Notes and guides.
Written for people responsible for commissioning a website or a rebrand, covering the decisions that tend to cause problems later.
When a Vancouver business has outgrown its website
How to tell whether a website needs restructuring or just needs redesigning, and why the distinction changes the budget.
Deciding what the project is
Brand first, website first, or both together?
Whether to start with the brand or the website, and how to sequence the work so the same decisions are not paid for twice.
02Complex offers / 3 minStructuring a page for a complex product
How to structure a technical product page so specialists and non-specialists can both use it.
03Procurement / 3 minWriting a website brief that gets useful responses
What to include in a website brief so the responses you get are comparable and the estimates are realistic.
04Technology / 6 minPositioning a technical product for non-technical buyers
If you sell something technical, you have probably watched a good conversation stall after the engineer on the call is satisfied and the person signing
05Brand / 6 minWhy positioning has to come before the logo
Positioning is the work that comes before anyone draws a logo, and it decides whether the design that follows is any good.
Choosing who does the work
What makes a case study credible
What separates a case study that wins work from one that reads as a portfolio piece.
02Working model / 3 minWhat senior-led means in practice
What senior-led actually means in a studio's day-to-day work, and the questions that establish whether it is true.
03Studio selection / 3 minHow to choose a website design partner in Vancouver
What to look for when choosing a design studio in Vancouver, and which parts of a pitch tend not to predict the working relationship.
04Working together / 6 minHiring a design studio in another country
A studio that only ever works remotely would write a more enthusiastic version of this article.
Building it and keeping it working
Choosing the right website platform in 2026
A comparison of WordPress, Webflow, Framer and custom builds, based on how your team publishes and what the site has to connect to.
02Accessibility / 3 minPlanning accessibility before the design stage
Why accessibility belongs in the structural phase of a project rather than in final QA, and what that changes in practice.
03Measurement / 3 minChoosing which website metrics to track
Which website metrics are worth tracking after launch, and how to connect them to decisions rather than reports.
04Content / 6 minWriting website content when nobody has time
Almost every website project we've run late has been late because of content rather than design or build: the words, the photographs, the twelve product
05Support / 6 minWhat actually happens after a website launches
Launch day gets treated as the end of the project, and it isn't. The invoice clears, the old site redirects, somebody posts about it on LinkedIn, and
Notes by sector
What manufacturers get wrong on their websites
A precision manufacturer's website has to satisfy two readers who want different things from the same twelve pages.
02Hospitality / 6 minThe hospitality website checklist nobody writes down
We build websites for restaurants, guesthouses, bars and venues, and much the same pattern turns up in nearly every one.
03Education / 6 minWebsites for research centres and institutions
A research centre website has to work for readers who want different things and arrive at the same homepage: a funder checking credibility, a postdoc
04Retail / 6 minWhen a shop should sell online and when it should not
We build both kinds of site: full ecommerce, and sites where the money is made in person and the site's job is to get somebody through a door or onto a call.
05Arts / 6 minBuilding a website for a festival or arts organisation
The dates for a festival are agreed long before anyone looks at the website, and they do not move for it.