Website Development

Our Standard package starts at $5,000, our Pro package starts at $12,000, and our Enterprise package starts at $25,000.

For more details on what comes with each package, head over to our pricing page. These rates are a baseline and we can often build a custom package to fit your specific requirements.

Contact us if you have any questions, or fill out our project request form and we’ll get back to you within 1 business day.

Timelines vary based on the scope of the project. 90 days is a typical minimum, and larger projects can take 6 months for final delivery. If your project has a tight deadline, we may be able to expedite.

Get in touch or fill out our project request form and we can strategize timelines and launch plans.

Yes, check out the case studies page.

1. Discovery phase

All projects start with a discovery phase. The discovery phase aims to gather information and insights about your project. Typically this will take place via a video call, phone call, email, and occasionally in person. During the discovery phase we will ask you some questions, most of which are based around your overall goals and target audience. We may request that you submit a questionnaire.

A successful discovery phase allows us to provide you with a realistic timeline and cost estimate, but most importantly, it helps us understand your technical requirements, target audience, goals, and get an overall sense of the project’s scope.

2. Planning and Strategy

The planning and strategy phase takes our collaborative insights from the discovery phase and puts them into a detailed plan of action.

In terms of a website build, this would typically include setting timelines and milestones, understanding technical aspects such as the CMS being used, defining the website’s structure, content, design, and overall functionality. Here’s some more info on each of these areas:

• Project timeline and milestones: A detailed project timeline is created, outlining the tasks and milestones for the project. This helps in managing the project and ensuring that it progresses according to a carefully planned schedule.

• Technical planning: The major considerations are typically scalability, security, and performance. Most modern websites are built with WordPress, which is open-source and built to scale. We will discuss CMS platforms and frameworks, taking note of any special requirements your organization may require. Website hosting may also need need to be part of the conversation, especially when security and performance are being prioritized.

• Information architecture: The website’s structure and navigation are defined, including the organization of pages, navigation menus, and overall content hierarchy. This keeps our goals aligned, and helps to ensure that users can easily navigate and find information on the website.

• Content strategy: A defined plan is developed for the creation, organization, and management of website content. Need a copywriter? We can assist with that. Need onsite photos? We can usually help with that too. We also have accounts with all of the major stock photo providers, including Adobe Stock.

• Wireframing and mockups: The website’s layout and interface design are created through wireframes, and occasionally more fleshed out custom mockups for larger budget projects. This step helps visualize the user interface and allows for early feedback and iteration before proceeding to the development phase.

3. Development

Once the strategy and planning phase is complete, the fun begins with development. This is where the actual coding and implementation of the website takes place.

Most of our new builds take place on a private location on our server. The URL is not public and is not indexed in search engines.

4. Compatibility and performance testing

We run extensive compatibility tests. This includes desktop browser testing in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, as well as device testing on smartphones and tablets. We test on actual devices instead of strictly relying on emulator tools. We also use a mix of Apple and Microsoft products, since bugs can exist on a single operating system. 

We spend significant time on performance testing, ensuring that any speed bottlenecks are addressed. Speed tests are performed with tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights, GTMetrix, and Pingdom. We have commercial licenses for the best WordPress speed optimization plugins, including WP Rocket. We may also advise setting up a CDN, such as Cloudflare.

During this testing phase we may require a communication channel with your hosting provider as hosting often plays a critical role in performance. 

5. Frontend testing and final quality assurance

During this phase items such as bugs and broken links are audited and fixed. Contact forms are tested to ensure they’re properly reaching recipients. Content is carefully reviewed for spelling and grammar mistakes. 

For ecommerce projects, we make test purchases of your products to ensure your payment processor and customer journey are working as expected. 

Our pre-launch checklist is massive and thorough, ensuring that your project doesn’t go into the wild prematurely. 

6. Launch

We made it! But we’re not quite in the clear yet…

The launch phase is a critical step in website development, as it marks the transition from development to a live environment. It involves careful coordination and execution in order to avoid speed bumps. We’ve made it this far, let’s take the proper steps for a successful launch. 

First, if we’re not hosting the website, then the hosting environment that we’re utilizing for the production site will need to be setup. This may involve configuring servers, databases, SSL certificates, and other technical components required for proper functionality. Unless you have an internal team to take care of this, we will need hosting access. 

From the hosting side we will also need to migrate files and databases from the development environment to the production server. This includes uploading the code that makes up your website (typically HTML, CSS, JavaScript), and assets such as images, and videos.

We may also need access to your domain name provider. DNS (Domain Name System) configurations are made to associate your domain name with the correct IP address of the production server. This ensures that users can access the website using the intended domain name and not the development URL we used during the building phase. 

A final round of testing is conducted after deployment to verify that the website is functioning correctly in the live production environment. Once again this includes server configuration and database testing, as well as testing for things like broken links, and contact form delivery. Final steps are also taken to optimize the website’s performance in the live environment as needed. 

Once the website is deployed, we often recommend ongoing management on a monthly basis. While some clients can perform small frontend updates themselves, higher level changes are not recommended for beginners. More importantly, our managed clients also benefit from software updates including WordPress core updates, plugin updates, and theme updates. Outdated plugins are the number one culprit for WordPress hacks, so it’s critical to stay on top of these updates. Our managed clients also benefit from our monitoring tools where we carefully keep an eye on uptime and security. We have commercial software for offsite backups, ensuring your website’s continued smooth operation.

