How we work
How a VCweb engagement actually runs
Five stages, each with a duration, a named owner and a list of things you receive at the end of it. This page is the same document we walk through on the first call, so you can decide whether you like the way we work before you spend anything.
Why it is structured this way
Fixed scope is a protection, not a formality
Most bad agency experiences trace back to the same root cause: nobody wrote down what "done" meant. Work starts on enthusiasm, the brief drifts, and three months later there are two reasonable people disagreeing in good faith about whether a booking system was ever part of the deal. Neither of them is lying. The scope simply never existed in a form you could point at.
So we spend the first two weeks producing something you can point at. The audit says what is wrong. The scope says what we will build, what we will not build, what each milestone costs, and what has to be true for a stage to count as accepted. Fees and acceptance criteria are fixed in writing before design starts. After that, the only way the number moves is a change order you sign.
The trade-off is real and worth stating plainly. Fixed scope means the discovery stage is slower and more demanding than "send us your logo and we'll get going". You will answer questions about margin, about which services you actually want more of, and about who your best customers are. That is deliberate. Every hour spent there removes a week of rework later.
What is fixed and what is not
- Fixed: the fee, the milestone schedule, the page count, the integrations listed in the scope, and the acceptance criteria for each stage.
- Fixed: the quality bar — Core Web Vitals, WCAG 2.2 AA testing, cross-browser rendering and analytics setup are in every build, not upsells.
- Flexible: what goes inside the pages. Copy, layout and priority order can change through the revision rounds without touching the contract.
- Requires a change order: new pages, new integrations, a platform change, or functionality nobody scoped.
Post-launch support runs 30, 60 or 90 days depending on the package, and covers fixes, tweaks and questions rather than new features. Which window applies to you.
The five stages
From first call to monthly reporting
Durations below are typical for a Growth-sized build. Starter projects compress the middle stages; e-commerce and custom work extend them. Whichever applies, you get the same deliverables at the same checkpoints.
Week 1
Discovery & audit
We start with your numbers, not our opinions. We review analytics, Search Console, ad accounts and the current site, interview whoever owns sales, and map how enquiries actually reach you today. You get a written audit listing what is losing you leads, ranked by impact and effort — yours to keep whether or not you hire us.
What you get
- Written audit document
- Keyword and competitor map
- Prioritised opportunity list
Week 1–2
Strategy & scope
The audit becomes a scope: page architecture, the conversion path for each audience, technical requirements, integrations and success metrics. Fees, milestones and acceptance criteria are fixed in writing before design starts, so there is no moving target and no surprise invoice.
What you get
- Sitemap and page briefs
- Fixed-scope proposal
- Agreed KPIs and reporting plan
Week 2–4
Design & copy
We design the pages that carry the most commercial weight first — usually home, the top service page and the contact path. You review real content in a real layout, not lorem ipsum. Two structured revision rounds are included, and we design mobile alongside desktop rather than after it.
What you get
- High-fidelity page designs
- Conversion-focused copy
- Component and style guide
Week 4–7
Build & QA
Clean semantic HTML, sensible CSS and only the JavaScript a page actually needs. Before launch every template goes through the same checklist: Core Web Vitals, keyboard and screen-reader accessibility, cross-browser rendering, form delivery, analytics and conversion tracking, redirects and structured data.
What you get
- Staging site for sign-off
- QA and accessibility checklist
- Analytics and tracking setup
Week 7+
Launch, measure, iterate
We launch with redirect mapping and post-launch monitoring, then report against the KPIs agreed in step two. Monthly reporting shows what changed, what it produced and what we recommend next — in plain language, with the raw dashboards open to you at all times.
What you get
- Redirect map and launch checklist
- Monthly performance report
- Rolling optimisation backlog
Stage five never really ends — it becomes the reporting rhythm of an SEO or Google Ads programme, or the quieter cadence of a Website Care plan. See how we report on it →
Your side of it
What we need from you
We can control our own throughput. We cannot control yours, and client delay is the single most common reason a launch date slips. It is almost never a lack of goodwill — it is that nobody budgeted the hours.
Content, or a decision about who writes it
Photography, service descriptions, staff details, pricing you are willing to publish, certifications and licence numbers. On Growth and Custom builds we write the conversion copy for key pages, but we cannot invent your service area, your warranty terms or the three things your best customers always ask. If content is coming from your side, agree the deadline in stage two and treat it like any other supplier commitment.
Feedback inside the review window
Each design and build milestone has a review window written into the schedule, usually three to five business days. Consolidated feedback inside that window keeps the sequence intact. Feedback that arrives two weeks later arrives after the next stage has been built on top of it, and unpicking that costs more than the original change did.
One decision-maker
Gather opinions from as many people as you like, then send us one set of instructions from one person with the authority to say yes. Projects that stall almost always have three stakeholders sending contradictory notes directly, each assuming theirs is the final word. We will ask on the first call who that person is, and we will keep asking if the answer changes.
Access to accounts
Domain registrar, current hosting, Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Business Profile, ad accounts and any CRM in the loop. All of it stays in your name — we are added as managers and removed when you say so. Missing registrar access in particular can hold a launch for days while somebody hunts down the person who bought the domain in 2014.
