Services · 4 disciplines · one retainer
Four disciplines, one retainer.
Most studios sell each of these as separate scopes with separate contracts. We run them as one because the trade-offs only make sense when somebody owns all of them. Below: what each discipline actually covers, who it’s a fit for, and how it shows up at each retainer tier.
01 · The build
Web Development.
The thing most studios dress up as “engineering” — building, shipping, maintaining the actual website. We treat it as the unglamorous core of everything else: brand work doesn’t multiply value if the site is slow, growth work doesn’t compound if performance keeps regressing, and design work gets diluted the moment a junior dev rebuilds it badly.
What this covers
- Production builds in Next.js (App Router, React 19, TypeScript strict)
- Performance budgets and Core Web Vitals — LCP, CLS, INP held at green
- Accessibility — WCAG 2.2 AA target, keyboard + screen-reader testing
- Component systems with tokens, motion engine, type scale
- Build-chain hygiene — dependency updates, security patches, deprecation tracking
- Production debugging — Sentry / Vercel logs / Lighthouse regressions
Who it’s for
Founders or marketing teams who want their site to feel as considered as their product, and don’t want to wonder whether next month’s push will silently regress LCP. Especially if you’ve had freelancer-built work that needs a senior eye.
Tier mapping
Foundation
Maintenance, monitoring, security patches, monthly strategic audit. One shipped improvement each quarter (component, page, or feature).
Acceleration
Monthly build sprint — features, integrations, conversion work, A/B test scaffolding. Bi-weekly strategy keeps the work pointed at outcomes.
Scale
Custom features in-flight every week: dashboards, integrations, A/B framework, internal tooling. Reserved engineering capacity, weekly cadence, no waiting in queue.
Related work
Foundation includes stewardship plus quarterly shipped improvements. Acceleration adds monthly build sprints. Scale runs reserved engineering capacity. Bespoke embeds a dedicated pod.
02 · The shape
Brand Strategy.
Not the logo. Not the brand bible. The thing underneath both: how the business explains itself to a stranger in two sentences, and how every page on the site, every email, and every campaign reinforces (or undermines) that story. We treat brand strategy as a function of the constraint — what you sell, who buys it, and what you can credibly own in their mind.
What this covers
- Positioning workshops — what you sell, who you sell it to, what makes you the obvious choice
- Voice + tone guidelines — vocabulary lists, sentence-rhythm rules, examples to emulate / avoid
- Messaging architecture — primary, secondary, tertiary lines that ladder up to one promise
- Audit of existing copy + visual system against the positioning
- Editorial templates — how case studies, blog posts, sales decks should be structured
- Brand-strategy reviews — quarterly check-ins on whether the work in production matches the strategy
Who it’s for
Founders who feel their site is "fine" but not differentiated, marketing teams whose messaging drifts when a new freelancer joins, or businesses pivoting into a new segment that needs the brand to follow.
Tier mapping
Foundation
Static. We monitor for drift in monthly reports and flag obvious mismatches; no active strategy work.
Acceleration
Active. Quarterly brand reviews, ongoing voice audits, messaging refreshes shipped as needed.
Scale
Embedded. We sit alongside your team for major narrative shifts — repositioning, new market entry, fundraising decks.
Related work
Brand strategy is dormant on Foundation, active on Acceleration, embedded on Scale.
03 · The compounding
Digital Growth.
SEO, paid acquisition, content, lifecycle, conversion. The marketing layer most agencies fragment into separate teams; we run it as one because the trade-offs only make sense when somebody owns all of it. The work is intentionally measurable — every change ships with a baseline metric and a check-in date — because the only honest growth work is the kind that survives a quarterly review.
What this covers
- Search — technical SEO audits, content briefs, internal-link architecture, Schema.org coverage
- Paid sprints — Google / Meta / LinkedIn, one channel per month, ad spend honest about its ROI
- Conversion optimisation — tracked A/B tests on real traffic, not arbitrary "best practice" tweaks
- Content — long-form essays, case studies, glossary entries that compound for organic search
- Lifecycle — newsletter cadence, drip sequences for prospects who don't convert immediately
- Analytics — dashboards a non-marketing-person can read, monthly executive reports
Who it’s for
Businesses whose acquisition strategy is "do more of what worked before" and want a senior eye on what to actually try next, or growth teams that need a steady cadence of compounding wins on top of their internal effort.
Tier mapping
Foundation
Monitoring only. Weekly performance + SEO checks, monthly report identifying the next test we'd run.
Acceleration
Active. One paid campaign sprint per month + ongoing SEO + bi-weekly strategy call. The default tier for "we want growth, not just stewardship".
Scale
Custom-shaped. Multi-channel, custom A/B framework, weekly tactical sessions, quarterly business review aligned to revenue goals.
Related work
Foundation is read-only growth. Acceleration is the default for active growth. Scale is multi-channel.
04 · The plumbing
Technical Infrastructure.
The work that keeps the site running, the integrations talking, and the team able to ship without surprises. Most studios call this "DevOps" or "platform engineering" and treat it as a separate quote; we treat it as part of the retainer because it's where the worst surprises hide. A monitoring gap costs you a customer. A stale dependency invites an exploit. A misconfigured integration silently drops 5% of your conversions.
What this covers
- Hosting + CDN — Vercel / Cloudflare, region routing, asset optimisation, edge caching
- CMS + content workflows — Sanity / Contentful / custom, with editorial guardrails
- Integrations — Stripe, Resend, Supabase, HubSpot, GA4, Plausible, your stack
- Observability — error tracking, RUM, alerting that wakes us up before it wakes you
- Security — dependency audits, secrets management, OAuth flow reviews
- Migrations — replatform from Webflow / WordPress / static-only to a modern stack without downtime
Who it’s for
Anyone who has been bitten by an outage and wants the next one to be detected, triaged, and fixed before they notice. Especially if your site has grown past the "Webflow can handle it" threshold.
Tier mapping
Foundation
Hosting + monitoring + security patches included. Ad-hoc integration fixes when they break.
Acceleration
Adds proactive infrastructure improvements — perf tuning, integration upgrades, observability stack expansion.
Scale
Custom infrastructure work in-flight: migrations, internal tools, multi-environment setups. Engineering capacity reserved monthly.
Related work
Foundation keeps it running. Acceleration improves it. Scale rebuilds it where needed.
Ready to start
Pick a tier or talk it through.
Pricing has the comparison grid + FAQ; the brief generator frames a project for you in eight questions; the 30-min call is the fastest path if you already know what you need.