Web Experiences

What a web project includes

Design and front-end build, by the same person. The design is not handed over as a file for somebody else to interpret, which is where most of the distance between a mockup and a finished site gets lost.

A project usually covers the structure, the design itself, the build, the writing where it is load-bearing, and the documentation whoever inherits it will need. SaskTaxSales is the fullest version of that: a search interface over public data, built to be used rather than admired.

Not every site needs the same shape. Horizons Cardiopulmonary is a clinic that needed people to find the right service and book it. Bro's Tows needed to be found at two in the morning by somebody in a ditch, which is a different problem and produced a different site.

What it costs, and what moves the number

Web work runs from roughly $2,000 to $25,000 and above, in Canadian dollars. Four things decide where a project lands.

• How many distinct page types there are. Twenty pages built from four templates is a smaller job than eight pages that are all different.
• Whether anything has to be built rather than laid out. A search interface, a filter, a configurator or a 3D viewer is software, and BBS RS and JellyLens sit on that side of the line.
• Who updates it afterwards. A site you will edit yourself needs an editing surface built and documented, and that is real work rather than a checkbox. The alternative is a retainer where I make the changes, which is often cheaper than building an editor you would use twice a year.
• Whether the identity exists yet. If it does not, that comes first, because a site is the place a half-decided brand shows most.

If that identity work is part of what you are pricing, why brand identity quotes vary sets out what moves that number and how to compare two studios on it.

Tell me the band you are working in and I will tell you what fits inside it.

How long it takes

A small site can be finished in five working days once the direction is agreed. Something with a real interface behind it, like a search tool or a configurator, takes longer, because there is genuinely more to build.

It moves quickly for the same structural reason the rest of the studio does: no account layer, no handoff between a designer and a developer, and no waiting for a scheduled review to change something that is obviously wrong on the screen in front of me.

The variable is rarely the building. It is how quickly decisions come back, which is why the five days runs from an agreed direction rather than from the first email.

If you have a launch, a season or a campaign already fixed, say so in the first message and I will tell you honestly whether it fits.

What you receive at handoff

A site that works, and the means to keep it working. That means the build itself, organised and named so a future developer can read it, and written documentation of how it is put together rather than a folder of files and good luck.

Where there is a design system behind it, the rules come too: spacing, type scale, colour roles and component behaviour, so somebody adding a page next year adds one that matches.

Hosting is specified per project rather than assumed, because a brochure site and a search tool do not need the same thing. There are workable options at every scale and price, and it is agreed before the build rather than discovered after it.

The test I hold it to is the same as for identity work. A developer you hire three years from now should be able to pick it up cold and get it right without calling me.

Who this is not for

If you need a five-page brochure site for a few hundred dollars, the template platforms do that well and I would rather say so than take the project.

It is also not the right fit if you want to be handed a design file and take it to a developer yourself. That split is where quality goes, and doing both is the reason the work holds together.