Websites designed and built by one pair of hands

What it is

A website build here is one person drawing, writing and coding the same site end to end, on the platform the work needs rather than the one the studio prefers to sell. No design phase is handed to a developer who was not in the room.

Four platforms cover almost everything that arrives. Astro, where pages ship as flat files with no database behind them. WordPress as a custom theme, where somebody publishes every week and wants the editor they already know. Shopify, where there is real stock and payments that have to work on a bad day. Wix or Squarespace, where a customised platform site is a better object than a thin bespoke one.

Inside every rung the same things are included rather than sold back later: the copy edit, the on-page search work, analytics and cookie consent configured lawfully, the accessibility standard below, and a handover with the accounts, the repository and a written account of how the site works.

Who it is for

Four kinds of buyer. Organisations with something particular to say and a reason to look unlike their sector: museums and galleries, foundations, heritage brands, societies and trusts. People whose name is the business: authors, musicians, architects, photographers. Trades and small firms who sell in one place and want the site that finally ranks there. And owners of a site that no longer fits, which is a redesign and sits on the same ladder.

The work goes to the Gulf, Europe, the United Kingdom and North America, in English, in writing, across time zones. A written process survives a nine-hour gap, and it leaves you a record of every decision instead of a memory of a call.

What it costs

These are the website rungs of the studio ladder, published so you can rank this studio against others before writing to anyone. There is no hourly rate here or anywhere else, because an hourly rate makes working quickly a penalty.

USD is the anchor on every quote and invoice. The figure in parentheses is the same price in dirhams at the pegged rate of 3.6725 to the dollar, given as one local equivalent rather than a currency list, and correct as of 5 September 2026. Prices exclude any VAT, sales tax or withholding your own country applies to imported services.

Speed and access

Speed is engineering, not a setting switched on at the end. On the code-built rungs it means pages shipped as files, images sized for the box they land in, fonts that do not block the first paint, and no third-party script added without a reason that survives being written down.

WCAG 2.1 AA is the standard on every rung, and it is written into the Illustrated world rung explicitly because an art-directed site is where the temptation to break it is greatest. Real text rather than words inside pictures, keyboard paths through anything interactive, contrast that holds in both themes, and motion that stands down for a reader who asked for less.

The evidence is this studio's own bench: the scripts that measure frame cost and paint behaviour live in the same repository as this site and are run on the work before it ships. There is no client accessibility remediation to show, because that job has not been sold yet.

Editing it yourself

A code-built site does not have to mean asking someone else to change a paragraph. An Astro build can carry a small panel that writes posts and pages as files into your own repository: you log in, you write, you publish, and no database query or plugin stack sits behind the result.

This site runs that panel, which is why it can be described rather than promised, and it is named in the quote where a site needs one. WordPress and Wix builds keep the editor those platforms already ship, because replacing a familiar editor is a cost dressed as a feature.

Search on your own site

Site search on a code-built site is a crawl of the finished pages at build time. The index is made when the site is made, so searching costs no server, calls no third-party service, and cannot go stale against the pages it describes. It is included in a build big enough to need one, and never sold alone.

Care after launch

The care plan is USD 150 a month, about AED 550: hosting management, nightly backups, platform and dependency updates, an uptime monitor that tells me before it tells you, and two hours of changes a month. Unused hours do not bank.

It is optional and it is not a lock. The hosting, the domain, the repository and the analytics are yours from day one, so leaving the plan means the site keeps running and somebody else takes over the maintenance.

Moving an existing site

Rebuilding a site that already ranks is a different job, because the risk is not the design, it is the URLs. Redirect maps, retained titles, an index check after launch and a Search Console watch through the transition are what keeps the traffic. That work is priced and described on its own page: migrations.

How it runs

1. You write the brief in a sentence. The card below takes it: the site you want, roughly when, and the address of anything that already exists.
2. I reply in writing, usually inside a day, naming the rung, what would move it, and which platform it belongs on.
3. One call, thirty minutes. You bring what did not survive being typed, I bring what the brief left open.
4. A fixed written quote, scope named, exclusions named, payment stages named. You keep it either way.
5. The build in the open. Pages and drawings arrive as they are made rather than at a reveal, because a reveal is where projects go wrong quietly.
6. Launch and handover. Accounts, repository, analytics, Search Console, training, and a written account of how the site works.

What it has proved

The two exports below come from client Search Console properties, handed over on 28 August 2026. They prove what the sites did after launch. They do not prove the build itself.

• Orlux Rides. 998,307 impressions and 4,464 clicks in the first twelve months, average position moving from 75 to 12.5. The export covers August 2025 to 26 August 2026.
• La Soie. Average position 6.75 across the run, weekly impressions rising from 147 to 1,650. Same batch, covering 25 May to 23 August 2026.

The build side of both is my own description rather than a measured claim, and it is marked as such: Orlux Rides runs a seventeen-block template, La Soie six bespoke theme sections. There are no testimonials on this site and no star rating in its markup, because it has neither.

Who it is not for

Questions people ask before they write

Sources

1. Client Search Console exports for Orlux Rides and La Soie, handed over 28 August 2026 (Chart.csv, Queries.csv and Pages.csv in each batch).
2. Pricing rungs and buyer behaviour, ShepherdUX research note 18, September 2026, drawing on published agency and freelance rate surveys.
3. United Arab Emirates dirham pegged at 3.6725 to the United States dollar, Central Bank of the UAE, rate as of 5 September 2026.