What building a website involves
The work starts well before the first mockup: you need to know who will visit the site, what those visitors are looking for and what the business expects from them, whether that's a call, a quote request or a purchase. Those answers shape the site structure, the tone of the content, the features and the choice of technology.
- 1Your visitorsWho comes to the site and what they're looking forStarting point
- 2The desired actionA call, a quote request or a purchaseGoal
- 3The site structurePages, content and technology follow from itDesign
A web agency brings together the skills this work requires: user experience (UX) design, interface (UI) design, copywriting, development, SEO and launch. At Sluak, a search visibility specialist before being a design studio, every site is planned from the start to show up on Google and in AI-generated answers.
Many of our clients sell in several countries. A multilingual site is planned from the site structure onward, with URLs specific to each language, copy adapted to each market and links between versions, a topic covered on our page about international SEO.
Three types of projects
The same word, "website," covers very different projects. We've organized them into three offers, each detailed on its own page.
Business website
It presents a business, its services and its contact details, with a simple goal: turning visits into inquiries. It's the most common format for small businesses, tradespeople and independent professionals. The details are on our small business website design page.
Ecommerce website
It sells: catalog, product pages, cart, checkout, shipping and inventory tracking. How categories and filters are organized matters as much for sales as for SEO. See our ecommerce website development offer.
Website redesign
It modernizes an existing site without sacrificing the traffic earned over the years. We inventory the pages that attract visitors, map old URLs to new ones and monitor the weeks following the switchover. The full method is described on our website redesign page.
Our six-stage process
Each stage ends with a document or screen that you approve before we move on. At every step you can see how far along the project is, and no code is written until you've approved the mockup.
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01
Scoping
A conversation about your goals, customers and competitors, followed by research into the queries your prospects search for.
Deliverable: The project brief, which sets the scope, timeline and budget
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02
Site structure and content
The list of pages, the role of each one and the phrase it should target on Google.
Deliverable: The annotated site map, with copywriting guidelines
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03
Mockups
The design of the homepage and main templates, drawn for desktop and for mobile.
Deliverable: Clickable mockups you can annotate
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04
Development
Building on the chosen CMS, forms, conversion tracking with a consent banner that complies with applicable privacy rules, and the tags SEO needs.
Deliverable: A staging version open to your team
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05
Testing and launch
Tests across different browsers, computers and phones, checks on speed, accessibility and redirects, then publication.
Deliverable: The launch checklist, completed and signed off
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06
Training and follow-up
A walkthrough of the back office for the people who will keep the site running, then monitoring of the first weeks in Google Search Console.
Deliverable: A user guide and an initial indexing report
How long each stage takes hinges on how many pages there are, the amount of copy to produce and how quickly approvals come in. The detailed timeline is written into the project brief.
WordPress or Shopify: which technology should you choose?
The CMS is the tool you use to manage the site day to day. We choose it after scoping, once the need is clear, because each platform has its sweet spot.
| Platform | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | Business websites and content sites that publish often, with needs covered by plugins | Updates and security to monitor closely, themes and plugins of uneven quality |
| Shopify | Online stores, from a small catalog to selling in several countries | Monthly subscription, apps often paid, fixed URL structure |
Fully custom development only makes sense if none of these platforms fits, because it costs more to evolve.
In between, WooCommerce adds selling to a WordPress site: it works for a small catalog or a business that sells alongside its services, as long as you take on the hosting, updates and payment security that Shopify handles. For a large catalog with specific business rules, PrestaShop remains a common option, especially in France. The choice comes down to product volume, integrations with your management software and the maintenance budget you're willing to accept.
If your site already runs on WordPress and mainly lacks visibility, our WordPress SEO service may be enough.SEO, accessibility and speed planned from the design stage
Catching up on SEO for a site that's already live always costs more than building it into the project. Every page we design gets a target phrase, a title and description written for it, a logical heading hierarchy and links to related pages. Structured data, the XML sitemap and redirects are ready on launch day. Once the site is live, our SEO agency can take over to help it grow.
Accessibility follows the same logic. We follow the WCAG guidelines at level AA, the international standard published by the W3C: readable contrast, full keyboard navigation, alt text on images, properly labeled form fields. Since June 28, 2025, the European Accessibility Act has applied to online stores, excluding microenterprises; for an ecommerce site selling in the EU, it goes into the project brief from the start.
Speed is checked before launch with Lighthouse, then on the live site with PageSpeed Insights, the only one that shows Core Web Vitals measured from your real visitors: compressed images, lighter fonts, third-party scripts kept to what's necessary. Then there's how answer engines read the site. Clean pages that answer a question precisely are more likely to be picked up by ChatGPT or Perplexity, work handled by our GEO agency.
How much does a website cost?
Two sites that look alike on screen can hide vastly different amounts of work. We price every project by quote, item by item, after an initial conversation. Here are the six factors that weigh the most.
- The number of pages and templates: a homepage, a few service pages and a form aren't the same job as a store with hundreds of products.
- Copywriting: copy you provide, reworked for the web, or written entirely by our writers.
- Design: adapting an existing theme or a visual identity created for you.
- Features: online booking, customer accounts, payments, integration with management software.
- Languages: each version requires its own copy and its own keywords.
- Migrating existing content: transferring content and old URLs.
On top of the build, there are recurring costs worth knowing up front: domain name, hosting or CMS subscription, plugin licenses and, if you want it, maintenance. The quote lists them separately.
How to choose a web design agency
Comparing agencies on their portfolios alone isn't enough: a portfolio shows a result, not how it was achieved. A few questions asked before signing tell you more.
- Is the project brief in writing, with a timeline and a list of what's included and excluded?
- Who owns the domain name, the code, the copy and access to hosting?
- Is SEO part of the design, or is it an add-on once the site is finished?
- Who trains your team, and who steps in if a bug appears after launch?
- Are annual costs disclosed in the quote?
- Could you hand the site over to another provider without rebuilding everything?
Our answers fit in a few lines. The domain name and accounts are registered in your name, the code and content are handed over at delivery (on Shopify, the theme and data can be exported, but the site stays hosted by the platform), and the site can be edited by any professional who knows the chosen CMS. SEO is part of every stage, training is included and the project brief spells out in black and white what's included. If your current site mainly suffers from a lack of visibility, an SEO audit may show that a full redesign isn't necessary.
Our services in detail
Your questions: Website design services
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Web agency or freelancer: which should you choose?
A freelancer works for a simple site, when one person can handle both design and development. An agency brings several skills together, design, copywriting, development and SEO, and ensures continuity if someone is unavailable. The choice depends on the size of the project and the support you expect after launch.
How long does a new website take?
Plan on a few weeks for a business website whose copy is ready, and several months for a store or a multilingual site, to allow time to load the catalog or write each version. The project brief sets a date for each stage.
What's the difference between a design agency and a development company?
The first imagines how the site looks and how visitors move through it; the second writes the code and makes it work. A web agency covers both, which avoids mockups that can't be built as well as sites that are solid but frustrating to use.
Will my site work on mobile?
Yes. Mockups are designed for mobile as much as for desktop, and testing covers several screen sizes. Google crawls and indexes pages with its mobile crawler anyway: what the phone doesn't display isn't taken into account.
Who writes the website copy?
It's up to you. You give us your copy and we adapt it for the web and for SEO, or we write it based on an interview with you. Either way, every page is submitted to you before it goes live.
Do you provide technical support after the site launches?
Yes, if you'd like: software updates, regular backups, security monitoring and small edits. Once trained, you can also manage the site on your own.