Before you email
How this goes
Nobody asks this out loud, so here it is written down. This is what actually happens, including the parts that are annoying.
Step one is an email, so here is the address: corby@bode.design
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You email us and a person emails you back
Not a form that goes to a queue. It lands in the inbox of the person who will build your site, and it gets answered ... usually the same day, occasionally the next one if we are at a wrestling meet somewhere. Tell us what you make, what the site does now, and what is bugging you about it. Screenshots are fine. A voice memo is fine.
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We talk once, properly
A call or a visit. We want to know what you sell, who buys it, what the busy season looks like, and what the last person got wrong. There is no discovery phase, no workshop, and no deck ... just one real conversation with a lot of questions about your product.
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You get a number and a schedule before you pay anything
Written down, in plain language, with what is in it and what is not. If the honest answer is that you do not need a rebuild, we will tell you that, because a site you were talked into is a site you resent in year two.
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We build it, and you watch it happen
On a private copy of the site you can look at whenever you like. If you are moving stores, your current one stays live and selling the entire time ... nothing in progress can reach your customers until you say go.
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We do the unglamorous part
Every old web address mapped to a new one so your search traffic lands somewhere. Tracking wired up and tested with a real order. Your team shown how to change the things they will want to change. This is the part that gets skipped by people who are cheaper than us, and it is the part you feel eighteen months later.
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It launches, and then we are still here
That is the whole pitch, really. The seasonal update, the new product line, the thing that broke on a Sunday ... you call the person who built it. Some of these sites have been looked after by the same person for over a decade.
The other way to pay for this
Most of these are a normal project fee, quoted up front. But if you sell online and the site basically is the business, there is a version where we take a share of what it makes instead of a check before it makes anything. We would rather get paid when it works. The numbers depend on the job, and you get them in writing before you spend a dollar.
- A share of net sales
- It steps down once the store has proven itself, and then it stays there for good. Net, not gross ... refunds and shipping come out first.
- Monthly updates, included
- Not banked, not rolled over, just there when you need them. Past that it is billed by the hour, and we tell you before we spend it, not after.
- Invoiced monthly
- Straight off your own sales report, so you can check our math any month. People do, and they should.
- A floor, so it stays fair to you
- If the store is not selling, either of us can walk away. A percentage of a business that is not selling is not a partnership, it is a subscription.
- A way out
- You can end the arrangement whenever you like, on a buyout written down before you start. No lawyers, no argument about it.
The whole point: if the site does not make you money, we do not make money. It is the only arrangement we know of where the people who built the thing have a real reason to still care about it in year three.
What we will need from you
- Somebody who can make a decision. One person, not a committee ... this is the single biggest difference between a project that takes two months and one that takes eight.
- Your product information, in whatever state it is in. A messy spreadsheet is fine. We have imported worse.
- Photography, or a conversation about us making it. Bad product photos will undo a good site faster than anything else on this list.
- Answers within a few days when we ask something. Most delays are not build time, they are waiting time.
When we are not the right call
- You need it in two weeks. We would rather say no than do it badly.
- You want the cheapest possible option. There are places for that and they are honestly fine for some businesses.
- You want a marketing department. We build and run websites and the things around them ... we are not going to run your paid social.
- You want a big agency with a team and a process and a slide deck. That is a real thing that some companies genuinely need. It is not this.