Your site could
feel like this.
Everything here runs in a browser.
Design, development, and infrastructure: one practitioner, one methodology, one bill.
How It WorksFive steps. No mystery.
Every engagement follows the same methodology. The scope changes; the rigor doesn’t.
Discovery
I ask uncomfortable questions about your business, your customers, and where money is leaking. I dig until I understand what’s actually happening, not what you think is happening.
Perception Audit
I run your site through the Perception-First Design™ framework: cognitive load, first impressions, processing fluency, perception bias, decision architecture. Where are visitors bouncing and why?
Strategy
A prioritized plan that addresses the biggest perception barriers first. What to fix now, what to fix later, and what to leave alone. No busywork.
Build
You see progress instead of surprises. Style tiles, wireframes, live prototypes, production. Each pass refines until it clears the perception bar.
Optimize
Perception work isn’t a one-time fix. I measure, refine, and adapt as your business evolves.
One client’s revenue tripled within a year.
Same products. Different perception.
Simply Smart Home
Repositioned “digital photo frames” as smart home décor. New brand system, packaging, web presence. Same hardware. Revenue tripled within the year.
“Stefan designed the brand, the packaging, and the product. Everything people see.”
Vacuum Sealers Unlimited
Ten years, same site. Incremental optimization, no redesign. The methodology compounds.
“The website Stefan built me helped put my 3 boys through college.”
iO Theater
Online ticket sales for a 40-year Chicago improv institution. Built in half the time of the agency they hired before.
“Stefan made our site in half the time, and even better looking than the agency we hired before him.”
Retail & licensing
Two tiers. Both month-to-month.
Growth Infrastructure
$800/mo
You stop thinking about your website. It just works.
Managed hosting, performance monitoring, security updates, and ongoing optimization. When something needs attention, I handle it before you notice.
Your site runs on infrastructure I built and maintain, not a shared hosting box you’ll outgrow in six months.
- Managed WordPress hosting on dedicated infrastructure
- Daily automated backups with 30-day retention
- Security monitoring, firewall, and malware scanning
- Plugin and core updates tested before deployment
- Performance optimization (caching, CDN, image compression)
- SSL certificate management
- Uptime monitoring with same-day response, 7 days
- Monthly performance report
Month-to-month after first year. Included with all new site builds. Your data, your domain, always.
Strategic Partnership
from $3,000/mo
The approach that tripled a brand’s revenue, pointed at your business.
Everything in Growth Infrastructure, plus Perception-First Design™ applied to your brand, your pages, your conversion paths. I’m the answer to “make it pretty.” I know what pretty is, what makes it pretty, and when to break it on purpose.
- Everything in Growth Infrastructure
- Perception-First Design™ applied to your brand and site
- Ongoing design iterations and A/B testing
- Conversion path optimization
- Landing page design and development
- Brand identity refinement
- Priority response and strategy calls
- Quarterly perception audit and roadmap
Month-to-month. 30-day notice. Your data, your domain, always.
One-off builds.
Every project includes the full Perception-First Design™ methodology: discovery, perception audit, strategy, build. No template drops.
Brochure Sites
~$12,000
5–10 pages. Designed to clear perception barriers and get visitors to act. Includes brand system, responsive design, and CMS setup.
Complex Builds
from $25,000
E-commerce, custom functionality, integrations, multi-step flows. Scoped precisely. No surprises. WooCommerce, custom WordPress, or headless architectures depending on what the project needs.
Brand Identity
from $10,000
Logo, typography, color system, brand guidelines. Built on Perception-First Design™ principles: what your brand communicates before anyone reads a word. Style tile → brand system → production assets.
The methodology, taught.
Perception-First Design™ as workshops, audits, and keynotes. I went looking for other designers working at this intersection. What I found were developers, researchers, founders, tool makers. The design voice is barely in the room. That's the gap I'm in.
+ View engagements and pricing
Perception-First Design™ Workshop
$2,500
Half-day / 4 hours
Your team learns the 5-layer framework applied to your product. Live audit. Actionable fixes ranked by impact. You leave with a list, not a theory.