How we handle a slipping date. If something on your side is at risk of moving the launch, we tell you in the week it happens, not in the week of launch. You get the revised date and what it would take to recover the original one. Nobody benefits from a schedule everyone privately knows is fiction.
Time to budget, honestly
- Discovery call and interview: around 90 minutes, once.
- Scope review: an hour of reading, plus a call to work through it.
- Design reviews: two rounds, roughly an hour each including collecting internal opinions.
- Content handover: the big one. Assume half a day if we are writing, considerably more if you are.
- Staging sign-off: an hour clicking through the site properly, on a phone as well as a laptop.
- Monthly reporting call: 30 to 45 minutes once you are in an ongoing programme.
That is the whole ask. Roughly a day and a half of your attention spread across two months, front-loaded into the first fortnight. More questions answered here.
People, not a queue
Who you work with
The people on the first call are the people who do the work. Your Account and Strategy Lead owns the outcome from discovery through reporting and pulls in specialists as each stage needs them — nothing is handed off to an unnamed junior once the contract is signed, and nothing is resold to a third-party production shop.
Account & Strategy Lead
Owns the outcome
Your single point of contact from the first call onward. Runs discovery, writes the scope, sets the KPIs and presents every monthly report. Nothing gets handed off to an unnamed junior after the contract is signed.
Lead Web Engineer
Build & performance
Responsible for semantic markup, Core Web Vitals, accessibility conformance and the technical QA checklist that every template passes before launch.
SEO Strategist
Organic growth
Handles technical audits, search-intent research, information architecture, structured data and the editorial calendar. Reviews every article for factual accuracy before publication.
Paid Media Manager
Google Ads & paid social
Builds and manages campaigns inside accounts you own, sets bidding strategy against agreed CPA targets, and keeps search-term and negative keyword hygiene under active review.
UX & Conversion Designer
Design & CRO
Maps customer journeys, designs the page hierarchy and calls to action, and runs post-launch experiments on the pages that carry the most commercial weight.
Support & Hosting Engineer
Uptime & care plans
Runs the managed hosting stack: monitoring, patching, backups with tested restores, and the response SLA on every Website Care plan.
The awkward part
What happens if something goes wrong
Every agency page describes the happy path. The useful question is what the contract says on the day you and we disagree — so here it is, before you sign rather than after.
Change orders
If you want something the scope does not cover, we quote it as a written change order: the work, the fee, and the effect on the schedule. You approve it or you do not, and if you do not, the original plan continues unchanged. We do not start work on a verbal "can you just" and invoice for it later.
Small things inside the spirit of the scope — a swapped image, a rewritten paragraph, a reordered section — are simply done. We are not running a meter on you.
Scope disputes
When there is genuine disagreement about whether something was included, we go back to the scope document and read what it says, because that is exactly what it was written for. If the wording is ambiguous, the ambiguity is our fault — we wrote it — and we absorb the work.
If it plainly sits outside the scope, we will say so, explain why, and quote it. Either way you get a straight answer in writing rather than a softened one on a call.
Something we got wrong
Defects against the agreed acceptance criteria are fixed at our cost, whenever they surface. That includes performance regressions, accessibility failures against WCAG 2.2 AA, broken forms and tracking that stopped reporting — the things a QA pass is supposed to catch.
During the post-launch support window this is simply support. After it, a genuine defect in what we delivered is still a defect, not a billable ticket.
The escalation path
Raise it with your Account and Strategy Lead first — by email if you want it on the record, which we would recommend. They are the person accountable for the engagement and in most cases the fastest route to a resolution, because they can change the plan without asking anyone.
If that does not resolve it, ask for it to be escalated to the agency principal. You will get an acknowledgement within one business day and a written position, including what we will do and by when. If we were wrong we will say we were wrong.
If a programme is not earning its keep, the exit is deliberately undramatic. SEO carries a three-month minimum because meaningful movement is not achievable faster, then runs month to month. Google Ads management and Website Care have no lock-in. Project work is billed against completed milestones, so stopping mid-engagement means paying for what was delivered, not for the whole contract.
You keep your accounts, in every scenario. Domain, hosting, Google Ads, Analytics, Search Console and Business Profile are in accounts you own with you as the primary administrator. If you leave, we remove our access and nothing moves. There is no version of a disagreement with us where you lose your data or your site files.
Where we are
214 Commerce St, Suite 300
Dallas, TX 75201, United States
Accessibility conformance is part of the acceptance criteria on every build — our accessibility statement sets out what we test and how to report a barrier. For anything else, the contact page reaches the same people.
See the process applied to your business
Stage one is the free written audit — your numbers, your search visibility, your ad account, and a ranked list of what to fix first. You keep it whether or not you hire us, including the parts that say the work is not worth doing.
- A written audit of your site, SEO and ad account
- A prioritised list of fixes, ranked by impact
- Transparent pricing before any commitment
- No obligation and no sales pressure
Replies within one business day, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Central Time.