Local businesses
A website for a business close enough to drive to, built before you pay for it, and kept current so it is still true next month.
Right now this page is showing the real hour and the real weather outside, and it did that by itself. Some of the sites I've built do it too: the farms, the fuel company, the places whose year actually moves.
01 Before you price one out
Most people file a website under advertising: a cost, a brochure, a thing you hand to whoever comes in cheapest and then can't change. That is the wrong drawer. Almost everyone who walks through your actual door looked at a phone first and decided you were worth the drive.
That decision gets made at nine at night, on a couch. Someone hears about you, looks you up in bed, and works out whether Saturday is worth the drive. They are not weighing you against the shop down the road. They are deciding between going and not going.
Which is why a page that is right today beats a page that is handsome. A beautiful site that still lists last spring's hours costs you the person who drove out and found you closed. They don't call to complain. They just don't come back.
You might be bracing for a login and a manual. There is neither. Nothing to log into, nothing to learn and nothing to forget: when something needs changing, you text me and I change it.
And you already know how hiring someone for this usually goes. Money up front. A few weeks of waiting. Hoping you like what shows up. Then you find out that changing one sentence means another invoice and another wait, so you stop asking, and the page quietly stops being true.
So I do it the other way around. I build the whole thing first, you use it on your own phone, and you decide after that.
02 For the businesses whose year moves
Most small business websites are right for about a month. Then the hours change, the season turns, and nobody has time to go fix it. A page can keep up with the calendar, the hour and the weather on its own instead. It is not right for everyone. A barber shop does not have a season, so it goes on the sites it earns its keep on, and nowhere else.
In September the page leads with apples. In December it leads with wreaths. It does that by itself, so people show up expecting what you actually have, and you stop fielding the same phone call all week.
Live · …The early crowd gets a bright, clear page. Someone checking from bed at night gets a soft dark one. It sounds like a small thing, and it is the difference between finding your hours and closing the tab.
Live · …When the forecast turns, the page leads with what's good indoors instead of what needs sunshine. Same customers, a new reason to come, and you never touched a thing.
Live · …03 Three steps
No quote to approve, no deposit, no contract to sign before anything exists. You open it on your own phone, and then you decide. The risk in this normally sits with you. Here it sits with me.
I learn your business, write the words and build the site. Not a sketch and not a slide deck. Real pages you can open and move around, with nothing wired up behind them yet. At this point you have paid nothing and agreed to nothing.
I come to you and hand it over. Tap through it, show your staff, tell me what's wrong. I'll fix it while we are standing there.
If it's right, we agree on a price and a date, and then I finish it properly: the booking, the ordering, the form that actually reaches you. It goes live on your own domain, in your name. If it isn't right, you keep the link and it cost you a cup of coffee.
Trust is earned, not assumed. This is me earning it first.
04 Before you have to ask
A local business site starts at $1,500. What moves it is how many pages there are and how much of it has to keep changing through the year. Keeping it current is one of three monthly plans, starting at $149 a month.
None of it is owed until you have seen it on your own phone and decided you want it. If yours is bigger than a small site, you will hear the number from me before I begin, not after I finish.
I'm in Stow and I only take on places I can drive to: Stow, Maynard, Hudson, Bolton, Harvard, Concord, Acton, Boxborough, Marlborough. Text me the name of your business and the town, and I'll take it from there. No form to fill out, no sales call, no pitch.
Run a machine shop, a fabrication shop or a small plastics shop? There is a page written for you.
Peter Ferreira
The name of your shop and the town is enough to start. No pitch, and no hard feelings either way.