Kootenay Made Digital

A web designer's own site gets judged harder than any client's. Owners in a small region compare a handful of names, and the site is usually the first thing they check. It has to say what I build, what it costs, how long it takes and whether I can be trusted, before anyone picks up the phone. It also has to work for two very different visitors: an owner with a tired website, and an owner who has never had one.

The visual idea came from the place. A custom WebGL shader draws a living survey map of a Kootenay valley, with contour lines and beacons. The same map runs across the site, and each major page views it through its own lens. The blog looks up into a starfield, the contact page fires signal flares, and the case studies zoom in on the site plan.

The free check-up lets an owner test my claims on their own site. They paste their address, and Google's Lighthouse loads the site on a simulated phone while my own server reads the eight browser protections it sends. The report gives a grade, names each problem in everyday words with the measurement behind it, and ranks the fixes. It asks for no email. The owner can save a one-page PDF or send the results to me.

Every page leads to the same two doors. An owner who already has a site goes to the check-up. An owner with no site goes to a first-website page. Twenty-two industry pages each speak to one trade, fifteen town pages speak to the towns I work in, and the 130 guides answer the questions owners ask before they hire anyone. The services page lists full prices.

The site checks itself before it ships. Before every build, a script compares the prices on the pages with the published price list and stops the release if they disagree. Plain-text price and service files sit beside the pages, so AI assistants quote the same numbers. The homepage went through my formal jury review in September 2026, a customer read first and a design score second, and its findings are kept as a written ledger. The site is built toward WCAG 2.2 AA.

Everything on this site is on offer for a client build: a design grown from one idea in the business, prices and next steps in plain view, pages written for each audience, and checks that stop a wrong number going live. The Neighbours Lodge, the private hub clients use after launch, runs on the same codebase.