Brainerd & the lakes area
I am Sean Swanson, a web designer and a web developer, here in Brainerd. I design and build custom websites by hand, for one fixed price, agreed in writing first. A new business package is $699 and goes live in days, not months.
Text me anytime: (218) 818-1023. Skip the email if you like. I read and answer every text myself.
Why local matters here
Most web designers will sell you the same site they sell a dentist in Ohio. That is not how money moves up here, and your website should know the difference.
Plenty of businesses around Brainerd earn most of the year's money between May and September. Your site needs to convert hard in season and hold the line off season, which means seasonal hours, a booking path that opens and closes, and an off season message that does not read as abandoned.
Cabin owners, weekenders and Twin Cities traffic on 371 do not know you by reputation the way your neighbors do. They find you on a phone, in a car, with one bar of signal. That is a design constraint, and it is the one most local sites fail.
Around here somebody hears your name first and looks you up second. Your site is rarely the first touch. It is the thing that confirms you are real and worth calling, which means it has to look like the business people described.
What I do
Start with whichever one matches what is actually wrong. If you are not sure, ask me and I will tell you.
I build it, put it on a real address, and you look at it before you spend anything. No card, nothing to cancel. Five businesses at a time across all my sites.
A new business package at $699, a landing page from $1,195, or a custom site with a page per service from $1,495. Hand written, live in days, and the source code is yours.
The map results take most of the local clicks and a website alone will not put you in them. Set up with every build, and worth doing even if you never hire me.
Designer and developer
They design inside a builder and stop where the code starts, or they develop and it looks like it. You get both from one person, so nothing is handed over halfway and nothing is lost in the handover.
I decide what the page says, in what order, and what a stranger does in the first ten seconds. Layout, type, colour and the words themselves. Your site should look like the business people were told about, not like a template with your logo dropped into it.
I build it by hand. No Wix, no Squarespace, no page builder underneath. That is why it loads on one bar of signal out on the lake, why it does not break when a plugin updates itself, and why another web developer can pick the code up and carry on with it. That last part is what makes owning the source code worth something.
Where you are right now
You are getting customers on referrals and a Facebook page. Everyone who hears your name still looks you up, and right now they find nothing, or somebody else. A real site is the fastest credibility upgrade available to you, and the homepage costs nothing to look at.
It loads slowly, it fights you every time you try to change a phone number, and it does not look like the business you actually run. Rebuilding a Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy site is the most common job I get. Your domain moves across with no downtime.
How it works
A phone call or a coffee. What you do, who calls you, and what the site actually needs to accomplish. Free, and I will tell you honestly if you do not need me.
Not a stock mockup with placeholder text. Your words, your photos, your services. You see the actual thing before you commit to it.
In plain English. "Make the phone number bigger" is a perfectly good instruction. We go back and forth until you genuinely like it.
Domain, hosting and the security certificate, all handled. Then I show you how everything works and hand you the source code.
What an absolute pleasure to have my website done. It was fast, easy, efficient and cost effective. Sean was always right on top of things and replied to my questions almost immediately. I would definitely recommend him to anyone who is interested in this type of service. 5 stars for sure.Kelly M., Be Bold Balloons
The honest comparison
Three of these four are not me, and for some businesses one of them is the right answer. Decide with the numbers in front of you.
| DIY builder | Brainerd Web Design | Twin Cities agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront | Low | From $699 | $3,000 to $10,000+ |
| Your own hours | 20 to 40, then forever | About two, plus content | Meetings across 6 to 12 weeks |
| Time to live | Your weekends, indefinitely | Days | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Truly custom | Template bound | Yes | Yes |
| You get the code | No, locked to the platform | Always | Sometimes, check the contract |
| Who you talk to | A help center article | Me, directly | An account manager |
| If you stop paying | Site vanishes, you keep nothing | