Principal-led builds

Website Development
Built to Produce Quote Requests

A prettier site on a broken offer just loses money faster. So we don't open Figma until the offer and the tracking are fixed. Then we build it, and the repository, the domain and the analytics are in your name from day one.

From $3,000, 30 days from kickoff
Copy and tracking before design
Every account in your name
90-day bug-fix warranty
Get a Fixed QuoteBook a 30-Minute Call with James

What We Build, and What We Build It With

Three stacks we can still maintain the year after launch, chosen on the call rather than sold to you before we know the problem.

Custom Website Development
No theme to outgrow, no page builder to patch

What We Build

  • Service business sites:A page for each service you actually sell, so the thing a customer types has somewhere to land
  • Multi-location builds:A real page per location, not the same paragraph with the city name swapped out
  • Quote and booking flows:The form is the product. Shortened, tracked, and measured against the one you have now
  • Landing pages for ad traffic:Built for the ad that sent the click, rather than dropping paid traffic on your homepage

What Comes With It

The offer and copy rewritten, not reskinned

Design dresses a message that is already signed off. That order is the entire method.

Tracking live before launch

GA4 and conversion tracking fired against the real form, so a quote request is countable from day one.

Everything created in your name

Repository, domain, hosting and analytics set up in your accounts on day one, not handed over if you leave.

Get Custom Development Quote

Three Stacks. We Tell You Which One You Need.

Custom build
Next.js & React
When speed and control matter more than a plugin directory

It is what this page is running on, and what our own SEO platform runs on. Nothing here is a stack we would be learning on your budget, and there is no theme sitting between you and a change you need made.

  • No theme or page builder to inherit
  • Deployed to Vercel, in your account
  • Core Web Vitals met on throttled mobile
See what a $3,000 build includes →
Selling online
Shopify Development
Because payments and tax are already solved

Rebuilding checkout, tax and shipping from scratch is your money spent badly. We build the storefront and the product pages, and leave the machinery that already works alone.

  • Custom theme, not a bought one lightly edited
  • Product and checkout tracking verified
  • App stack pruned to what earns its fee
Learn More →
You publish it yourself
WordPress Development
When your office adds pages without asking us

The right call when someone on your side needs to post a job, a page or an update without raising a ticket. We build a clean theme instead of stacking a page builder on a bought one.

  • Theme built for your content, not a marketplace
  • Plugin count kept low, because each one breaks later
  • Editor training so your team actually uses it
Learn More →
Built Mobile-First, Tested on Real Devices
Your buyer is standing in a driveway on one bar of signal

Most of your quote requests arrive from a phone, often on a poor connection. So the phone layout gets designed first and the finished build gets checked on real handsets, not on a fast laptop with a narrow browser window.

  • Core Web Vitals measured on throttled mobile
  • Tap targets and forms tested by thumb, on real phones
  • Images sized per device, not scaled down in the browser
Website Maintenance & Support
Sites rot quietly while you are busy running the business

A certificate expires, a plugin update takes the contact form down, and nobody notices for three weeks. Maintenance is a separate month-to-month plan, and every build carries a 90-day bug-fix warranty from launch either way.

  • Security updates and backups you can restore from
  • Uptime and Core Web Vitals monitoring
  • Content updates and a monthly report
View Maintenance Plans →
Built to Be Marketed To, From Day One
The redirects, the schema and the tracking are part of the build, not a phase two

The most common way a redesign loses money is quietly: the new site ships without a redirect map, the rankings the old pages had go with them, and the conversion tracking restarts at zero so nobody can prove what happened. That work is in the build here rather than in a quote you get three months later when the traffic chart drops.

SEO

Redirects and schema on day one

Learn more →

PPC

Pages built for the ad, not the homepage

Learn more →

CRO

Tested after launch, not assumed

Learn more →

Social

Pixels inside your own Business Manager

Learn more →
Building a Full Application or SaaS Product?
Web apps, client portals, AI tools and multi-tenant platforms are their own discipline

Once a project needs user accounts, a database, background jobs or AI features, it has crossed out of website territory into software, and it gets scoped and priced that way: from $10,000. We build those on the same stack that runs this site and our own SEO platform.

Explore Software Development Services →

How a Build Actually Runs

Five steps, and the order is the argument. Nothing gets designed until the message and the measurement are settled.

01
Discovery & Strategy
We map how your customers actually buy, audit what your current site does with them, and agree the one number this project has to move.
  • A call with James, not a questionnaire routed to someone you never meet
  • We agree the one number this project has to move, and record where it sits today
  • Your current site audited for what it does with the traffic it already gets
  • We name who has to sign off, because slow approvals are what stretch timelines
  • A written scope, a price and a dated timeline before anything starts
02
Design & Copy
Layout and words are built together against that number. Every section has to justify its place before it gets designed.
  • The offer and the copy written first, then signed off
  • Figma opens only once the message is approved
  • The phone layout is designed first, since that is where most quote requests start
  • Three rounds of revisions, written into the contract
  • Work outside the agreed scope is quoted, not absorbed into a round
03
Development & Testing
Built fast, accessible, and search-ready, then tested on real devices before anyone sees it.
  • Built on the stack agreed at discovery: custom, WordPress or Shopify
  • Schema, canonical tags and a full redirect map from the old URLs
  • GA4 and conversion tracking wired, then fired against the real form
  • Core Web Vitals checked on a throttled mobile connection
  • Tested on real handsets and with a keyboard before you see it
04
Launch & Optimize
We launch, watch real behaviour, and change what the data says to change rather than what looks tidy.
  • Launch checklist run against a staging copy first
  • Repository, domain, hosting and analytics already in your name
  • Redirects and form submissions checked daily through the first weeks
  • Rankings watched for the pages that were earning before the rebuild
  • 90-day bug-fix warranty from the day it goes live
05
Ongoing Support
Maintenance, monitoring, and continued testing so the site keeps improving instead of ageing.
  • Month-to-month maintenance, never a lock-in
  • Security updates, backups and uptime monitoring
  • Content updates and new pages as the business changes
  • Continued testing so the site improves instead of ageing
  • The same person you started with, still on the account

Four Reasons to Hand Us the Build

Every one of them is checkable before you spend anything.

