Alongside the apps, the studio has started doing something a bit different: building websites for small businesses. Nothing grand, just modern, responsive sites for the kind of local business whose current site looks like it was last touched fifteen years ago.
There is a web design page now with examples and pricing, but here is the honest version of why and how.
Why bother
Once you have built and shipped a handful of apps, a good website is the easy part of the day. And there is a lot of low-hanging fruit out there. A surprising number of genuinely good local businesses, the kind with five-star reviews and a decade of trade, are running a site that does not work on a phone, has no secure connection, and was built in an era of table layouts and tiny grey text. Their customers are all on phones. The site is actively losing them work.
That is a problem worth fixing, and it is a nice change of pace from staring at scoring algorithms.
How it works
The approach is deliberately low pressure. Instead of cold-pitching a quote, I rebuild a real page of their site first, for free, using their actual details and branding, and send it over. No obligation. If they like it, great. If not, no harm done and they keep a free mock-up.
The sites themselves are the simple, fast kind: a single well-built responsive page, real photos, click-to-call, a proper contact section, the lot. Built to load quickly and work on the phone in someone's hand, because that is where nearly all of the traffic actually is.
If a business comes on board, the site is hosted and maintained on a simple monthly plan. No big upfront bill, no lock-in, edits handled for them rather than left to fight a clunky builder.
The honest framing
This is dabbling, not a pivot. The apps are still the main thing. But it is a sensible second string: it uses skills I already have, it helps real local businesses that are being let down by their current site, and the monthly-plan model fits the same patient, low-overhead way the rest of the studio runs.
If you run a small business, or know one whose website could do with a quiet rescue, the web design page has the details.
Numbers
- Apps live: 3 (GutLedger, ListLedger, Letterly)
- Apps in testing: 1 (Odomo)
- Apps in dev: 2 (Inkframe, Settle)
- Concept site redesigns built so far: a couple of dozen