The studio
The Better Website is a one-person web design and development studio in Raleigh, North Carolina. I design and hand-code every site I build and look after it once it is live, so the person you talk to is the person who writes the code.
Who you work with
A small studio run by developers is not a stage I am trying to grow out of. There is no account manager relaying your question to someone else, no junior quietly picking up the build after the pitch, and no production team you never meet.
The design, the code and everything after launch are the same person's job: mine. If a build needs a team, I bring in partners I have vetted myself, not the cheapest contractor I can find overseas. I am based in Raleigh and work across the Triangle and with clients nationwide.
What I do
Four things come with every build, and they are the same four whether the site is five pages or fifty.
Motion
Custom scroll-driven motion that stays fast and fully indexable.
Speed
Sub-second loads that actually rank, because nothing loads that isn't doing a job.
Access
Accessibility considered from the first line, not audited at the end.
Visibility
Built to be found in search and cited in AI answers, at no additional cost. I show you proof it works before I ever sell visibility services.
That is the floor, not the ceiling: a build climbs as far as it has a reason to, and every rung of it is hand-coded website development. The full system is a page of its own, and so is the motion. I work within all industries, but my personal taste is best for luxury, bold, or experience-based brands. My work shines within architecture practices, landscape architects, art studios, travel companies, venues, and any business whose work is a story or a statement. I also build just because I love the work. You think a theme specifically for haunted attractions is a big seller? Nope! I just had some fun with that one. To contrast, minimalist websites are one of my more popular client choices.
See the premium themesHow I work
It starts with a conversation, not a questionnaire. Your work is one of a kind, and a questionnaire treats you like one of everyone.
I want your goals for the site, your target market, your current pain points, and your “in a perfect world” description. From there, I begin the research before touching a line of code. Once I'm comfortable with my knowledge of your work, industry, goals and market, I develop your content and your theme.
Talk
Goals, market, pain points, and the perfect-world version
Research
Your work, your industry and your market, before any code
Content and theme
The backbone feel of the site, developed once I know the work
Build with you
Section by section, previewed live on a staging server
Launch and after
Hosting, updates and whatever comes up, same person throughout
The starting point
I develop this way because much of my work cannot be translated onto a two-dimensional plane without movement, and I'd rather build the site with you than hand you something that, once you see it live, isn't what you wanted. A Photoshop or Figma file isn't made with website capabilities in mind.
What you get is a section by section preview to sign off on or give feedback about, and you get to watch your site take shape live on a staging server. I'm a partner, not a contractor.
The human part
I am easy to deal with, and it is on purpose. There is nobody here who needs managing: no discovery deck, no account manager working from a script, no meeting held to justify the last meeting. The profits go to the people doing the real work.
I don't believe in toxic professionalism. I won't dress things in corporate or tech jargon, and I have this crazy belief that people should act like people. My skills speak for themselves and being genuinely comfortable with the material and conversation is what makes it possible to say “that is a bad idea, and here is why” instead of retreating behind process to close a sale and meet an arbitrary number. Every claim on this site is one I can show you, from the speed scores measured on this site to the complete reduced-motion fallback.
“I've had a lot of clients become real friends through the build process. That may be what I'm most proud of out of all of this.” (The Better Website Guy)
Say helloWhere this came from
I spent years doing accessibility remediation and WordPress work before noticing that both problems had the same root: sites assembled out of software nobody involved fully controlled and nobody controlling really cared about. The accessibility half of that is a longer story and I have told it properly in why website accessibility matters. The short version is that it permanently changed how I build.
The Better Website itself started as a WordPress agency site I was finished with. Its replacement had one job beyond replacing it: the site had to be the pitch. The motion, the scrolljacking, the performance, the compliance, and a new slide-deck mode you can switch on in the nav. The full case study covers what I set out to build, what broke, and what actually shipped.
The developer who built your site. (Yes, developers can have social skills.) There is no ticket queue and no support tier, so the answer comes straight from the person who can make the change. If I am deep in another build or away, you hear that, with a date, instead of silence. And when a job needs more hands, vetted partners I keep on call step in; you still deal with me.
Better... just so much better. And fun! Watch your site come to life instead of being handed 34 pages to review just to be disappointed by how much the agency's vision drifted from what you imagined.
It asks a little more of you than a hands-off agency would. Building section by section means looking at the staging site and giving feedback while the work is fresh, not disappearing until a big reveal. That is a real time commitment, and it is also why nothing gets lost in translation between what you asked for and what ships.
Say so, as early as you like. We'll work together on a solution. Because you are watching it come together, changes happen while the site is still being built instead of turning into a list of regrets after launch.
You do. Your domain and your content are yours throughout, and if you ever decide to leave you get a copy of your site files that any developer worth your time can pick up and host. They just may not be as talented, attractive, charming, or modest as me.
Yes, and how is decided with you rather than fixed in advance. Some clients want to post their own updates; others would rather send them over and have them handled. The cost is subjective. Building a CMS takes time, but constant edits may make the decision financially responsible. I build for you, not for maximum profit.
Cost, timelines, ownership
Still
curious?
So that's the studio: one person, hand-coded, and still here after launch. If you want the detail, the system is how it all works, the portfolio is what it looks like finished, and the blog is why I keep writing about it. The FAQ handles the practical questions, cost and timelines included, and home is the whole pitch on one page. Want to talk about a project, or just tell me the motion is too much? Say hello.
The Better Website
The Better Website is a one-person web design studio in Raleigh, NC, serving the Triangle and clients nationwide. Every site is hand-coded: plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript by default, or a custom WordPress theme when that is the better fit.
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