Design & Build

Custom Web Design & Development

Cibbster Designs builds custom websites for small businesses, contractors and service companies in Lapeer County, Michigan and nationwide. Every site is hand-coded rather than assembled from a page builder, which keeps pages light, fast and fully under your control. A typical build covers strategy, design, development, accessibility, on-page SEO and launch, and takes four to eight weeks depending on page count. Builds start at $4,500 for a five-to-eight page business site, or $1,800 for a single-page or landing site, and rise with scope from there.

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Starting from $4,500

The problem this solves

Most small-business websites lose leads for the same three reasons: they load slowly on phones, they bury the phone number and contact form, and they look like every other template in the industry. Visitors leave before they ever see what you do.

Scope

What's included

Everything below is part of the engagement. Where something is genuinely optional, we say so in the quote rather than discovering it later.

  • Discovery & strategy session

    We map your services, your best-fit customers, and the exact actions you want visitors to take before a single pixel is designed.

  • Custom visual design

    A layout built around your brand and your offer — not a stock theme with your logo dropped in the corner.

  • Hand-coded front end

    Semantic HTML, modern CSS and vanilla JavaScript. No page builder and no forty plugins to keep patched.

  • Mobile-first responsive build

    Designed for the phone first, because that is where most local service searches happen, then scaled up to tablet and desktop.

  • On-page SEO foundation

    Title tags, meta descriptions, heading hierarchy, structured data, internal linking and an XML sitemap configured before launch.

  • WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility

    Keyboard navigation, screen-reader landmarks, colour contrast and focus states built in from the start rather than patched afterwards.

  • Lead capture & spam protection

    Contact forms that actually reach your inbox, with CSRF protection, honeypots and server-side validation.

  • Launch, redirects & handover

    DNS cutover, 301 redirects from your old URLs so you keep your rankings, and a walkthrough so you know how everything works.

How It Works

The process

  1. Discovery

    A working session to understand your services, your market and your competitors. You get a written scope with fixed deliverables.

  2. Design

    Page layouts for every unique template. You review and request changes before any code is written.

  3. Build

    Development on a private staging URL you can watch progress on. Weekly check-ins, no silence for a month.

  4. Test

    Cross-browser, cross-device, Lighthouse performance, and an accessibility pass with real keyboard and screen-reader testing.

  5. Launch

    Go-live with redirects mapped, analytics connected, Search Console verified and a sitemap submitted.

Questions

Web Design & Development FAQs

How much does a custom website cost?

Cibbster Designs builds start at $4,500 for a five-to-eight page site for a local service business. The figure rises with page count, custom functionality, integrations and whether you need content written — there is no published ceiling because a large or complex site genuinely can cost a multiple of the starting figure. You get a fixed written quote after discovery, and once it is written it does not move unless you change the scope.

I only need one page. Do I have to pay the full $4,500?

No. That figure describes a five-to-eight page business site, and it is a starting price, not a minimum we enforce. A single-page site or a landing page — one page, hand-coded, accessible, with a working contact form and the same SEO and schema foundation — starts at $1,800. If your project is smaller than the published figures, say so rather than assuming you are priced out; small jobs get quoted as small jobs.

How long does it take to build a website?

Four to eight weeks for a standard business site. The largest variable is how quickly content, photos and feedback come back from your side — projects that stall almost always stall on content, not code.

Do you use WordPress?

Only when a client genuinely needs it. WordPress is a good fit if non-technical staff will publish content weekly. For a brochure or lead-generation site, a hand-coded build is faster, cheaper to maintain and has far less security surface. We recommend based on your situation rather than defaulting to one tool.

Will I be able to edit the site myself?

Yes, if you want to. We can add a lightweight content management system for the sections that actually change — services, staff, projects, blog posts — while leaving the structural code alone.

Do I own the website when it is finished?

If you commissioned the build as its own project and paid for it, yes — the custom code, the design and the content transfer to you on final payment, and nothing stops you moving the site elsewhere. If the site was instead provided as part of an ongoing plan, we retain it and you hold a licence to use it for as long as that plan runs. Your domain, your content and your data are yours in either case. We tell you which arrangement you are in before you sign, not afterwards.

Works Well With

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the work of making your business the answer Google returns when a nearby customer searches for what you sell. For local service businesses that means three things: a properly optimised Google Business Profile, a technically clean website with correct structured data, and genuinely useful pages targeting the terms your customers actually type. Cibbster Designs handles all three, and increasingly optimises for AI answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews as well.

Local SEO • Schema Markup • AI Search

ADA Compliance & Accessibility Audits

ADA website compliance means your site can be used by people with disabilities — including those navigating by keyboard, screen reader, magnification or voice control. In practice, compliance is measured against WCAG 2.2 Level AA, the standard US courts and the Department of Justice reference. Cibbster Designs performs manual accessibility audits, remediates the failures, and documents the result in an accessibility statement. Automated scanners catch only a minority of real issues, so every audit we run includes hands-on keyboard and screen-reader testing.

WCAG 2.2 AA • Manual Testing • Remediation

Hosting & Maintenance

Managed hosting means somebody other than you is responsible for keeping the website online, patched, backed up and fast. Cibbster Designs hosts client sites on hardened cloud infrastructure with daily off-site backups, uptime monitoring, automatic SSL renewal and monthly security patching. Plans start at $149 per month, and unlike commodity shared hosting, when something breaks you reach the person who built your site.

Cloud Hosting • Daily Backups • 24/7 Monitoring
Ready to scale?

Ready to talk about web design & development?

Tell us where you are now and what you need to happen. We will come back with scope, timeline and a fixed price — usually within two business days.

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