Everyone claims the same 4 things
Results driven, data led, passionate about growth. The vocabulary of this industry has been worn smooth, so any claim made in those words is read as noise before it is read as meaning.
The one site we could not blame on the client.
This is our own site. No brief to hide behind, no budget to blame, no stakeholder who wanted the logo bigger. Just 8+ years of marketing work in this niche, turned into a design system we now hold every client project to.
The build
Our own proof of work.
Designed, written, built and shipped in house
The work
The work, up close.
15 pieces of our own site, and the reasoning behind each one.
The hero
An agency that shows the work instead of describing it
Most agency sites open on an abstract promise. Ours opens on a real client site inside a laptop, with the rating and the client count directly beneath it. A visitor forms a judgement about whether we can design in about 2 seconds, so the fastest honest answer is to show them something we designed.
Proof above the fold, not below it
Services
Six services, each with the tools named on the card
Web design, social media, ecommerce, SEO, Google Ads and software development. Every card carries the actual platform logos and a plain list of what is included, because a business owner comparing agencies wants to know whether we work in Shopify or WooCommerce before they want our philosophy.
Platforms named, not implied
The growth engine
Explaining marketing as one system, not a service list
An animated diagram pulls every channel we work in, from Google and Meta to SEO and email, into a single centre and out to the metrics a business actually tracks. It is the clearest way we have found to make the point that these are not separable line items. The figures shown are illustrative of the model, not a specific client result.
One connected system, drawn rather than described
Process
Three steps, with what happens inside each one
Discover, Build, Launch. Each card lists the concrete deliverables and carries a small progress illustration, so the process reads as a schedule rather than as reassurance. Clients who have been burned before are looking for evidence that someone has done this in an orderly way, repeatedly.
Deliverables listed under every phase
The portfolio
Real screenshots in real hardware, at a real ratio
Every card is a live screenshot in a MacBook frame at true retina proportions, captured rather than mocked up. It sounds pedantic, and it is the difference between a portfolio that looks like a template and one a prospective client can verify by opening the site themselves.
Captured at 1440 by 900, never stretched
Proof
The numbers, then the people who back them
50+ clients and teams, a 4.9 average rating, 120+ projects delivered and 8+ years doing this work, followed immediately by named reviews from the business owners behind them. A statistic without a name attached is decoration, so the two sit together.
Every review carries a name and a business
Objections
The awkward questions, answered before the call
How fast can results appear, how we differ from a traditional agency, whether content needs to be ready, whether we work with small businesses. These are the questions that stall a decision. Answering them on the page means the first call starts from a better place than a list of doubts.
7 objections handled in public
Conversion
Two ways to start, because people differ
A 15 minute call for the people who want to talk, and a short form for the people who do not. The form asks what they are interested in as selectable options rather than making them compose a brief. Fewer people abandon a form when the hardest field is optional.
Call or write, no forced funnel
About
Positioning that commits to something
Clear thinking, useful design, and a stated sequence of start with clarity, design for action, build for growth. Agency about pages usually try to appeal to everyone and end up describing nobody. This one names how we work so the wrong-fit enquiries can rule themselves out.
Written to filter, not only to attract
The difference
One connected system, not disconnected tasks
The argument for using one team across design, SEO, ads and content, rather than briefing four suppliers who never speak. This is the single most useful thing 8+ years in this niche taught us: most marketing underperforms because nobody owns the joins between the parts.
The case for a single owner across channels
Depth
A page for the people who want the detail
The homepage summarises 6 services. The services page gives each one its own card with a route onward to the relevant proof, whether that is the portfolio, the growth engine or a call. Layering it this way keeps the homepage scannable without punishing the researcher.
Every service links to its own evidence
Case studies
Eight case studies on one template, deliberately
Every project page runs the same order: hero, site view, 15 real screenshots, client story, scope, challenge, goals, strategy, comparison, results, impact and questions. A reader who has seen one knows how to read the next, and the consistency is itself an argument about how we work.
1 structure, 8 projects, no exceptions
Detail work
Alternating blocks, numbered, with a takeaway line
Each of the 15 blocks per case study pairs a real screenshot with a number, a label, a claim and a single note underneath. The alternation gives the eye a rhythm over a long page, and the note means a skim reader still leaves with the point of every section.
120 screenshot blocks across the portfolio
Custom components
A goal flow that reads like a sequence, because it is one
Seven goals laid out as a serpentine path with arrows that turn at the end of each row. It would have been quicker to use a 3 column grid, but the goals were agreed in an order and the order carries meaning. The component was built for that argument and gets reused wherever sequence matters.
