Web development, built to be read, used and changed.
Company websites, landing pages, online stores and web applications. Design, content, search and speed are decided together here, because on a finished page they cannot be separated.
What the work includes
- Corporate websites
- The full site of an established company, with many pages, several kinds of visitor and a structure that keeps all of it findable.
- Company profiles
- A short site that says who you are, what you do and how to reach you, for a business that needs to be looked up and believed.
- Landing pages
- One page with one job, built for a single offer and measured against that job.
- E-commerce
- A catalogue, product pages and a checkout that load on a phone and can be found in search.
- Custom web applications
- Software that runs in a browser and does a job for your business, such as a booking flow, a customer portal or an internal tool.
- Website redesign
- An existing site rebuilt with a plan for the pages, the addresses and the search visibility it already has.
- Legacy modernisation
- An ageing site or system moved in stages onto a foundation that can be maintained, keeping what still works.
How a site is built here
Static first. A static page is made ahead of time and kept ready, not assembled each time someone asks for it. Wherever a page can be static, it is. It reaches the browser whole, so the words are there before any script has run. A part that has to be live, such as a form, a cart or an account, gets the script or the server it needs and nothing more.
Written by hand. The code a browser reads, the HTML and the styles, is written for your site. It is not inherited from a theme made to suit everyone. A page carries only what it uses, and that keeps it light.
Seven layers, together. Every site has them: design, UX (how it is used), development, content, SEO, performance (how fast it is) and analytics (what is measured). Here they are one piece of work, not seven handovers, because they meet in the same places. A heading is a design decision, a line of content and something a search engine reads, all at once. A photograph is part of the design and often the heaviest thing the page has to load.
Why it is built this way
Speed is decided by how a site is built. It cannot be added in the week before launch.
Search is the same. If a page’s words arrive only after a script has run, a search engine may read them late or not at all. Google’s own documentation calls sending finished pages “still a great idea”: it is faster for people and for crawlers, the programs that read pages for search engines, and not all of those can run scripts.
And a site that nobody can safely change starts ageing on the day it launches. Code that holds only what the site uses is code the next developer can read, and change without breaking something they did not know was there.
Web applications
A web application is a different kind of thing. It has accounts, data and rules, and it needs a server and a database. The same habits apply. Whatever can be a plain page stays one. The interface is built from the browser’s own buttons and form fields, which a keyboard and a screen reader already understand. When an application needs automation or AI behind it, that part is built in collaboration with Laras.
Two kinds of project have pages of their own: online stores and redesigns of an existing site.
Look underneath
This site is built the way this page describes. Switch any page to Structure, or press X-ray this website on the home page. The site then shows its own headings, its links and what your browser measured while loading it.
What we will not promise
- A launch date before we have seen the content and the scope. A date given that early is a guess.
- A number of enquiries or sales. We can take away reasons to leave a page. Whether people want what you offer is not in the code.
- A site that looks after itself. Every site needs care after launch. A simple one needs less of it.
Goes with
- SEO The work that lets the right people find what you already do well. It has an order: a site that can be read, then pages that answer the question, then a reputation that is earned.
- Technical SEO The part of SEO nobody sees: whether a search engine can reach your pages, render them, and understand how they fit together. If it cannot, nothing else you do for search will count.
- Website care The work after launch: keeping a site fast, safe and up to date. The software under a site ages and its content goes stale, whether or not anyone is watching.
- Case study: LARAS A company site for Laras, an AI and automation studio: original 3D scenes, one honest simulation, and a home page that loads in fifteen requests.