Our Philosophy
We exist to help others, to be a part of their success, to leave things better.
Building lasting relationships is our number one KPI. We’re in it for the long-haul because we know most web designers are flakey. They build your website and disappear. They’re slow to respond, slow to make changes, slow to adapt.
We do business differently. We keep things small on purpose. The growth we’re most concerned with is your growth. When your business grows because of the work we’ve done, we consider that a massive success.
We work personally with each client, one project at a time. So we’re selective about which projects we take on, and we sometimes have a waiting list. But you always get our undivided attention.
Rather than the process taking months, your website’s usually ready to launch in two weeks.
Every project is custom tailored for your unique business and audience. While most web designers focus on fitting your content into their pre-existing design, we take a radically different approach.
Our philosophy is what we call Content-First Design. We take time to deeply understand your business, research your market, and get to understand your target audience. The we craft the right message to compel the right action – and we design around that.
But sharing a link to your website shouldn’t embarrass you. It should look as beautiful as it is functional. It should be your hardest working salesperson.
We want to make the internet a better place. So we’re minimalists focused on user-friendliness, accessibility, and giving things space to breathe.
We’re not just web designers – we’re web consultants. We’re always happy to help. No matter your question, we’ll either know the answer from experience, dig deep to find the answer, or point you in the right direction. So don’t hesitate to email us or schedule a call.
Principles
- We don’t do everything mediocrely. We do one thing excellently.
- We never outsource, but we’ll gladly make a referral.
- We aren’t gatekeepers. We empower our clients.
- We do business on a personal level.
- We commit to one project at a time.
- We are selective about what projects we choose to work on.
- We under-promise and over-deliver. Never the other way around.
- We are always learning, growing, and perfecting our craft.
- We are always happy to help.
Do's and Don'ts
We do new websites. Turn your idea into a strategy, a message that sells itself, and make it effortless for people to take action. Websites are not a “build it and they will come” sort of thing. So when they do come, you better be converting those visitors into customers.
We do redesigns. We’ve done hundreds of them. Many clients return to us again and again to keep their websites current and reflective of their business growth. We love to iterate.
We do offer web hosting. This is a necessary evil. We never set out to be a web hosting company, but most web hosting companies suck. They’re slow, over-priced, and insecure. We leverage solid-state, virtual machines to make your website faster, help it rank higher, and make it more secure, scalable, and reliable. We offer this along with our website management plans at various price points with no long-term commitment.
We do offer website management. We do everything we can to empower clients to easily make their own simple edits. But many clients still prefer to save their time and pay us. If there’s something that might take you an hour but would only take us a few minutes, we’d rather save you the time.
It’s also important to keep things up to date, to keep plugins and frameworks maintained. Most clients don’t have time to do that. So we do it for them.
And occasionally clients break things unintentionally. We’d hate to see you undo all the hard work we did to make your site user-friendly, rank well, and accessible. We can do the work so your website scales seamlessly with your business.
If it’s not listed above, we generally don’t do it. But we will gladly refer you to someone who does that thing with excellence. This means…
- We don’t do logos. But we know amazing folks who do.
- We don’t do print. But we know amazing folks who do.
- We don’t manage social media. But we know amazing folks who do.
- We won’t run your Google ads. But we know amazing folks who will.
You get the gist.
We want to be the best at what we do. So we can’t dilute our efforts by dabbling with mediocrity in other things.
What about SEO?
Unless you’re a very large corporation with money to burn for fun, you probably shouldn’t hire an SEO company. Most of these “gurus” want to charge you an obscene amount of money each month to essentially do nothing.
We do know a lot about SEO – we stay current with SEO trends and what works today vs what worked six months ago – and your website will be optimized for search engines. And if you have good content (which you should, and which we prioritize), your website will likely rank well.
But there are other strategies we could discuss – like local service pages and other kinds of content marketing – that would be a much wiser investment if you need help ranking in a competitive niche.
What about pricing?
It’s almost impossible to give a fair quote without a deep discussion about your unique needs. This would be like a car salesman trying to sell a sports car to every person who walks into their dealership. But what if they have kids? What if they need to tow a boat?
So let’s schedule a call so we can learn about your project and see if we’re a good fit. There’s zero pressure to work together.
Meet Mike
Mike Hirst is the founder and visionary behind Exton Web Design. Since 2013, his small team of designers, developers, and editors have been turning ideas into measurable results for hundreds of businesses across the United States and around the world.