Built for the content, not chosen from a kit
Making the case
A comparison table that survives a phone
Criterion, before, after. On a desktop it reads as a table; below 700 pixels each row restacks into a labelled card so nothing is squeezed into an unreadable column. Comparison tables are where most responsive designs quietly break, so this one was built mobile first and checked at 390 pixels.
Restacks to cards, never scrolls sideways
The studio.
Rizer is a web design and growth studio with 8+ years in this niche, building websites and the marketing systems around them for business owners who need the two to work as one thing.
At a glance
The project, on paper.
- Client
- Ourselves, which is the hardest client either of us has worked with.
- Audience
- Business owners comparing agencies, usually with a bad previous experience behind them.
- Scope
- Brand expression, homepage, services and about pages, a case study system, and the conversion path through all of it.
- Build
- Hand-written HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No framework, no page builder, no theme.
- Hosting
- Cloudflare Pages, served from the edge.
- Type
- Space Grotesk throughout, with italics carrying the emphasis instead of a second typeface.
- Colour
- Warm off-white, near-black text, and a single restrained gold. No second accent anywhere.
The challenge
Nobody trusts an agency site. Including us.
The problems specific to selling design and marketing to people who have been sold it before.
The site is the portfolio
A restaurant can have a mediocre website and great food. A design studio cannot. Ours is the first and often the only sample of our work a prospect will judge us on.
Most visitors arrive burned
A large share of enquiries come from owners who already paid someone and got a site that never produced anything. They are not looking to be impressed, they are looking for reasons to disqualify.
Design and marketing get sold separately
The market is used to hiring a designer, then an SEO, then an ads person. Explaining why that split is the problem takes more than a services list.
Your own project never ships
Client work is always more urgent than your own site. Left unmanaged, an agency site sits half finished for years, quietly contradicting everything the agency says about launching.
Nobody is checking your work
With no client to approve anything, the only quality control is the standard you set yourself. It is remarkably easy to accept things on your own project you would flag on someone else's.
The goals
7 goals, in order.
What we set out to make the site do, and the order we solved it in.
01
Prove we can design, immediately
Open on real client work rather than a claim, so the question of whether we can do this is answered before anyone reads a sentence.
02
Say what we do without jargon
Six named services with the actual platforms listed, so a visitor can match us to their problem in one pass.
03
Explain the connected system
Show design, search, ads and content as one engine, because that argument is the reason to hire us rather than 4 freelancers.
04
Back every claim with a name
Ratings, project counts and reviews attached to real businesses, positioned so the numbers and the people are read together.
05
Answer the objections in public
Deal with timelines, pricing worries and fit on the page, so the first conversation is not spent clearing doubts.
06
Go deep for the researchers
Full case studies for the people who read everything, without slowing down the people who decide in 30 seconds.
07
Make it hold up on a phone
Most of this traffic is mobile, so every component had to work at 390 pixels before it was considered finished.
Our strategy
The decisions behind the design.
Where we chose the harder option, and why.
Show client work before saying anything about ourselves
An agency describing its own quality is the least credible sentence on the internet. A real screenshot of a real site in the first viewport does the same job without asking anyone to take our word for it.
One typeface, one accent, no exceptions
Space Grotesk carries every level of the hierarchy, with italics doing the emphasis a second family would normally do, and a single gold as the only accent. Restraint is harder to hold than variety, and it is what makes 8 case studies feel like one studio.
Write the components, do not install them
The site is hand-written HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no framework and no builder. It means every component is exactly the size it needs to be, the pages load fast by construction, and nothing on the site depends on a plugin we do not control.
Give every case study the same 15 blocks
We could have designed each project page around its own story. Holding one structure across all 8 is more work and less fun, and it is what turns a portfolio into a body of work rather than a set of one-off pages.
Capture screenshots rather than mock them up
Every portfolio image is a real page captured at true retina proportions from the live site. Nothing is a stretched placeholder or a stock frame, which means a sceptical visitor can open the site and see the same thing.
Design the mobile layout first, then check it again
Most of this audience arrives on a phone. Every table restacks, every grid collapses, and the whole site is audited at 390 pixels for horizontal overflow before anything ships. It is unglamorous and it is where competitor sites usually fall apart.
The design system
What holds it together.
The pieces reused across every page and every case study.
The comparison
A typical agency site, and this one.
