Website design & build
Website design
& development
We design and build websites that look like your brand and do a job: get bookings, sell products, or make a premium business feel premium online. Strategy, design, development and launch — handled by one small team you talk to directly.
- What we do
- Strategy, UX/UI design, development, booking and e-commerce, launch
- Platforms
- WordPress, Shopify and custom builds
- Typical timeline
- 3–8 weeks on recent sites
- Team
- Washington, DC · New York · Guangzhou
- Pricing
- Quoted per project
- Languages
- English & Chinese sites
What a good site does
Your reputation is strong in person. The website should keep up.
Many of the businesses we work with are excellent at what they do and well known locally, but their website was built years ago on a template, loads slowly on phones and doesn't look like the experience customers get in person. New customers judge them by that page first.
For Crystal SPA in Virginia, the brief was to turn an outstanding in-person reputation into a site that converts. We started with a brand audit, set a calm, premium visual direction, designed the booking flow first and then the full site, and launched in six weeks.
Every site we build starts from the same question: what should a visitor do next — book, buy, call or ask for a quote — and how do we make that the easiest thing on the page?
What's included
Design and build, from first sketch to launch
- 01
Strategy & structure
Goals, audience and the pages you actually need, mapped into a sitemap and the key path to booking, buying or inquiring.
- 02
UX/UI design
Homepage concept first, then the full site, designed for phones as carefully as for desktop.
- 03
Development
Built on WordPress or Shopify, or custom-coded when the design needs it, so your team can update content without a developer.
- 04
Booking & e-commerce
Reservation and booking flows for restaurants and spas, and online stores for product brands like LuPetz and Caross.
- 05
SEO foundations
Clean page titles and descriptions, structured data, fast loading, image alt text and redirects, set up before launch, not after.
- 06
Bilingual sites
English and Chinese versions with a one-click language switch and correct hreflang, like the site you are on now.
How we work
Four steps to launch
- 01
Audit & requirements
We review your brand, current site, competitors and analytics, and agree on goals, pages and features.
- 02
Visual direction & homepage
A visual direction and homepage concept for approval before we design the rest — the step that saves the most revisions.
- 03
Full-site design
Inner pages, booking or shopping flows and mobile layouts, reviewed together page by page.
- 04
Development & launch
Build, integrations, content entry, speed and SEO checks, then launch and a handover so your team can run it.
Selected work
Websites we have designed and built
Crystal SPA website
A calm, premium website with an online booking flow for a Virginia spa, delivered in 6 weeks.
YAKUN restaurant website
An editorial website and reservation flow for a Japanese omakase restaurant in Los Angeles.
Caross jump starter launch site
A minimal Shopify site for the North American launch of a US-patented car jump starter.
LuPetz brand and US launch
Identity, a custom WordPress store and product visuals for a New York pet accessories brand.
Fantasy of Taste patisserie
A white-space-led website and ordering experience for a French patisserie in New Jersey.
Alien Handpan website
An immersive brand website with sound-on-hover interactions for a handpan maker.
How to choose a web designer
Questions worth asking any web studio
Use these to compare quotes. A low price with no answers here usually costs more later.
- Can I see live sites, on my phone? Open their recent work on your own phone and see how it loads and feels.
- Who owns the site and the accounts? The domain, hosting and platform accounts should be in your name.
- Can my team edit it without a developer? Ask to see the editing screen before you sign.
- What happens to my current search rankings? A redesign without redirects can lose traffic you already have.
- Is SEO set up at launch? Titles, descriptions, structured data and a sitemap should be part of the build.
- What happens after launch? Agree on support, updates and who fixes things if something breaks.
Pricing
Quoted per project
A focused service-business site and a full online store are very different projects. After a short call we send a clear scope and quote.
- Number of pages and templates — and how much content we write or adapt.
- Features — booking, e-commerce, memberships, forms and integrations.
- Platform — WordPress, Shopify, or a custom-coded build.
- Languages — one language, or English and Chinese.
- Brand readiness — whether the identity exists or needs to be designed first.
FAQ
Website design questions
How long does it take to design and build a website?
Our recent sites took between 3 and 8 weeks: Fantasy of Taste about 3 weeks, Crystal SPA 6 weeks, and YAKUN and Caross about 8 weeks. Online stores and multi-language sites take longer.
Which platforms do you build on?
Can you add online booking or reservations?
Yes. Booking flows were central to Crystal SPA and YAKUN. We design around the booking or reservation system you already use, so the website and the booking step feel like one experience.
Will the new site help us rank on Google?
We set up the technical foundations at launch: page titles and descriptions, structured data, image alt text, fast loading and redirects from old URLs. Rankings also depend on content and reputation over time, and we can plan those with you.
Can you build a bilingual English and Chinese website?
Yes. We build bilingual sites with a one-click language switch and proper hreflang tags so search engines show the right language, the same way this site works.
Can we update the website ourselves after launch?
Yes. We build so your team can edit text, images and products without a developer, and walk you through it at handover.
Do you redesign existing websites?
Yes, most of our projects are redesigns. We keep what works, map old URLs to new ones so you don't lose search traffic, and move your content across.
Keep exploring