Every “how we built this” post I read from other agencies reads like a press release. This one won’t. Here’s the actual list of decisions that went into shipping a customer’s site this week, including the ones we got wrong the first time.
What the customer asked for
A cleaning-business owner in Alberta needed a site live before a trade show, five days out. No logo yet, three photos on her phone, and a strong opinion that she didn’t want to sound like every other cleaning company’s website.
What actually took the time
Not the build. The build took about four hours once the content was locked. What took the time was getting the copy to sound like her and not like a template — three rounds of “this isn’t quite it” before the homepage headline landed.
“I don’t want ‘trusted, reliable, affordable.’ Everyone says that. Say what I actually do.”
What we’d do differently next time
Ask for the three photos on day one, not day two. We lost half a day waiting on them and it was the only real bottleneck in the whole build.
Live in 71 hours, one revision round, no discovery calls. Same promise as every build — this one just happened to need it.