Services

Small Madison businesses should be able to take their website for granted.

When the site is built right, stable, performant, and self-sufficient enough that it doesn’t pull you away from your actual work.

Most people who find me aren’t looking for an agency. They have a website that’s broken, expensive to change, or just isn’t theirs anymore, and they want one person who treats it like it matters. That’s what I do. I build it, I get it running, and if you want to run it yourself, I’ll show you how. I’m in Madison; the web doesn’t care where either of us sits, so I take on people beyond it too.

How I work

Two ideas shape every Gibsonworks engagement. I name them so they’re easier to talk about, not because they’re trademarked or sold separately.

The Usability Triangle.

I treat accessibility, user experience, and build as one discipline, not three separate passes. I build accessibly from day one: no contrast failures I could have caught, no controls you can’t reach by keyboard. That floor is included. A full WCAG 2.1 AA audit, and the remediation to pass it, is a separate engagement; so is keeping a site accessible once other people are adding content and choosing colors.

The Self-Sufficient Site.

Knowledge transfer is part of the deliverable. I train you and document the parts you can reasonably run yourself, so billable hours go to work that genuinely needs a developer. Nobody should be paying me an hourly rate to update a popup.

What I take on

Start with a diagnostic.

Not every project needs a quote on day one. When the starting situation isn’t clear, a short fixed-scope diagnostic gives both of us an honest read before anyone commits to a bigger plan.

• Site Triage. A few hours of investigation: what platform you’re on, what’s installed, who owns the domain and hosting and DNS, where accessibility and performance currently stand, and a plain-language summary with a recommended next step. The honest precursor to a migration, rescue, audit, or build when the picture is murky.
• Accessibility audit. A WCAG 2.1 AA read on an existing site. I run a multi-lane process (automated scanning, AI-assisted review, manual human review; the Usability Triangle in action) and hand you a plain-language report with a prioritized fix list. It also measures the contrast of text sitting over photos and gradients, the one case axe, WAVE, and Lighthouse all hand back as “needs manual review.” Mine measures it. Remediation is quoted separately, once we both know what’s there.
• Technical SEO audit. A technical read of whether search engines and AI crawlers can even reach, read, and index your site: crawlability, indexing, valid structured data, broken links, and whether the AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and the rest) are allowed to see you at all. This one reads whether the foundation lets you rank; the ranking audit reads how you show up. A prioritized fix list, in plain language.
• GEO/SEO ranking audit. A six-part read on how your site shows up in traditional search and in AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews): the questions your buyers are asking, where your site answers them and where it doesn’t, and a roadmap of what to write and where. The roadmap is the deliverable; the writing stays yours or your writer’s. I don’t write content.

The Whole Picture. When the stakes are higher, an RFP, a grant requirement, legal exposure, or a rebuild where the whole site has to be on the table first, I run all three audits together, accessibility, technical SEO, and ranking, and add the part you only get that way: the synthesis. One prioritized view of the entire site that shows where a single fix clears more than one problem (the cleanest example is structured data, where one change serves both technical SEO and AI search). It’s its own product, not three audits at a discount; the synthesis only exists when the lanes run side by side.

Build, move, or sell.

The main work: building a new site, moving an existing one to WordPress, or running a small online store. I build accessibly by default, never bolted on at the end. A formal WCAG 2.1 AA audit and the remediation to pass it is separate work you can add.

• Site builds and redesigns. Custom WordPress on the block editor, with a content model you can actually use. No page builder fighting you every time you want to change a phone number.
• Migrations and rescues. Stuck on a platform that charges for every edit, or a builder nobody supports anymore? I move sites to WordPress and hand you the keys. Craft, Joomla, Squarespace, an old theme from 2014; I’ve moved them all.
• WooCommerce. Online stores for small shops: products, checkout, and the seasonal rush that has to work on the busy day. Built so you can run the day-to-day without calling me first.

Stick around.

When something breaks or needs changing later, you’re not starting over with a stranger. I keep working with the sites I build, and the relationship lasts because clients want it to, not because they’re locked in. This is the Self-Sufficient Site in practice: you should own and operate your site, not rent it from me.

• Ongoing support. Hourly when you need an occasional fix or a small change you’d rather hand off. A custom monthly arrangement is available when ongoing capacity is the right fit for both of us. I don’t bill for an edit you could make yourself; I do bill for the time spent walking you through how to make it, because the walkthrough is the actual deliverable when knowledge transfer is the point. No on-call coverage, no emergency response, no after-hours work; my practice is part-time, and response is within one business day.

How it works

1. Tell me what’s wrong, or what you want.
2. I come back with a quote and a plan, in plain language.
3. I make it work, and I teach you how to keep it that way.

What it costs

I keep most projects small, on purpose. That’s what fits my time and the budgets of the people I usually work for. The honest first step is a short note about what you’re working on; I’ll tell you what it would take.

Nonprofits

A lot of my nonprofit work comes through DANEnet, a Madison organization that provides technology support to nonprofits. If you’re already a DANEnet client, that’s the path. If you’re not, you’re welcome to come to me directly.

Common questions

Working on something?

Send a short note. I read each and every one.