Web developer in San Francisco: a marketing site that opens on your own claim
For a software company, I build the marketing site around one sentence: the claim your best salesperson makes on a demo call. It sits at the top of the home page, readable before any video or animation loads. I'm the web developer in San Francisco you'd deal with from scope to handover, and the code is written by my team in Kolkata, India.
Overview
Finding the sentence that belongs to you
Before any layout, we write down the claim your company can back with proof, in the words your customers use when they describe you.
That means choosing one buyer for the home page to address. I'd pick the buyer your sales team closes most often and write to them. Other buyers get pages further in.
The proof can be a customer count, a named integration or a review you have permission to quote.
Then the sentence stays. When someone on your side asks to soften it, I ask what proof would make them comfortable, and add that proof under it instead.
Side by side
Load order for SaaS website design
This is how I'd order a software home page, and every line is open to change.
| On the first screen | Loads | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Your headline claim, as text | First | The reason the visitor came |
| One web font, in two weights at most | With the text | Each extra font file holds the words back |
| A product screenshot | After the text | Sized for the screen showing it |
| Video or animation | Last, once the claim can be read | It brings the product to life once the visitor knows what it is |
What moves the number
What shapes the size of a software marketing site
Page templates are where the bulk of the work goes, one for each kind of page marketing will publish. Each of these adds or removes work on its own, and each becomes a line in the written scope.
- 01Page templates marketing will publish from
- 02Fresh layouts, or files from a designer you already work with
- 03A product screenshot or demo clip for each feature page
- 04Current pages that rank, and the care needed to move them
- 05A link from the site into your CRM or demo-booking tool
- 06Copy written from scratch, or edited from what you have
Your design system, or your brand guide
Your design system or brand guide decides how much of the site is built from parts you already own. A link to it before our first meeting lets me plan around it.
Where this comes from
Since 2017, in brief
Of 900+ projects completed since 2017, the American share comes to 600+ projects for US clients.
Your engineers can open any page on staging and check its code and page speed for themselves. If you'd like the code in your own repository, the build happens there, and your engineers can review each change.
The team works on your schedule, in your time zone.
What a scope from me looks like
Scope sample: a software company's marketing site
If you already have a design system, the scope names its components, and the site uses them as they are.
Where there isn't one yet, the designer on my team draws the layouts from your brand guide.
Included
- A written scope: every page and feature as its own line, agreed before work starts
- Design to build, reviewed on a staging URL that stays open the whole project
- Mobile first — checked on a real phone
- Domain, hosting and every account created in your name from day one
- Page templates marketing can publish from, with no code
- Basic on-page SEO: titles, descriptions, headings, sitemap, Search Console connected
- A runbook at handover: how to edit it, what renews and when
Phase two
- A second landing page for another product or audience
- A demo-booking link into your CRM
- Ongoing SEO once the site has traffic to read
- A maintenance plan once the site is live
- Logo and brand design, quoted separately from the build
Not doing
- Guaranteed rankings
- A launch before your sign-off
Nearby
Further along the coast
For portfolio sites, see Los Angeles. For an audit of a site that's already live, see Seattle.
FAQ
Before the first template is built
Your sales and engineering teams each get a say before anything is built.
Can the site use an existing design system?
- An existing design system is used as it is: its colours, type and components become the site's building blocks. Where parts of it aren't written down, I'll note what I find and send it to your team to confirm before building. Components the site needs that the system lacks are drawn in its style and handed back to your team for the library.
How fast should a marketing site load?
- A marketing site should show its first screen before a visitor thinks about waiting. I'll test it with Lighthouse on a mid-range phone setting and fix whatever holds that screen back, before launch and again once the site's live. Your engineers get the report, with each fix listed against the score it changed.
Can a startup marketing site start as one page?
- A startup marketing site can start as a single landing page, built in the same design the full site will use. When the later pages come, they'll slot in beside it.
How does marketing publish a new page?
- Marketing picks a template in the editor, fills in its fields and previews the page before it goes live. An engineer only comes in when a page needs something the templates don't have.
Can demo requests go straight into a CRM?
- Demo requests can go straight into a CRM such as HubSpot or Salesforce, through a form tool or the CRM's own embed. I'll list the fields each request carries, and your sales team confirms them before the form is built.
Next step
Name the buyer you most want to win
If the home page could speak to only one buyer, which would you pick? Any answer, however unsure, gives our meeting a place to begin.
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