For SEO, paid, brand, content, PR and creative agencies
You win the client. I build the website.
You keep the relationship, the commercial terms and whatever your agency is already good at. I take the website — starting before it’s sold, when nobody has worked out yet what should be proposed.
Have a web opportunity? →Your client needs a website. That isn’t what your agency does.
It comes up in seven ways.
- SEOThe audit says the site has to be rebuilt before any of the recommendations will land.
- PaidThe campaign is fine. The landing pages are losing the click after you’ve paid for it.
- BrandThe identity is approved and now somebody has to build the thing it was made for.
- ContentThe strategy needs an architecture the current site can’t hold.
- PR and commsA launch needs somewhere to send people that isn’t a press release.
- Full serviceYou sell web when it comes up, and it comes up too rarely to hire for.
- In-house teamYour developers are booked out for months and the client isn’t waiting.
Each of those is billable work you can keep. None of them is a good reason to start a web department.
Send it to me before you’ve promised anything.
The hard part of selling a website is knowing what to sell. Send me a qualified opportunity and I’ll work out what the site has to do, what it should contain and what building it involves — while you still have room to price it.
You qualify the opportunity.
The client, what they want, the site they have now, and whatever came out of the first conversation.
I research it.
Existing site, business model, competitors, audience, search opportunity, and where the current site loses people.
I design the solution.
Sitemap, page types, functionality, content requirements, integrations, and which parts are core rather than optional.
I write the part you present.
What I found, what I recommend and what it takes to build it, in a form you can put in front of a client instead of a line item reading “website”.
You price it and close it.
The number, the contract, the meeting and the relationship are all yours. I don’t need to be in the room.
I build it.
Against a scope the client has already agreed to, which is the only version of this that runs on time.
Sometimes three options work better than one number.
Where it helps, I’ll structure the recommendation as three versions of the same site rather than a single figure. The middle one is the one the proposal argues for; the other two turn a price into a choice. What the numbers actually are stays on your side of the line.
It also changes the conversation. “Why does a website cost this much” becomes “here are three ways to solve it, and here is the one we recommend” — and a proposal that shows its reasoning holds a higher number than one that does not.
Who pays for the ones that don’t close.
Research and scoping are real hours spent before anyone has been paid, so scoping an opportunity is $500 — credited in full against the build if it closes. On a project that goes ahead it costs you nothing. On one that doesn’t, neither of us is quietly absorbing the other’s sales work.
A first look is free and always will be: send me an opportunity and I’ll tell you whether I think there is a website in it. The $500 starts when you want the research behind that answer.
Then I produce it.
One route from a signed scope to a live site, in the same order every time.
- 01
Research and scope
Goals, audience, the current site, competitors, search opportunity, technical constraints, and a brief that says what the site has to accomplish.
- 02
Architecture
Sitemap, page types, reusable templates, URL structure, navigation and the content model underneath it.
- 03
Content
Copy written or rewritten, structured for the page and for search. A request list saying exactly what I need from the client and in what form.
- 04
Design
Visual direction, UX and UI, a design system where the project earns one, and responsive layouts for desktop, tablet and phone.
- 05
Build
Front-end development, a CMS where it genuinely helps, forms and the systems they feed, integrations, and analytics implemented rather than recommended.
- 06
Quality
Accessibility, performance, technical SEO and structured data, cross-browser and responsive QA. Tested, not asserted.
- 07
Launch
Deployment, DNS, form delivery, analytics, and handover into the client’s own accounts so nothing is hostage to mine.
Built around the project, not around a preferred platform.
Modern custom development by default, and a CMS when the client’s actual publishing needs justify one. If a client edits three paragraphs a year, a content system is overhead they will pay for twice — once to build and again every time it breaks. Those three paragraphs are what the retainer is for; a client who genuinely publishes every week gets a CMS, and either way the site hands over to accounts they own.
Scope is counted in page types, not pages.
A twenty-five page site running on eight templates is eight designs plus content. Page count is the number that makes estimates wrong, because it measures the output rather than the work.
So a quote is built from unique page types, reusable templates and the content that has to fill them. That is also why adding the ninth service page later costs almost nothing.
What sits outside a standard build.
E-commerce · complex booking systems · authenticated client portals · migrating a large existing content archive · more than two languages · custom back-end systems · paid third-party software · advanced integrations.
Real work, quoted on its own so the standard project stays quotable — and so a client who actually wants one gets it planned and priced instead of quietly absorbed.
Where the line falls.
A starting point rather than a rule. Most agencies want it somewhere slightly different, and it’s easier to argue with something written down.
Your agency
- Finds and qualifies the client
- Runs the meetings
- Sets the price and the commercial terms
- Contracts and invoices the client
- Stays the client’s primary contact
- Collects everything on my client request list
- Consolidates feedback and manages approvals
- Leads whatever your agency is already good at
Me
- Researches and scopes the opportunity
- Writes the scope and reasoning you present
- Turns requirements into a brief
- Says exactly what is needed from the client, and in what form
- Plans the architecture and writes the content structure
- Designs the site and builds it
- Tests accessibility, performance and technical SEO
- Deploys, connects and launches it
The line moves. I can be introduced as your web production partner and sit in client calls, or stay entirely behind your team and never appear. Work that needs specialist back-end engineering, complex authentication or sensitive data brings in an additional specialist, and I’ll say so rather than quietly attempt it.
