Getting found is half the job
Search brings someone to the door. It has nothing to say about what they find once they walk through it. Two businesses can sit next to each other in the same search results and one of them wins nearly every time, for reasons that have nothing to do with keywords.
That is the part that gets left out of most conversations about websites. Ranking is measurable, so it gets all the attention. What happens after the click is harder to put a number on, which does not make it less important. It makes it easier to ignore.
Some of them met you
last Tuesday
Search is one way in. It is not the only one, and for most local businesses it is not even the biggest one.
You hand someone a card at a mixer. A customer texts your name to a friend who needs the same work done. Somebody hears about you on a job site. Every one of those people goes straight to your site with your name already in their head. They are not comparing you to ten search results. They are checking whether you are the real thing.
Nothing about search touches that moment. Those people were already on their way to you. The only question is what they find when they get there.
THE MOMENT IT HAPPENS
Ten seconds, one hand, half their attention
Your card sits on their counter all afternoon. That night, phone in hand, TV going in the background, they finally look you up.
Ten seconds later they have decided something about you, and it is not based on anything they read. It comes from whether the site looks current, whether anybody seems to have touched it lately, and whether you are likely to be good at the thing they need.
Try it on your own site. Open it on your phone, look for ten seconds, then close it and write down what you remember. That is the version of you most people meet.
Found and chosen
Your website has two jobs
They are not the same work, and being good at one does nothing for the other.
decent is everywhere · sharp is rare
Everyone’s site is decent now
Phone cameras got good enough that everyone takes a decent photo. Photographers did not disappear. A decent photo just stopped being worth paying for.
The design tools went the same way. We use them every day and they are genuinely good. Good enough that anyone can produce a decent page now. Which is exactly why decent stopped setting anybody apart.
What is left is the part the tools do not hand you. Knowing why the decent version is still not sharp. Knowing which direction is worth chasing. Knowing when to stop. That is the part that took us 25 years and is not something anybody can learn in a weekend.
WHAT DESIGN COVERS
Design is not just the website
Most of what we do starts with a site, but the eye does not stop at the browser. If it carries your name on it, it is design work.
Websites
Custom builds and redesigns. Mobile first, accessible, fast, and built so the search foundation is already correct on day one.
Brand and identity
Logos, color, type, and the rules that keep it consistent once it is out in the world. Voice and messaging when the words need to match the look.
Print and marketing pieces
Flyers, one sheets, cards, signage, merch. The things that get handed to someone in person and have to hold up in their hand.
Product and interface
App and web app design, internal tools, dashboards, user flows. The work Craig did at Intuit and the work David did across state systems, at whatever scale you need it.
Art direction
Sometimes what you need is not a deliverable. It is someone with an eye telling you which of three versions is right and why, before you spend money building the wrong one.
See the full scope of services.
We come from the design side
Craig and David Goebel. Brothers, over 25 years, design first the whole way.
Craig led TurboTax.com, built the first mobile version of TurboTax and cut support calls by 41 percent, and designed an intranet for more than 40,000 people that landed in a Nielsen top ten. David led an award winning redesign of CA.gov, ran WordPress across more than 75 state sites, and scaled an e-commerce business from a Kickstarter to over $10M in sales.
For most of those years the job ended at the spec. We designed it, handed it to a development team, and hoped. That is not how it works anymore. We take it from the first idea to the live site ourselves, which means nothing gets lost on the way and nobody has to talk us out of the version that was actually right.
Craig
David
Questions we get
Do you do design or SEO?
Both, and we would rather not sell them separately. Nearly everyone who calls asks for both anyway, usually in the same sentence. The search foundation is part of building the site, not a monthly add on.
Do you take on design work that is not a website?
Yes. Logos, flyers, one sheets, signage, merch, and interface work for apps and internal tools. Print and web have different rules and we have been doing both long enough to know where they diverge.
My site already ranks well. Does design still matter?
More, if anything. Ranking well means more people are arriving. Every one of them still forms an impression in the first few seconds, and a dated site turns good traffic into a phone that does not ring.
How do I know if my site looks outdated?
Some of it you can spot yourself. Stock photos of people who never worked there, a slider nobody scrolls past, a copyright year that stopped a while back. Our Online Presence Review handles the rest.
Do you use AI tools?
Every day, and we are not quiet about it. They let two people do the work of a much larger shop. They also make the design eye worth more, not less, because everyone can make something decent now.
Can you fix what I have, or does it need to start over?
Often we can fix it. Sometimes starting over costs less than repairing a shaky foundation. We will tell you which, including when the honest answer is that your site is fine and the money belongs elsewhere.