Perception-First Design™ Workshop + Report
$5,000
Full-day / 8 hours
Everything in the half-day, plus a detailed written report. Scored findings, fix specifications, before/after projections. The document your team references for the next 6 months.
Neuroinclusive Design Audit
$8,000 – $15,000
1–2 weeks
Comprehensive Perception-First Design™ analysis of your digital product. 76-citation evidence base. Scored by layer. Fix roadmap. Executive summary for stakeholders who need the short version.
Keynote
$15,000+
45–60 minutes
“Designing from the Edge.” How cognitive constraints become design material. I built a methodology on what the field treats as an edge case. They leave knowing why it matters.
What I work with.
Every engagement is scoped to your business.
Design
Brand, web, and product design. Built on how people actually see.
Build
I build it. It ships.
Grow
What you measure is what you fix.
Protect
Your site stays up. Your data stays yours.
Common questions.
Can’t I just use Squarespace / Wix / AI tools?
Sure. Try it. I mean that genuinely. Go build something with the tools available. They’re good. They’ll get you 80% of the way to something that looks like a website. That last 20% is the difference between a site people visit and a site that produces outcomes. You’re reading about it.
What platforms do you support?
WordPress, WooCommerce, and custom builds. If your project needs a headless architecture, static site, or something non-standard, I’ll scope it honestly. If it’s outside my wheelhouse, I’ll tell you.
What if I want to leave?
You own your content, your domain, and your data. Always.
I’ll export everything and help with the transition. The custom infrastructure (hosting stack, licensed plugins, headless layer) stays with me, but your site will run on any standard WordPress host. No hostage situations, no surprises.
Is there a contract?
Every site build includes one year of Growth Infrastructure hosting. After that, month-to-month with 30-day notice. I keep clients because the work produces results, not because of a contract.
What’s the typical turnaround for a new site?
Brochure sites: 3–4 weeks from kickoff. Complex builds: 6–10 weeks depending on scope. I don’t rush. Perception work requires iteration. But I also don’t drag things out.
How does onboarding work?
A 30-minute call to understand your business, your customers, and your goals. Then I do the perception audit on my end and come back with a strategy. You don’t need to prepare a 50-page brief. I ask the right questions.
What does “perception audit” mean?
I run your site through the five layers of Perception-First Design™: cognitive load, first impressions, processing fluency, perception bias, and decision architecture.
It’s a structured diagnostic, not “I think this looks nice.” You get a prioritized list of what’s costing you conversions and why.
Do you work with agencies?
Selectively. If you need a white-label partner who applies a real methodology and doesn’t just push pixels, let’s talk. I’m not interested in being the cheapest vendor in the stack.
What does a Strategic Partnership actually include month to month?
Design and dev work on whatever’s blocking your sales pipeline. Could be a homepage rewrite, a conversion path audit, a new landing page, a checkout flow rebuild. I work like an in-house designer-developer who happens to also do strategy. You get my judgment on what to build and the build itself.
Why a monthly partnership instead of a one-time project?
Conversion problems aren’t one-time. You ship a new page, traffic shifts, your audience evolves. A one-time project leaves you with a snapshot. A partnership means I’m watching your numbers and iterating against them.
How long until I see results?
First measurable lift usually inside 30 to 45 days. Big swings (3-4x) take longer because they’re compounding. The fastest wins are removing friction the visitor never told you about.
What kinds of businesses does this work for?
Anyone with traffic that isn’t converting. I’ve shipped for ecommerce, SaaS, content sites, professional services. The common pattern: real visitors arrive, but the site is losing them in the first ten seconds. If your product works and your traffic is qualified, I can help.
Are you available for just a piece of this, like just the design?
Sometimes. Design-only or audit-only engagements are possible if your team can execute the build. I’m picky here because Perception-First Design is most effective when design and code ship together. If you’re handing the design to a team that won’t follow the spec, you’ll get half the value.