Frequently Asked Questions

Web design, website redesigns, SEO, performance improvements, lightweight e-commerce, and bilingual (English/French) websites. We also partner with marketing and design agencies on a white-label basis. We’ll recommend the simplest approach that fits your goals and how you want to manage your site.

Yes — and for most clients, the simplest path is to email us your updates. Ongoing content changes are included in every monthly plan, handled within 24–48 hours, with no CMS login to manage. If you’d rather edit the site yourself, we can add a lightweight CMS layer on top of your Astro site — see the next question for the options.

It depends on how you want to work. If you don’t plan to edit the site yourself, skip the CMS entirely — email-based updates are simpler and faster. If you do want hands-on access, Decap CMS or TinaCMS give you a clean dashboard for structured content editing, and CloudCannon adds true visual, click-to-edit editing where you see changes live. We’ll recommend the right fit based on your team’s comfort level.

Yes. We're native French speakers with professional English fluency, so we build truly bilingual sites — not translated pages that read awkwardly. Both language versions get culturally adapted copy, proper hreflang setup, and seamless language switching. We've built bilingual sites for North American and French-speaking audiences.

Yes — every site we build is mobile-first. The phone layout is designed and optimized from the start, not adapted from desktop after the fact. Your site loads quickly and displays correctly across all screen sizes with no pinching, zooming, or broken layouts.

Performance is a hard requirement in every build, not a late-stage optimization. Our sites typically score 95+ on Google Lighthouse and load in under 1 second on mobile — achieved by hand-coding on Astro and avoiding bloated themes and plugins. Your exact results will depend on content, images, and any third-party scripts you add.

Yes — for lightweight commerce. Snipcart works well for small product catalogs bolted onto an Astro site, and we also build on Shopify when you need a full storefront. We’re not the right fit for plugin-heavy WordPress/WooCommerce stores or membership portals with 500+ products. We’ll recommend the simplest setup that fits your catalog, features, and budget.

Yes. We host most sites on Netlify — fast, reliable, with built-in CDN, automatic HTTPS, and continuous deployment. For lump-sum builds, hosting is an optional $25/month add-on (SSL, monitoring, and backups included). If your project has specific infrastructure requirements, we’ll recommend the right host and handle the configuration.

Six stages: Discovery (understanding your goals and target customers), Design (layouts you approve before we write a line of code), Development (we build it), Testing (cross-device and performance checks), Launch (go-live without downtime), and ongoing Support. Standard small business projects move through the first five stages in about two weeks — our 14-day turnaround. Larger redesigns and complex builds take longer.

Our standard turnaround is 14 days — about two weeks from kickoff to launch for a typical small business site. Larger redesigns generally run 4–6 weeks, and complex builds with custom functionality or e-commerce can take longer. Timeline also depends on how quickly you provide content, images, and feedback. We’ll confirm a specific date during our initial call.

We'll need your business information, services/products, contact details, and any existing branding materials like logos. If you don't have professional content or images, we can help create compelling copy and source quality visuals that represent your brand effectively.

Ideally yes — you know your services and customers better than anyone. In practice, we work with whatever you have: we can turn rough notes into polished copy, source professional stock photos, or coordinate with a photographer. We'll tell you exactly what we need and when, so nothing blocks the project timeline.

Design revisions are included until the layout is right — there's no round cap. Most projects reach a final design after one or two feedback rounds. Once we move into development, changes to the layout or project scope are quoted separately.

Yes. If your site feels outdated, confusing, or isn’t bringing leads, we can redesign it so it looks modern, communicates clearly, and makes it easy for customers to take action.

You work directly with Xavier — no account managers, no ticket queue. We communicate via email, phone, video calls, or in-person meetings if you’re in San Diego. New inquiries get a reply within one business day; during an active project, replies usually land within a few hours on business days.

Most clients prefer to email us changes — it’s included in every monthly plan, handled within 24–48 hours, and there’s no CMS login to manage. If you’d rather edit the site yourself, we can add a CMS layer (Decap, TinaCMS, or CloudCannon for visual editing) so you can update content from a browser without touching code.

Yes. On a monthly subscription, support is ongoing from launch — content updates, hosting, security monitoring, and daily backups are all included for as long as you’re a client, and all plans include a 30-day money-back guarantee plus a free redesign after 3 years. Subscriptions start with a 12-month commitment, then roll to month-to-month with 30 days’ notice. For lump-sum builds, 30 days of post-launch support is included; after that, you can add a maintenance plan or request changes ad-hoc. Most requests are handled within 24–48 hours, same-day for anything urgent.

We host most sites on Netlify — a fast, reliable platform with built-in CDN, automatic HTTPS, and continuous deployment. If your project has specific infrastructure requirements, we’ll recommend the right host and handle the configuration.

Yes, your domain is always yours. If you already have one, we’ll connect it to your new site. If not, we’ll help you register one — but it stays in your name and under your control. We never retain ownership of client domains.

Just email us. On a subscription or maintenance plan, most content updates are handled within 24–48 hours. For anything structural or outside your plan’s scope, we’ll quote it before we start — no surprises.

Yes. Every site we build gets a solid technical foundation: semantic HTML with proper H1→H2→H3 hierarchy, optimized titles and meta descriptions, structured data (JSON-LD) where it helps, clean URLs, fast load times, and a mobile-first layout. For ongoing campaigns — content strategy, on-page optimization, local SEO — we offer dedicated SEO retainers starting at $275/month.

We build your site with SEO best practices so you have a strong foundation. Rankings depend on competition, content, and time, but we’ll make sure your site is set up correctly and can support ongoing SEO work.

We cover the fundamentals on every build: one clear H1 per page, logical H2/H3 structure, optimized meta titles and descriptions, clean URLs, descriptive alt text, and JSON-LD structured data where it adds value. We also make sure your site passes Core Web Vitals and is easy for crawlers to index.

We can optimize your site for local search with local schema markup, Google Business Profile guidance, and location-specific content. For broader local SEO campaigns — review management, citation building — we offer ongoing services or can connect you with trusted specialists.

We test against Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) and Google Lighthouse on real mobile conditions before launch. We also set up Google Analytics 4 and Search Console so you can track traffic, keyword impressions, and conversions over time.

Bilingual SEO is a strength of ours. We implement hreflang correctly so search engines serve the right language to the right audience, and both language versions get independent keyword optimization — not just translation.