The 5-Week Lead Engine
Five weeks, and you are in four hours of them.
A kickoff questionnaire, written notes at the wireframe and design stages, and an hour on photos and handover, all of it on your own schedule. That is the whole ask, and it is the only thing on your side that can move the timeline. If a week slips on our side, it comes off the invoice.
01
Week one
We find out what you actually sell
The kickoff questionnaire asks what your best job of last year looked like, what your worst lead looked like, and which calls you wish you got more of. Then we go and find every search a homeowner in your counties is actually typing, and which of your competitors is already answering them.
We need from you: About an hour on the kickoff questionnaire
You end the week with
- The page list, agreed before anyone builds anything
- The searches worth ranking for, with current competition
- A fixed scope and a fixed number, both signed
02
Week two
The words come before the layout
Every page gets written first. Headlines, service copy, and the forty questions your office manager answers every week. Nothing gets designed around placeholder text, because a layout built for lorem ipsum falls apart the moment real sentences arrive.
We need from you: 45 minutes of notes on the pages
You end the week with
- Every page written and yours to edit
- The specific job-site photos we need from you
- The FAQ, drawn from questions you actually get asked
03
Week three
Design, on a phone first
You see the real pages, with the real words in them, on a phone before you see them anywhere else. Desktop comes second because your customers do not start there. Two rounds of revision are included, and because the words were signed off in week two, they get spent on design rather than rewrites.
We need from you: 45 minutes of notes on the design
You end the week with
- Mobile design for every page template
- Desktop design for every page template
- Two rounds of revision, included
04
Week four
Build, and the measurement goes in
The site gets built, and the tracking gets wired in: a dedicated call tracking number, form attribution on every form, analytics, and the Google Business Profile connected properly. This is the quiet week that makes month twelve provable.
We need from you: Nothing. Go and run your business.
You end the week with
- Call tracking number, live and logging by source page
- Form attribution on every form on the site
- Core Web Vitals verified on a real phone, not an emulator
05
Week five
Launch, watch, hand over
We go live, then sit on it for a week watching what real people actually do and fixing what the design got wrong about them. Then we hand over every login you own, which is all of them.
We need from you: One hour on photos and handover
You end the week with
- Live site, with a week of post-launch fixes included
- Handover of domain, hosting, code, analytics and tracking
- The first Signal report scheduled
Porch Light runs the same shape compressed into 2 weeks; Beacon stretches to 8 weeks. The five weeks above describe Flood Light, the middle tier and the one this process was built around.
The rules
Four things we will not renegotiate mid-build.
Written down because a published price list is only worth something if the things that could quietly undo it are published too.
The price does not move once it is agreed
The scope is fixed at the end of week one and so is the number on the invoice. If we underestimated the work, that is our problem, and it is the only way a published price list means anything.
If a week slips on our side, it slips on our invoice
The build has exactly one dependency on your side: the four hours. If those do not arrive, the timeline moves. If we are the ones who are late, you do not pay for the delay.
Everything is registered in your name
The domain, the hosting, the analytics and the tracking numbers. Agencies that hold those hostage are managing an exit risk rather than earning a renewal.
We will tell you when the answer is not a website
Sometimes the site is fine and the problem is that nobody answers the phone after four. We would rather say that in week one than take the money and build something that cannot fix it.
Week four is the one that matters in year two
Proof cannot be retrofitted, so the measurement goes in before the site goes live.
A tracked number and form attribution take an afternoon and cost a few dollars a month. Skip them and twelve months from now there is no before, no after, and nothing to put on a case study. That is precisely how five functioning agencies with eighty-five years of combined history ended up with forty-one testimonials and zero outcomes between them.
Five ways in
How can we help?
Four of these five need nothing from you but a browser. That is on purpose. Most visits are research, not readiness.