We look. We build. You own it.
Three steps, in that order, and none of them happen without you saying yes to that exact thing first. Here is the whole of it, including the parts most people would rather you did not read.
Step one
We look, before anybody builds anything
The first conversation is nine questions and we ask them one at a time, because stacked questions get one answer and the rest are lost.
None of it costs you anything and none of it commits you to anything. We do not quote on the first call. A produce stand and a construction outfit are not the same work, and a number given before we have looked is a number somebody is going to be unhappy about later.
We also read your current site from the outside, which needs no password from you at all.
The nine questions
1. What is your web address?
2. Who built the site, who do you pay every month, and how much?
3. What can you not do on your own site today that you wish you could?
4. Is your email at the same domain name as your website, or a different one?
5. Does anybody log in to your website, or buy anything through it?
6. Who at your company would keep the site up to date? A name, not a department.
7. Do you still have the original photographs from your jobs, and where are they?
8. Who registered the domain name, and who has that login today?
9. Is there anything on the site that has to stay exactly the way it is?
Question eight is the one that decides things. If nobody knows who holds the domain name, that hunt starts before anything else does, and it is the single most common reason a job like this stalls.
Before a single hour is billed
Twelve things have to be true
Every line has to be yes before work begins. One no and the job does not start. A no is not a refusal, it is a list of what to go and get, and usually it is you who has to get it.
- Domain ownership confirmed
- Registrar access confirmed
- Where your DNS actually lives, confirmed
- Email provider identified, and whether it runs on the website domain
- Current site backed up, including a full record of the DNS
- You have authorized us in writing to make changes
- Maintenance person identified by name
- Required photographs available
- Content ownership established, including any photo showing somebody else
- Third party integrations identified
- Scope agreed, and confirmed as work we accept
- The hourly rate and weekly invoicing acknowledged in writing
And it gets repeated on the morning of the switchover, in short form. Backup current, authorization in hand, rollback written down. Then we go.
Step two
We build, and nothing moves without your say so
No change to your DNS, your domain settings, your email, your analytics, your form routing or your live site happens until you have authorized that specific change in writing.
An email is enough. A phone call is not, because a phone call is what two people remember differently afterwards. The same rule covers deleting anything at all, a page, a photograph, a blog post, a record or an account.
Nothing gets signed at your kitchen table. No unexplained paperwork ever appears. Before the first hour of work you get the scope, the rate, the weekly invoicing and short written terms, in plain words, and you say yes in writing. An email is fine, and that email is the record.
Every authorization names four things
- What is being changed, in plain words
- The date and the window it happens in
- What downtime to expect, if any
- What the rollback is, and how long it takes
While we are in your accounts
Your name is on every key, the whole way through
Some of this work is done sitting with you and some of it is done from here. Either way the rule is the same: every account is opened in your name, and you get a copy of every login and password as it is made, so nothing exists in your name that you cannot see.
How we get in
Where a service takes a second user, such as Bing Webmaster Tools or Apple Business Connect, we work under our own user on your account and come off it at sign-off. Everywhere else the account is opened in your name in the setup session, with our address on it while the site is being built.
We hold the login while the site is being built, and you get a copy of it the moment it is made. That is what lets the work happen without you being called for a code several times a day. At sign-off you change it to something we never see.
Two factor sits with us while we build, which is the whole reason a job can run from here without interrupting your day. The backup codes are handed to you at sign-off and two factor moves to your phone the same hour. Nothing about it is hidden from you: you hold a copy of every login from the day it is made, and at sign-off every one of them changes to something we never see.
How you get us out
The last thing we do together, with you driving:
- You change the password, to something we never see.
- You sign out every other device. Nearly every account has that button, and it matters, because changing a password on its own does not always end a session somebody already has open.
- You set the recovery email and phone to yours, not ours and not the last fellow’s.
- We try to log in while you watch, and fail. That is the proof, and it takes about ten seconds.
We do not email you a list and hope. If we send instructions and you get busy, we are still holding a key to your business, and that is exactly the thing we warn you about in other people. So it happens on the call, with us. If you would rather leave things as they are for now, that is your call, and we write down what you chose and the date you chose it.
The rest of it, no exceptions
- No password, key, recovery code or account number is ever written into a document, a help file, a text or an email.
- Two factor authentication is switched on before the account is used for anything real.
- At sign-off the recovery email and phone are yours. Never the previous vendor’s, and never ours once the job is signed off.
- The backup codes are held for the build and handed to you at sign-off, with the steps for moving two factor to your own phone.
- Any key or token we were given for the job is deleted at handover, because those keep working after a password changes.
One thing we look for every time. A previous vendor’s email or phone number still sitting on your account as a recovery contact is a password reset back door into your business. We tell you plainly if we find one and we get it changed. That check is free and it happens whether you hire us or not.
Step three
You own it, and we go home
The last hour of the job is the handover. We sit with the person you named back in question six and we show them how to change the things that change. Prices, hours, a phone number, a photograph.
Then, if you want sign-off that day, you take control with us still on the call, using the four steps above. We try to log back in, fail, and that is the job finished.
After that there is no retainer and nothing charged for being on call. If you want us back, you call and it is billed at the same hourly rate, and there is no free first call. If you would rather have us regularly, you buy hours ahead. Either way you are paying for work done, never for us standing by.
That is what makes the ownership real, because a service you cannot leave is not ownership, whatever the paperwork says.
Start with the first call
Nine questions, no price, no commitment, and you decide nothing that day. Nothing gets signed at a kitchen table.