Web design from one person who also builds

Web design, with me, means one person plans, designs, builds, and publishes it. You explain your project once, and what happens after that doesn't happen inside a team you never meet. That's the difference from an agency, and it's why I've worked this way for over twenty years.

Who this is for

For self-employed professionals who need a site that takes their work seriously. For small and medium businesses whose site has been standing for eight years and is starting to look embarrassing. And for agencies that need extra capacity and want someone who delivers without a ramp-up period.

It's not a fit if you're looking for the cheapest option out there. Website builders cost ten euros a month and are the right choice for plenty of people. If that's where your budget sits, I'll tell you that in the intro call instead of selling you something you don't need.

What you get

A site that works on a phone just as well as on a desktop, loads in under two seconds, and Google understands. Structure and copy are settled before any design work starts, because a beautiful site with no clear message doesn't do anything for you. At the end, you get the rights to the design and code, access to everything, and a walkthrough so you can keep working on it yourself.

Technically that means WordPress with a custom theme or a custom-built site, depending on the project. Both without page-builder plugins that bloat the site, and without off-the-shelf themes you can't update two years from now.

References

For buk.S from Stuttgart, a company for sustainable housing projects, I built a WordPress site with a custom theme, plus the corporate design with logo and print materials. For PhysChem Analytics from Feucht near Nuremberg, an analytics lab, and for Marketing macht Frisch, I built the websites. Other projects include SHIFTSCHOOL and punkt und pause. Part of the work runs as subcontracting for agencies, including Siegfried and ROI in Zurich.

I've built two products entirely on my own, from the first sketch to running production: zeit, a time-tracking tool for the self-employed, and events, a planner for parties and club events. Both run live, and both show what I can do technically better than any reference list.

Pricing, no fog

The price is set before the project starts: fixed price, by effort, or a monthly retainer, your choice. No hourly tally that surprises you at the end. There's no flat rate, because no project is like the last one. What drives the price comes down to three things: the number and type of pages, whether copy and images come from you, and whether the site needs features beyond content.

What actually drives the price up is rarely the design. It's multiple languages, integrations with other systems, custom forms, and content that still needs to be written. I've written up a detailed comparison of freelancer, agency, and website-builder pricing in the web design pricing overview.

Where I work

I'm based in Fürth. Across the Nuremberg metro area, so Fürth, Nuremberg, and Erlangen, I'm happy to come by for the kickoff, because a conversation at the table gets to the point faster than three video calls. Everything beyond that runs remote, and that's worked well for years. There's a dedicated page with the details for the region: freelance web design in Fürth.