Frequently asked questions

Yes — $500 USD covers the entire Starter build. Design, code, mobile-responsive layout, SEO essentials, contact form, 14-day post-launch fine-tuning, walkthrough video on handoff. Every line item is in writing before you sign.

What's not bundled in: domain registration (~$15/yr paid directly to a registrar), hosting (free on Netlify at Starter scale), brand identity work, and commercial-licensed stock assets. Each one is quoted separately, never glued in as a surprise mid-project.

Builders are great for hobby pages and personal portfolios. They start to hurt the moment you need three things at once: real performance (95+ Lighthouse without bolting on five "optimizer" apps), a design that doesn't look templated, and the freedom to move hosts without rebuilding from scratch.

Hand-coded files give you actual ownership — they run anywhere, they don't slow down because the platform pushed a new tracker to every account on it, and they don't get more expensive as the vendor raises monthly fees. The trade-off: builders are easier to edit yourself with zero knowledge. Hand-coded means a short walkthrough on common edits, or a quick message to me. Justified when the site is a real revenue channel — overkill for a 3-page hobby project.

A typical Starter, day by day:

• Day 1: structure and wireframe locked from the discovery call
• Day 2-3: visual design — typography, color, layout, your review and sign-off
• Day 4-5: code build, mobile-responsive, performance-tuned
• Day 6: polish, copy refinement, SEO setup, form wiring, cross-browser checks
• Day 7: deploy, walkthrough video, handoff

Honest dependency: the timeline holds if you can review and respond inside 24 hours at each checkpoint. Three days of silence mid-build means three extra days at the end. Most clients hit the rhythm — the few who can't, we plan around upfront.

Three things:

1. A clear conversion goal — what visitors should DO on the site (book a call, buy a product, request a quote)
2. Brand basics — logo if you have one, color preferences, reference sites you love or hate
3. Content — either you draft the copy, or give me bullet points and I draft, or we pull it from the discovery call transcript

Not required to start: a finished logo, professional photography, or a full content marketing plan. Those run in parallel or post-launch. If you're starting from a fully blank brand, scope a separate identity sprint first — trying to do brand and site inside one Starter compromises both.

Yes. Default Starter is static HTML, CSS, and JS — simple edits (a copy change, swapping an image, updating a price) take 5 minutes in any code editor. Handoff includes a walkthrough video covering the 6-8 most common edit patterns.

If you want a no-code editor layer (drag-and-drop text and images without touching code), a Sanity, Decap, or similar CMS integration runs $300-$600 USD on top, depending on how many sections need to be editable. What I never do: lock the site behind a proprietary editor only I can access. Every project is yours to take elsewhere if you ever need to.

One site, two languages, switchable via a button in the nav. Same URL path, same SEO weight — content swaps based on the visitor's choice, and their preference is remembered across visits.

Every line is natively written, never machine-translated. Either you supply both languages, or I draft in EN and a native FR writer reviews — billed at $1 per word of source text on top of the base build. Default for Montréal businesses serving both markets. Google specifically deprioritizes machine-translated content in its rankings, so cutting this corner costs you traffic.

You. Full stop. On handoff you get:

• The full Git repository (or a zip if you don't use Git)
• All Figma design files with editing access
• Hosting account ownership transferred to your name
• Domain registrar access in your name
• Every credential, API key, and configuration documented

No license, no usage limits, no "you're paying for the right to use it." The site is yours the same way a hand-painted sign is yours after the painter walks away. I keep a backup copy for 90 days post-launch in case you need a rollback — deleted after that.

Real answer: the schedule is capped to make this almost never happen. Two builds in parallel max. New starts are quoted with the next available slot, not "we'll start whenever."

If a real emergency hits mid-build — illness, family event — you get an immediate update with a revised timeline, the option to pause and refund the unbuilt portion of the deposit, and a referral to one of two trusted Montréal front-end devs I've worked with (with my project notes handed over so they don't start from scratch). No pretending to be a multi-person team. The upside: no PM relay, no juniors, no contractor in another time zone learning your project mid-build.

Three paths:

1. One-off add-on — quoted hourly or flat depending on size. Most small additions (a new section, a new form, an extra page) run $200-$800 USD.
2. Retainer — $500/mo USD (5 hrs), $1,500/mo USD (15 hrs), or $3,000/mo USD (30 hrs). Cheaper per hour, predictable, cancellable any month.
3. Take it elsewhere — you own the code, hand it to any developer, in-house or external. The codebase is documented for exactly this reason.

I'll never gatekeep your own site to force you onto a retainer. The retainer exists because some clients actively want a recurring relationship — not because it's the only way to keep the site alive.

"No leads" usually hides one of three different problems:

1. No traffic — the site is fine, no one is finding it. SEO foundation is in every build, but SEO compounds over 3-6 months. Paid ads, content, social, or partnerships fill the gap.
2. Traffic but no conversions — visitors land but don't act. Usually a copy or positioning issue, or friction in the conversion path. Fixable with targeted edits to the CTA, headline, or form.
3. Conversions but no revenue — leads come in but don't buy. That's a sales-process problem more than a site problem, but the site can do more to pre-qualify.

I run a free diagnostic at the 30-day mark for any Starter or higher to identify which of the three is happening. What I won't promise: a specific number of leads per month. Anyone promising that without seeing your industry, offer, traffic source, and conversion rate is making it up.