The choices that separate this from the sites it sits alongside.
A typical agency siteWhat we built
First screenA slogan over a stock photographA real client site, with the rating beneath it
Portfolio imagesMockups and stretched placeholdersLive screenshots at true retina proportions
Case studiesA paragraph and one image15 screenshot blocks on a shared structure, 8 times over
ProofUnattributed statisticsNumbers next to named reviews from real businesses
ServicesSix abstractionsSix services with the platforms and deliverables named
The buildA licensed theme on a page builderHand-written HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no framework
TypographyThree families and a decorative display face1 typeface, with italics carrying every emphasis
ObjectionsLeft for the sales call7 answered on the page before anyone gets in touch
MobileTables squeezed into scrolling columnsAudited at 390 pixels, every component restacked
The track record
Eight years, and counting.
Our own numbers, and the size of the portfolio this site carries.
8+Years in the niche
120+Projects delivered
50+Clients and teams
4.9Average rating
What it changes
Why we built it this way.
How holding our own site to this standard changes the work. These describe the intent behind the build, not measured outcomes.
The sales pitch is the site
Rather than explaining what we would do for a client, we can point at a page and say this, at this standard, for you. It removes most of the abstraction from a first conversation.
Better enquiries, fewer of them
Naming the way we work and answering the awkward questions up front means people who want something else stop before they book, which is a feature rather than a loss.
A system, not a set of pages
Because every case study runs the same components, the next one is a content problem rather than a design problem, and it still comes out looking like the rest.
Fast because there is nothing extra
Hand-written markup with no framework and no builder means the pages carry only what they use, which is the simplest performance strategy there is.
The standard is visible
Anyone can check the claims here by opening a client site or shrinking a window to 390 pixels. Publishing work that can be verified is a stronger position than describing it.
Practising what we sell
Every argument on this page is one we make to clients. Making it on our own site first means we have already paid the cost of the advice we give.
Questions
The short version.
Is this really your own website?
Yes, and we included it in the portfolio on purpose:
- Why it belongs here: it is the project we had the most control over, so it shows what we do when nothing is compromised by budget or committee.
- What it demonstrates: the design system, the case study structure, the writing, and the conversion path, all of which we build for clients too.
- The obvious caveat: we are marking our own homework here, which is exactly why the other 8 case studies point at live client sites you can open and check yourself.
What does 8+ years in this niche actually mean?
It means the whole span has been spent on the same problem rather than adjacent ones:
- The niche: websites and the growth marketing around them for owner-led businesses, not enterprise brand work and not pure agency subcontracting.
- What that buys you: we have already seen how this goes wrong. Most of the decisions on this page exist because a previous version of them did not work.
- Across both sides: design and build on one side, SEO, ads and content on the other, which is why we argue so hard for treating them as one system.
- In numbers: 120+ projects delivered for 50+ clients and teams, at a 4.9 average rating across 50+ reviews.
Why build it by hand instead of using WordPress or a builder?
Because for a site this size the tradeoff runs the other way:
- Weight: a theme plus its plugin stack ships a great deal of code the page never uses. Hand-written markup carries only what it needs.
- Control: components like the serpentine flow and the restacking comparison table were designed for specific arguments, not chosen from what a builder offered.
- Maintenance: nothing here breaks because a plugin updated or a licence lapsed.
- The honest limit: this approach suits a site edited by the people who built it. For clients who need to publish daily we build on a CMS, and we say so.
Can you design something in a completely different style?
Yes. This site is our voice, not a template we apply to everyone:
- Look at the range: a Bangladeshi phone retailer, a California IT firm, an accessible travel operator and an IELTS testing platform all needed to look like themselves, not like us.
- What stays constant: the process, the structural thinking, the attention to mobile, and the standard of finish.
- What changes: the typography, colour, imagery and tone, which are decided by the brand and its audience rather than by our preferences.
What would you build for me?
The same standard, aimed at your business rather than ours:
- Start with clarity: what you sell, who buys it, and what the site has to make happen before it is worth anything.
- Design for action: a structure built around the decision your visitor is making, not around a page list.
- Build for growth: fast, searchable, mobile-first, and set up so the marketing has something to work with from day one.
- Then keep going: SEO, ads and content run against the same system rather than bolted on by someone else later.
- Next step: book a free call and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit.
Keep exploring
View all
More case studies.
Your turn
Want this standard pointed at your business?
Everything on this page is what we do for clients. Tell us where the business is going and we will show you what it would look like.