You Work With the Person Who Does the Work
No account manager, no junior handed the file after signing

The person who diagnoses the problem on the discovery call is the person who writes the copy and ships the build. Nothing gets lost relaying your feedback to somebody who was never in the original conversation. Where a specific piece needs a specialist, such as photography, we bring in a named contractor and you know it is happening.

  • James Price, Founder & Lead Designer
  • 8+ years in conversion optimization and web design
  • CXL Institute — Conversion Optimization · Google Ads Certified · Meta Ads Certified
Speed Is a Threshold, Not an Adjective
Measured on a throttled phone, which is where your buyer is

Anyone can call a site fast. The check we build to is Google's own Core Web Vitals, taken on a throttled mobile connection before launch and monitored afterwards:

  • Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds
  • Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds
  • Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1
You Watch the Build, Not a Status Report
A staging link from the first week of development

You get a URL you can open at any point, so “it is coming along” gets replaced by looking at it. Feedback goes in as one consolidated list per round, because unlimited revisions is how a site dies of a thousand small opinions and launches six months late.

  • A staging URL you can open any time during the build
  • A written weekly update and a 24-hour response time
  • Three rounds of revisions, written into the contract
A Rebuild That Does Not Cost You Your Rankings
The part most redesigns get wrong and find out about ninety days late

The most expensive thing a redesign can do is throw away the search equity and the measurement history the old site had. Every URL worth keeping gets mapped to a destination before launch, and analytics carries over instead of restarting at zero.

  • Full redirect map from the old URLs, re-checked after launch
  • Schema, canonical tags and an XML sitemap ship with the build
  • GA4 and conversion tracking migrated, not recreated from scratch
The Proof We Can Actually Attribute

“Grindstone Design has been doing SEO for my company for the past 7 months and has made our rankings in Google shoot up. We've increased the amount of people coming to our website by over 500% from when we started. Can't recommend enough!”

Anton Montgomery — 7-month SEO engagement, Google review

That is one review out of 47, averaging 5.0 on Google. It is an SEO result rather than a build result, and we would rather hand you the one number we can put a name against than three we cannot. If an agency shows you percentages with no client attached to them, ask whose account they came from.

Named client work you can go and look at: Aircraft Parts Store, Wood Pro Supply, La Nopalera, Rex Golf, WW Pizza, MPA, FCF, PARC.

View Full Portfolio

What a Build Costs

One published floor and an honest list of what moves it. The number in the proposal is the number on the invoice.

Where the Number Comes From

The Floor: $3,000

  • • The offer and the copy rewritten, not reskinned
  • • GA4 and conversion tracking live before launch
  • • Schema, canonical tags and a redirect map
  • • Three rounds of revisions, in the contract
  • • 90-day bug-fix warranty, 30 days from kickoff

What Moves It Up

  • • Page count, and how many services need a page of their own
  • • A real page per location for multi-location businesses
  • • Selling online: products, checkout and payment setup
  • • Photography and content you do not already have
  • • Migrating a large existing site with URLs worth keeping

Where It Stops Being a Website

  • • User accounts and logins
  • • A database your customers read from and write to
  • • Background jobs, scheduling or automation
  • • AI features and deep third-party integrations
  • • Those are quoted as software development, from $10,000

What Is Not in the Price

  • • Domain and hosting, paid to the provider in your name
  • • Platform subscriptions and ad spend, never billed through us
  • • Maintenance, which is a separate month-to-month plan
  • • Work outside the agreed scope, quoted as its own piece
  • • Nothing else. There is no line you find out about later
What Happens Before You Commit

1. A 30-minute call

We open your current site together and name what is costing you the calls. Free, and we are fine telling you a rebuild is not your problem.

2. A written scope, price and dated timeline

Within 24 hours of that call. Nothing starts until you have seen all three and said yes to them in writing.

3. A fixed project price

Agreed before kickoff. Changes you ask for outside that scope get quoted separately rather than turning up on the final invoice.

Get the Scope and the Price in Writing

Tell us what the site has to do and who it has to do it for. You get a real number back, not a range designed to get you on a second call.

  • Free 30-minute call, no obligation to proceed
  • Written scope, price and dated timeline in 24 hours
  • Every account created in your name on day one

If your new website doesn't outperform your current one, we work for free until it does.

Get Your Custom Quote

Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign Anything

Ask the next agency on your list the same ones.

Bring Your Current Site and the Number You Want to Move

Thirty minutes with the person who would build it. Worst case, you leave with a straight answer about whether a rebuild is even your problem.

Get a Fixed QuoteBook a 30-Minute Call
24-hour response time
No obligation quote
Straight to James Price, no gatekeeper

Or call directly:

(904) 608-8534
Case Studies

Our Website Development Work

View All Work