Most web designers build you a site for a business that is open twelve months a year. Up here that is not the job. I am Sean Swanson, I build in Brainerd, and I build for the season you actually have.
Rust is your season. Gold is when people plan and book it. Notice that the booking months and the earning months barely overlap. A site that goes quiet in February is missing the half of the year where the decisions get made.
None of these are opinions about design. They are things that cost lakes area businesses actual bookings every year.
Somebody looks you up in January to plan a July trip. Your site still says "See you Memorial Day" from last spring, or the hours block shows closed. They assume you are gone and book the place down the road. Your off season page has a job, and it is not hibernating.
Hours shift with the weather. A guide cancels. The kitchen closes Tuesdays in September. If updating that means emailing a designer and waiting two days, you stop bothering, and the site drifts out of date until it is actively misleading people.
Your customer is on a dock, or in a car on 371, or on a lake with two bars. A heavy page that takes eight seconds has already lost them. Every site I build is hand coded and loads in about a second on a bad connection, because that is the connection they actually have.
$40 an hour, times the hours the job takes. No packages, no discovery call you have to sit through first, and a fixed price in writing before any work starts.
Phone, or coffee if you are close. What you run, when your season is, and what the site has to do in July versus February. Free, and I will tell you if you do not need me.
Your photos, your services, your prices. Not a stock mockup with a lake stock photo dropped in. You see the actual site before you commit.
Plain English. "The booking button needs to be higher" is a perfect instruction. We go back and forth until it is right.
Domain, hosting and the certificate, all handled. Then I show you how to change your own hours, because in July you will not want to wait on me.
What an absolute pleasure to have my website done. It was fast, easy, efficient and cost effective. Sean was always right on top of things and replied to my questions almost immediately. I would definitely recommend him to anyone who is interested in this type of service. 5 stars for sure.
If you start early enough, yes. A one page site takes about a week once I have your content, and five pages takes one to two weeks. The problem is never the build, it is that people call me the week before Memorial Day. Book in March or April and it is comfortable.
Stay up, stay honest and keep taking next season's bookings. A surprising share of summer trips get planned in January and February. If your site reads as abandoned in the winter, you are handing that planning traffic to whoever kept theirs current.
Practically that means dated seasonal messaging, an obvious way to enquire year round, and hours you can change yourself in thirty seconds.
Honestly, sometimes not. If you are fully booked on repeat customers and not trying to grow, a Google Business Profile and a Facebook page may be enough, and both are free. I would rather tell you that than take $350 off you.
It is worth it when you are trying to reach people who have never heard of you, or when you are competing with resorts that look more established online than they are in person.
Yes, and I will show you how before I hand it over. That matters more here than almost anywhere, because your hours genuinely move with the weather and the fish.
The build is a one off. The $79 care plan afterward is optional, and it covers hosting, maintenance and three hours of edits. Plenty of people take it for the season and think about it again in November.
Either way you get the source code, so you are not renting the design and you can leave whenever you want.
I am based in Brainerd and most of my clients are within about forty minutes: Nisswa, Pequot Lakes, Crosslake, Breezy Point, Gull Lake, Crosby and Deerwood. The work happens over email and calls, so further out does not change the price.
Tell me what you run and when you open. You get an itemized estimate within 24 hours, free, whether or not you hire me.
