated rounds of changes.
30% falls due at this milestone, after you have had a fair chance to say what is wrong.
DNS is cut over with the timing planned in advance, certificates are confirmed, the form is submitted and received for real, and the rollback point is recorded before anything moves.
You get: A release record: what went live, when, from which commit, and how to put it back.
Final 30% falls due before go-live. Your domain and accounts are never used as leverage.
Training on the parts you will actually touch, a written handover, and a defect window where anything that does not match the signed scope gets fixed at no charge.
You get: Ownership of everything, a documented site, and a support decision you make with real information.
If you take no care plan, you still own and can run the site. That is the point of building it this way.
When it stalls
What happens when it goes quiet, because it usually does
In my experience a stalled website project has almost always stalled in the same place: content. You are running a business, and writing the About page is never today’s most urgent thing. That is normal, and it is planned for rather than punished.
A project that goes quiet is not a client problem. It is a process that had no plan for the most predictable thing that happens.
Why this table exists
| Point | What I do | What it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Day 5 with content outstanding | A written reminder naming exactly what is missing and who has it. | Nothing. |
| Day 20 with no movement | An inactivity review. We agree a restart date or reschedule the delivery slot. | Nothing, unless a booked capacity window is lost, which is discussed before it happens. |
| You need to pause for a reason | The project is paused in writing, with the state recorded and the preview left up. | Nothing. Life happens. Say so and it is handled. |
| You want to change scope mid-build | A change order: the request, the price, the time impact, and your approval before any of it starts. | Whatever the change order says, agreed before the work, never discovered afterwards. |
| You want to stop entirely | Reconciliation of work properly performed and committed direct costs, less anything avoided. | What was actually done. You keep every account, because they were always yours. |
How the work is done
The build workflow, and where AI sits in it
AI assists the drafting and the code. It does not publish, decide or approve anything, and every fact on your site comes from you.
Every change goes the same way
- 1. A feature branch, never a direct edit to what is live.
- 2. Automated checks: the build, the tests, the accessibility and content gates.
- 3. A deploy preview on its own address, excluded from search engines.
- 4. My review, named and recorded.
- 5. Your approval where the change is one you should see.
- 6. Release, tagged, with the rollback point written down first.
What that buys you
A bad release can be undone in about a minute, because the previous state is a recorded, deployable thing rather than a memory. That is not an advanced feature. It is the ordinary consequence of building on version control instead of editing a live site.
It also means the site you approve on the preview address is the site that goes live, byte for byte, rather than a rebuild that looks similar.
Start at stage one
60 minutes and $395 plus GST. You agree the platform and the shape of the job in the call, and the written scope and fixed price follow inside two business days.