Every project requires a level of collaboration and we work hard to ensure that you love the final output.

We will always use your existing style guide and branding requirements, and we’ll also lean on you in the early stages to provide links to websites that you like. These can be used as inspiration for our design team.

Before we get into the design and development phases, we use the strategy and planning phase to define goals – these goals can have a direct effect on expert design decisions, and our team has experience that’s backed by years of launching hundreds of successful projects. We’ve spent extensive time in UX/UI and are well versed in the importance of good design and how it affects your brand. We know best design practices, and also harness the ability to make data-backed decisions to ensure that everything is done with purpose.

We take our job of delivering you a high-quality product very seriously. We respectfully request that you trust us in taking the lead during our collaboration.

Yes, these can be added to any website package.

Typically this is provided by you, but we can assist when needed.

Our Pro and Enterprise website packages include both standard copywriting and SEO-optimized content writing.

We recommend original images that are unique to your business, but stock photos can also be used when necessary. We have accounts with all the major providers including Adobe Stock. Onsite photography can also be arranged in certain circumstances.

This varies from project to project, and is discussed in the initial discovery and planning phases.

Our favorite CMS is WordPress, which is open-source and utilizes PHP.

For most ecommerce projects, we like Shopify. Shopify’s primarily built with Ruby on Rails, an open-source framework.

Not really. WordPress is as secure as you want it to be. Did you know that The White House and NASA websites use WordPress?

Because of the enormous popularity of WordPress, it’s a common target for bad actors, but this can be prevented by following standard security practices. 

Leaving WordPress software such as plugins and themes outdated can make your website a much easier target. Think of it like parking your car in a big city and leaving the door wide open. Don’t give the bad guys a shortcut. 

Most plugins, themes, and WordPress itself (“WordPress core”) release frequent updates in order to better protect against security issues. When these updates get ignored is typically when trouble comes into paradise. Avoiding the use of too many third-party plugins will also save you some grief. 

A reliable hosting provider who knows the intricacies of WordPress can also be hugely beneficial in keeping your WordPress site secure. Our favorite WordPress hosting provider is WP Engine, based out of Austin. They are constantly innovating WordPress, including its security.

Yes, of course. Mobile responsive design is no longer an option, it’s a requirement. More people visit websites from a smartphone than a computer. 

No. These are separate beasts, and should be treated as such. Learn more on our SEO Marketing and PPC Marketing pages. You can view our pricing page for rates.

We do not offer hosting as a standalone service, and it is typically more advantageous for clients to keep hosting under their own roof. Some exceptions are our managed WordPress clients, who have optional WP Engine hosting included with their service package. 

If you still prefer we handle your hosting, we can take a look at your particular situation and let you know if we can help. Some factors that would come up are any technical requirements you may have, including traffic and storage. We do not offer IT or email services of any kind.

No. We recommend you setup your custom domain email with Google Workspace. While Google WorkSpace support is excruciating nowadays, you’ll rarely need it and you can’t beat the reliability and efficiency of Google’s email servers. 

We take on a very limited number of social media marketing clients at one time, but get in touch and tell us a little bit about what you’re looking for. We’ll get back to you within 1 business day. 

Absolutely not, and while our primary location is in Los Angeles, physical location rarely inhibits who we work with. We have clients and staff located around the world. Our virtual production team works out of Houston. SEO LA’s creative director, Ryan O’Connor, spent the first 30 years of his life in Maine, and we’re proud of our New England roots. 

Please visit our web accessibility service page for more information. We offer WCAG audits and compliance implementation as optional add-ons for all website packages.

We are advocates for making the web accessible to everyone, but it’s important to note that unless you’re a government website, it is typically not a legal requirement to maintain accessibility compliance with your website. A great thing to do? Yes. A legal requirement? No.

Overlay companies like AccessiBe often push this angle in order to boost sales of their accessibility products, most of which are a band-aid at best. We think web accessibility is something that should be better understood and more prioritized, but we don’t support shady companies pressuring business owners into thinking they’re going to get sued if they don’t use their inferior products. Here’s an interesting read about this subject.

Yes, your website is yours, and you have full admin access. If any premium third-party WordPress plugins and themes were used, they are licensed legitimately and you are welcome to keep these within your website’s ecosystem for as long as you’d like, even if we’re not managing your website.

You may need to purchase a new license in order to gain access to software updates and developer support as many plugins and themes require annual renewals in order to support the authors and development teams.

Some basic aspects of WordPress websites can be updated without extensive technical knowledge. However, it’s generally best to have a professional take care of updates. A good team can handle your content updates, as well as critical software updates to ensure your site stays up and running without issues. We offer multiple WordPress management packages.

You’re not required to be under a maintenance contract unless you need us to update your website. Maintenance packages allow us to effectively handle the ongoing management of your setup, ensuring that things are running smoothly, and software is being kept up to date. With WordPress there is a lot of moving parts. Learn more about our WordPress management services. 

Note: we do not offer “one off” updates. A bug fix for a website that we built within the last 90 days is one thing, but isolated and sporadic frontend updates will require a service agreement. 

Get in touch and tell us about your project. You can contact us directly or submit our project request form. We’ll get back to you within 1 business day.