Can't I just use Squarespace / Wix / AI tools?

They'll get you 80% of the way to something that looks like a website. That last 20% is the difference between a site people visit and a site that produces outcomes.

What platforms do you support?

WordPress, WooCommerce, and custom builds. If your project needs a headless architecture, static site, or something non-standard, I'll scope it honestly.

What if I want to leave?

You own your content, your domain, and your data. Always. I'll export everything and help with the transition. No hostage situations, no surprises.

Every site build includes one year of Growth Infrastructure hosting. After that, month-to-month with 30-day notice. I keep clients because the work produces results, not because of a contract.

What's the typical turnaround for a new site?

Brochure sites: 3-4 weeks from kickoff. Complex builds: 6-10 weeks depending on scope.

How does onboarding work?

A 30-minute call to understand your business, your customers, and your goals. Then I do the perception audit on my end and come back with a strategy. You don't need to prepare a 50-page brief. I ask the right questions.

What does 'perception audit' mean?

An assessment of your site through the five layers of Perception-First Design: cognitive load, first impressions, processing fluency, perception bias, and decision architecture. It's a structured diagnostic that produces a prioritized list of what's costing you conversions and why.

Do you work with agencies?

Selectively. If you need a white-label partner who applies a real methodology and doesn't just push pixels, let's talk.

What does a Strategic Partnership actually include month to month?

Design and dev work on whatever's blocking your sales pipeline. Could be a homepage rewrite, a conversion path audit, a new landing page, a checkout flow rebuild. I work like an in-house designer-developer who happens to also do strategy. You get my judgment on what to build and the build itself.

Why a monthly partnership instead of a one-time project?

Conversion problems aren't one-time. You ship a new page, traffic shifts, your audience evolves. A one-time project leaves you with a snapshot. A partnership means I'm watching your numbers and iterating against them.

How long until I see results?

First measurable lift usually inside 30 to 45 days. Big swings (3-4x) take longer because they're compounding. The fastest wins are removing friction the visitor never told you about.

What kinds of businesses does this work for?

Anyone with traffic that isn't converting. I've shipped for ecommerce, SaaS, content sites, professional services. The common pattern: real visitors arrive, but the site is losing them in the first ten seconds. If your product works and your traffic is qualified, I can help.

Are you available for just a piece of this, like just the design?

Sometimes. Design-only or audit-only engagements are possible if your team can execute the build. I'm picky here because Perception-First Design is most effective when design and code ship together. If you're handing the design to a team that won't follow the spec, you'll get half the value.

Design, Development & Consulting Services | Perception-First Design™

The Partnership Loop

Working with
[Aurochs]

Design, development, and infrastructure. Every partnership is a loop of methodology and rigor.

01

Audit

Goals, audience, baseline. What’s working, what isn’t.

04

Optimize

Measure. Refine. Compound the wins.

02

Strategy

Decision architecture. Sequencing. Where to invest.

03

Build

Design and ship. Production-grade, no approximations.

The Partnership Loop

01

Audit

Goals, audience, baseline. What’s working, what isn’t.

02

Strategy

Decision architecture. Sequencing. Where to invest.

03

Build

Design and ship. Production-grade, no approximations.

04

Optimize

Measure. Refine. Compound the wins.

Disciplines

What I work with.

DIAGNOSE

audit

I find the conversion bottleneck, score it by perception layer, and tell you what to fix in what order.

from $2,000 · 1–2 weeks

→ delivers scored report fix roadmap executive summary

Book an audit

Ongoing Partnerships

Two tiers. Both month-to-month.

Run by someone who knows your stack. One person to call.

Growth Infrastructure

from $300/mo

What enterprise hosting feels like.

Whatever you run on, hosted on infrastructure I built and maintain. When something needs attention, I handle it before you notice.

Site stays up. Stack-agnostic hosting, monitoring, daily backups.
Site stays fast. Caching, CDN, image compression, edge tuning.
Site stays safe. Security monitoring, SSL, DDoS protection, vetted updates.
I see it first. Same-day response. Same person every time.

Month-to-month after first year. Included with all new site builds. Your data, your domain, always.

Strategic Partnership

from $1,200/mo

Your full-stack design and web agency.

Everything in Growth, fully covered. Plus the design and development capacity that compounds conversion.

Your perception sharpens monthly. Methodology applied to brand, pages, conversion paths.
Your stack evolves with you. New pages, components, A/B tests.
Your brand scales without drift. Identity refinement, landing page design.
I talk strategy, not tickets. Quarterly perception audit and roadmap.

Month-to-month. 30-day notice. Your data, your domain, always.

Tell me what you need

Project Work

One-off builds.

Every project includes the full Perception-First Design™ methodology. No template drops.

Brand Identity

from $5,000

Logo, typography, color system, brand guidelines. Built on Perception-First Design™ principles: what your brand communicates before anyone reads a word. Style tile → brand system → production assets.

Brochure Sites

from $6,000

5–10 pages. Designed to clear perception barriers and get visitors to act. Includes brand system, responsive design, and CMS setup.

Complex Builds

from $15,000

E-commerce, custom functionality, integrations, multi-step flows. Scoped precisely. No surprises. WooCommerce, custom WordPress, or headless architectures depending on what the project needs.

Let’s scope it

Results

Same products. Different perception.

Revenue 3x

Simply Smart Home

“Stefan designed the brand, the packaging, and the product. Everything people see.”

How

Repositioned “digital photo frames” as smart home décor. New brand system, packaging, web presence. Same hardware. Revenue tripled within the year.

Revenue 4x

Vacuum Sealers Unlimited

“The website Stefan built me helped put my 3 boys through college.”

How

Ten years, same site. Incremental optimization, no redesign. The methodology compounds.

50% → 75%

iO Theater

“Stefan made our site in half the time, and even better looking than the agency we hired before him.”

How

Online ticket sales for the Chicago improv institution that launched Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, and Amy Poehler. Built in half the time of the agency they hired before.

Where this work has shipped