Web design process and pricing

TL;DR: The web design process and pricing we work to are published: Discovery at $2,500 for one week, Architecture at $2,500 credited against the build, the build from $5,000, care from $1,500 a month. Five phases, each named, each priced before it starts, each with an end date you can hold us to.

What this includes

An owner usually gets one of two answers when asking what a website costs. The first is a range so wide it means nothing. The second is an invitation to a call before a number is said out loud. This page is the third answer: five phases, five prices, five dates, published, so you can price a project before you speak to us.

The engagement is bought in phases rather than as one lump, because a project sold as a single block cannot be stopped halfway without an argument. Each phase is a stretch of one to ten weeks with a named output at the end, and any one of them can be the last you buy.

A written verdict at the end of Discovery: what is holding your site back, what it costs you in orders you never see, and the order we would fix it in
An Architecture document you own whether or not you continue, covering the data your site stores, where it will live, what it connects to, and how it leaves the platform you are on
A release every week on a live address during the build, so you review the real thing on your own phone instead of a picture of the real thing
A redirect map built and tested before the switch day, so the addresses that earn you traffic now still earn it afterwards, which is the part of moving an existing store without losing its traffic that pays first
Before and after measurement on the same numbers the project was sold on, taken from your own analytics rather than from ours
Thirty days notice to stop care, because by the end of the build the code, the accounts and the addresses are already in your name

The person who writes the architecture and reviews the work is the same person who priced it and the same person who signs off the launch. That is the reason the phases are short: whatever we get wrong is visible inside a week rather than inside a quarter, while it is still cheap to correct.

The same five phases apply to the web design work in Miami and to a store built from the first listing to the last checkout. Only the length of the build changes, and that is the one number we set with you rather than for you.

How it works

The five phases run in a fixed order and each one ends with something you can read, open or count. The durations below are the ones we commit to in a scoped quote, and the price of each phase is printed on it.

Discovery, one week, $2,500. We read your site the way a customer does, on a phone, then look at what your own numbers say happens after that. You get a written verdict: what is broken, and the order of work ranked by effect against price. It has the shape of a one week performance audit, with your site as the subject.

Architecture, one week, $2,500, credited against the build. Everything expensive to reverse is decided in writing before anything is built: the data your site stores, where it lives, what it connects to, and the option we rejected with the reason. You keep the document whether or not you go on.

The build, two to ten weeks, from $5,000. Work ships every week to a live address you can open. Feedback is given on the running site rather than on a picture of it, which removes the stage where a design is approved and then lost in translation. A shop with a large catalogue and connections to invoicing sits at the long end; a marketing site with a form sits near the short end.

A week of checks and the switch, included. Before any address moves, every one that earns traffic today is listed and mapped to its new home, in Google's order of operations for a site move. Orders from your last season are replayed against the new build, and the old version stays reachable until the new one has survived its first days in the open.

Care, monthly, from $1,500. Monitoring, updates and small changes, with a monthly note on speed and orders. Thirty days notice to stop, at any point.

The build is the only phase whose length is genuinely uncertain, and what moves it is scope rather than speed: how much content has to move, how many systems have to connect, and how many people have to agree on the wording. The scoped quote names the date you get the site, and the date is what we are judged on.

What it costs

These five figures are the whole of the published web design pricing in Miami, and they do not move with the size of your business.

Discovery: $2,500 for one week, written verdict included.
Architecture: $2,500 for one week, credited against the build if you go on.
The build: from $5,000, over two to ten weeks depending on the catalogue and on the systems it has to talk to.
The week of checks and the switch: included in the build, never billed on its own.
Care: from $1,500 a month, with thirty days notice.

The figure on this page is where a phase starts. The scoped quote is what fixes the rest: the exact scope, the final price and the calendar. We do not bill by the hour, so a build that runs a week longer than planned costs you nothing more than the week.

What is absent from the invoice matters as much as what is on it. There is no change-request fee when we misread something of yours, no extra line for the handover of accounts and documentation, and no subscription you have to remember to cancel. The questions owners ask before signing covers the rest, including what happens to a project that stops after the second phase.

An agency quoting by the hour is not being dishonest. It is being honest about a scope nobody has fixed yet, and the hours are how the risk gets carried. Publishing the price of each phase is the other way round: the risk sits with us from the first day, which is why we spend a week on Discovery before quoting the build.

Two things push the build towards the long end: the volume of content to bring across, and the number of connections to systems you already run. Both are counted during Architecture, before a price is fixed.

Proof

Two projects carry the numbers on this page, and what those two projects produced, phase by phase sets them out against the phases above.

Food By Box came in with a catalogue of 2,500 products and a checkout that lost people on a phone. It ran the whole sequence: Discovery, Architecture, the build and care. Monthly visits went from 20,000 to 500,000 over 24 months, the speed rating Google gives the site reached 95, and every address that carried traffic was listed and mapped before the switch. The growth did not come from a new look. It came from pages that finally loaded on a phone and a checkout that stopped losing the order at the last step.

The phase that produced it was not the one the owner expected to pay for: the first week of Discovery put the checkout ahead of everything already queued.

Tatiana Miath is the other end of the same story: a small store, no rebuild, a site that took 4.8 seconds to show anything useful on a phone. It now takes just over one second, and the change cost it no ranking at all. The design barely moved. What moved was how long a customer waited before seeing a price.

The architecture is written and the code read by Michael Agnassia, who has spent 15 years building stores. That is why the published price sits where it does: the expensive part of a project is the week spent deciding, and that week is done by the person who would have to live with the decision.

Two outside references set the bar we are measured against: the speed thresholds Google publishes for real visits and the abandonment rates Baymard keeps updated. Both are public and both are the numbers we report against at the end of a build.

Questions

What does the web design process and pricing cover?

It covers all five phases of a project, from the first week of reading your own numbers to the month after the switch. Each phase has its own price, its own duration and something you receive at the end of it. Nothing outside these five phases is billed.

How long does the web design process and pricing take from start to finish?

Two to fourteen weeks for most projects. Discovery is one week, Architecture is one week, the build runs two to ten weeks depending on scope, and the checks and the switch take one more. Small marketing sites land closer to six weeks; a shop with a large catalogue lands at the top of the range.

Why is Architecture a separate paid phase?

Because it is where a project is won or lost. The data the site stores, where it lives and what it connects to are decided in writing, before anyone has an opinion about colours. The fee is credited against the build if you go on, so the phase costs you nothing when you continue.

What happens if we stop after Discovery?

You keep the written verdict: what is broken and the order of work. Nothing else is owed, and the $2,500 is not credited against a build that does not happen. Owners who stop here usually do so because the list turned out shorter than they feared.

What is not included in the published web design pricing in Miami?

Hosting, domain fees and any software you license stay in your name and on your card, so you are never locked in by us. Content writing and photography are quoted separately when a project needs them; if you have neither, the build can be scoped without them.

Can the work be spread over two quarters?

Yes, and it is common. Phases are billed one at a time and none of them starts before the previous one has been signed off, so a project can pause between Architecture and the build without losing anything. The price of a phase is the price on the day it starts.

How do you keep a project from running over its dates?

By keeping the build short and the feedback frequent. Work ships every week to a live address, so a misunderstanding surfaces in days rather than at the end. The scoped quote names the launch date.

Book the first week, which is priced and takes one week of your team's attention rather than a month
Our address in Brickell if you want to walk through the phases in person, in English or in Spanish