People make up their minds on their phones, long before they walk in your door. I build websites that let them feel your place, or hold your product, first. Then I get out of the way so they can buy, book, or come see you.
Every site I build has one thing at the top that visitors can touch.
I'm Chris Yates, a website designer in Paris, Texas, building custom websites for owner-run businesses. Sites start at $900.
6 feet of fence
Their one thing: Look around the real room.
Built from your business's real world. Never a separate mode, and never in front of your phone number or your booking.
The top of your site is where a customer decides whether you feel right. So that is where I put the one thing they can touch, built from what your business really is.
Lets people look around the real space, so they know where they are going before they get in the car.
Gives people something to handle. Turn a boot over. Roll a bottle and read the label.
Hands people a small object from your world, and using it starts the quote.
It sits on the normal page, never in a separate explore mode, and it never stands between anyone and your phone number or your booking.
NowAn interactive customer and employment hub, with an admin dashboard for managing job postings.
BeforeA flat brochure site for a rock hauling company.
Customers request a haul and see a fuel cost estimate, drivers find the hiring board, and the top of the page is the company's own photos and video.
NowGuided onboarding, plus real-time dashboards for product availability and site analytics.
BeforeA working site, but visitors were left to find their own way around it.
Switch dumpster units on and off and watch live availability and a running estimate follow along.
No middleman between you and your own website.
From $5,000 up, your site is built with a dashboard behind it. Add a product at nine at night. Change a price before you open. Put Saturday's job photos up on Sunday. None of it waits on me.
On the two smaller sites you send me the change and I make it. Anything that needs building rather than editing, I do either way.
Your dashboard
Your website
Type in the dashboard. This is the page a customer sees.
Upload files and they sort themselves into the right folder. Watch the work move through its stages. Message me on the project rather than in a thread of forwarded emails.
Quote, contract, signature and payment all in one place, and the account stays yours when the job is done.
Priced by what the site has to do for you, not by how many pages it has. Pick the one that sounds like your situation.
For a business that just needs to be found.
Not included: Separate pages for each service, anything you log into, or the ability to change the site yourself.
For a business that wants the website to bring in work.
Not included: A login for you, or the ability to change the site yourself. You send me changes and I make them.
For a business that wants to make changes without calling me.
Not included: Accounts or logins for your customers.
For a business whose customers need their own accounts.
Half to start, half when it goes live.
* Hosting and care are not part of the build price. From the day it goes live you choose one of two things. Keeping your site hosted, backed up and looked after costs:
A One Page Site or a Small Business Site is plain files, so this is optional. Your IT person can upload them to any host you like and they will work. No charge, and the files are yours.
A site with a dashboard or customer logins has a database behind it, and somebody has to be responsible for that, because an unattended database is how a business loses its customer records. Either I look after it, or I move everything into your company's name and write down how it works so your own people can, for a one-time $500.
Shown per month and billed once a year.
From the Site With Your Own Dashboard up, yes. You get a private page only you can log into, where you add photos, write updates, change prices and see every message from your site in one place. On the One Page Site and the Small Business Site you send me the change and I make it.
No. It sits at the top of your normal page. It is never a separate explore mode, and it never stands in front of your phone number or your booking. Someone who only wants to call you can do that straight away.
One Page Site: about a week. Small Business Site: two to three weeks. Site With Your Own Dashboard: about four weeks. Site With Customer Logins: about six weeks. These are honest timelines rather than best cases. Work often finishes sooner, but a date quoted and missed costs more than a slower one honestly given.
Three things, and the first is the one that slips. Your words: the copy, or enough of it that we can shape the rest. Whatever brand material exists: a logo, colors, photography. And one person who can decide.
No, and it is more common than you would think. Starting with nothing means the look is built for the job rather than inherited from something that no longer fits.
You press Get a quote and answer two questions. I read it myself and reply. We talk through what is actually being built. You get a written quote in your client portal with the scope, the price and the dates. You sign it there and pay the 50% deposit by card, work starts and you see it as it goes, and the remaining 50% is due when it goes live. Nothing is signed or charged until you have the full scope and price in front of you.
Half up front, half on launch. Card details go straight to Stripe, and Alchema never sees them.
Search engines, yes: structured data describing what you do, where you are and what you charge, a sitemap, and pages that load fast enough to rank. AI assistants can only quote a page they can read, so yours will have the words in the page, marked up so a machine knows what they mean, with those crawlers allowed in on purpose. What nobody can sell you is the recommendation itself. There is no switch that makes an assistant suggest your business, and anyone who says otherwise is guessing.
I build new sites from scratch, and that is where the work is worth paying for. Connecting systems that already exist is a different trade. If that is most of the job, I would rather tell you now than three weeks in.
Sometimes. Tell me the date in your first message rather than after we have started. If it does not fit, I would rather say so right away.
Sites start at $900. Answer two questions and I'll reply myself with an honest price, or just call.