What I need from you, written down before we start.
Every project starts with the same list, so nobody discovers in week four that the case studies were never cleared for publication. You chase the client for it; I say exactly what it is and what form it should arrive in.
Company
12 items
- Correct legal company name
- Short company history and year founded
- Current description of what they do
- Positioning or mission, if it exists
- Address and service area
- Primary phone and email
- Social links
- Team names, roles and short bios
- Team photographs, if they should be public
- Awards, certifications and memberships
- Anything that must not be said publicly
- A company-owned email domain
Brand
7 items
- Logo files, SVG preferred
- High-resolution raster versions
- Brand guidelines, if they exist
- Official colour values
- Fonts and typography rules
- Existing brochures, decks or print work
- Past work that best represents the identity
Services
8 items
For each service they sell:
- Service name
- Short explanation in their own words
- Who usually buys it
- What the process includes
- Typical deliverables
- Any specialist capability worth naming
- Relevant examples of past work
- Anything that should not be advertised
Projects and case studies
12 items
For each project worth showing:
- Client name and project title
- Year
- Services delivered
- The brief or the problem
- What they actually did
- Results, with metrics where they exist
- Links to live work or coverage
- Images, video and campaign graphics
- Before and after material
- Press coverage
- Client testimonial, if there is one
- Written permission to display it
Clients
5 items
- Current approved client list
- Client logos
- Which clients may be shown publicly
- Which clients must not appear
- Priority accounts, or preferred ordering
Content
8 items
- Existing articles and blog posts
- Interviews and press appearances
- Talks, reports and presentations
- Research or proprietary data
- Internal documents that could become public
- The questions clients ask constantly
- Topics they want to be found for
- Anything already written that can be reused
Technical access
6 items
Only where relevant, and only when it is actually needed:
- Domain registrar, and DNS if managed elsewhere
- Existing hosting
- Current email and form routing
- An email-sending key so forms send from their domain
- A deployment account the client owns
- Search Console and analytics on the existing site
None of it has to arrive polished. Raw material is more useful than hurried copy — organising it is my job.
Five ways this tends to start.
None of these has to be decided up front. One project is enough to find out which one you’re actually in.
Project by project
Send opportunities as they appear. Nothing standing, no commitment either way.
Pre-sale support
Bring me in before the sale to research the opportunity and scope the site — $500, credited against the build if it closes. I build what I scope.
Overflow production
Your internal team is full and the work is still arriving. I take the ones that would otherwise slip.
Web capability
Add websites to what you sell without hiring designers and developers to sit between projects.
Ongoing production
Reserved capacity each month for agencies with steady web work, so the queue isn’t a negotiation every time.
And three ways the money can work.
These are floors rather than quotes — scope sets the rest, and which structure fits depends on how many web opportunities you actually see in a year.
- $5,000from, per standard project
Per project
A wholesale production fee set against the scope of each site, up to ten unique page types. You set your own price to the client on top of it. Simplest to start, predictable on both sides.
- $3,000a month, credited against production
Reserved capacity
A monthly slot held for you whether or not a project is running. At one project a month it costs nothing — it buys position in the queue rather than hours.
- Openpropose it
Your own structure
Volume pricing, an unusual split, a first project run as a paid trial. If something already works for how your agency is set up, propose it and we start there.
The first project does not need a structure settled. A fixed fee covers it while we both find out how much work actually comes through the door.
Less meeting. Better feedback.
Feedback falls apart when it arrives in pieces — a message here, a screenshot there, an email describing a button nobody can find.
- 01The working site goes to a private staging URL
- 02You review it first, before the client sees anything
- 03First pass of fixes goes in
- 04The client reviews and feedback comes back consolidated
- 05Final pass, approval, launch
I work from what already exists — the current site, your sales notes, call recordings, brand assets, analytics, whatever the client has sent you. I don’t need a standing weekly call to keep moving, and I’ll tell you when a decision is actually blocking something.
You reviewing before the client does is the part worth keeping. It catches anything you know about the client that I don’t, and it means the version they open is one you’re willing to put your name on.
I spent five years on the agency side of this.
I managed the specialists — strategy, design, development, SEO — at four agencies before going out on my own. Most of that was operations: keeping concurrent client work moving, briefing people who weren’t in the room, and coordinating vendors who had their own priorities.
So I know what it costs an agency to hand work outside the building, and what makes it worth doing anyway. I can take a vague opportunity and turn it into something scoped, I can work from source material instead of meetings, and I can tell you early when something is going to be a problem.
I do the work myself. There is no team behind me that you haven’t met and no account manager between you and the person building the site. Strategy, design and development happen in one workflow, so decisions don’t spend days moving between departments waiting to be someone’s priority.
That also means capacity is finite. I run a limited number of projects at once and I will tell you what the queue actually looks like, rather than saying yes and letting the date slide.
- 4Agencies — LevLane, Digitas Health, R\ND, 8BITSTUDIO
- 50+Concurrent client web engagements overseen as VP of Operations at R\ND
- 10+External vendors coordinated across copy, design, development and search
- Multi-millionBudgets worked across at Digitas Health
Have a web opportunity?
Send me the company, their current site and whatever you know from the conversation so far. I’ll take a look and tell you whether there’s a web opportunity worth scoping, and roughly what shape it would take. No call needed to start.