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Website Design & Development

Sites that load fast, are accessible to everyone, and are built for search and answer engines.

The tell is usually that nobody wants to touch it. Every change goes through someone else, the page takes four seconds to load on a phone, and the thing you most need people to read sits three clicks down.

Website design and development is the whole job: the structure, the design, the code, and the setup that makes the site findable. We do both halves here, which matters more than it sounds. When design and build are split across two vendors, whatever got approved in a mockup quietly becomes something else in the code, and nobody owns the difference.

Most of this work is a redesign rather than a first site, which means the real question is what carries over and what does not. Sometimes the content is fine and the structure is burying it. Sometimes it is the other way around. That gets sorted before anything gets designed.

A site is not finished when it looks right. It is finished when it loads fast, works on a keyboard, reads correctly to a screen reader, and gives search and answer engines something structured to pull from. Most sites fail on the second half. They look fine and carry three megabytes of code nobody asked for, which shows up as a slower load, a worse ranking, and a visitor who left before the hero image finished.

Every build targets WCAG 2.2 AA from the start, not as a pass at the end. Because 2.2 is backward compatible, that also covers 2.1 AA where that is the version written into your requirements.

You get an editing workflow your team can use without calling a developer, and training on it before handoff. If your current platform is the reason nothing gets updated, that is the part to fix first.

If you are still working out what to ask a studio before you hire one, we wrote that list down. And if the brand underneath the site needs work too, brand identity design usually runs first and feeds straight into this.

Website Design & Development work from FifthHouse

What a Website Project Includes

  • Information architecture
  • Responsive design system
  • Accessible build to WCAG 2.2 AA
  • SEO and structured data
  • Analytics and conversion tracking
  • Training and handoff

How Long It Takes

5-7 Weeks

  1. Weeks 1 to 2

    Discovery and site architecture

  2. Weeks 2 to 4

    Design

  3. Weeks 3 to 6

    Build and content

  4. Weeks 6 to 7

    Testing, launch, and training

Estimates, not promises. What moves them: current studio capacity, how many deliverables are in scope, and how complex they are.

Who This Is For

  • Teams whose current site is slow or hard to update
  • Organizations with WCAG or ADA compliance to meet
  • Anyone running content marketing on a platform fighting them
  • Teams replacing a site nobody on staff can edit

Every project is scoped individually. See how scoping works. Not sure a studio is the right fit? Compare it against an agency, a freelancer, and a full-time hire.

Quick Answers

What platforms do you build on?

The platform depends on what the site needs to do: static site generators for content-heavy marketing sites, WordPress where a familiar admin matters, and headless setups when the content feeds more than one place.

How much does a website cost?

Every project is quoted individually after a short conversation, because a five-page site and a site with a blog, a donation flow, and three audiences are not the same job. You get a written quote with fixed pricing, defined deliverables, and a delivery window, usually within a few days.

Do you handle accessibility?

Yes. Builds target WCAG 2.2 AA, including contrast, keyboard navigation, focus states, and screen reader structure. WCAG 2.2 is backward compatible, so a 2.2 build also meets 2.1 AA where that is the version written into your requirements.

Will my site show up in AI search?

A site shows up in AI answers when its structure supports it: real headings, structured data that matches what is on the page, and answers written plainly enough to be quoted. It is part of every build here rather than an add-on.

Can my team update the site ourselves?

Yes. Every build includes an editing workflow your team can use without calling a developer, plus training on it before handoff.

What happens after launch?

You own the site and your team can update it. If you would rather not, ongoing updates and new pages can run through a creative retainer instead of a new quote each time.

Let's Build Something That Loads.

Send over the details and we will take it from there. The form takes a few minutes, and you can pick a time to talk.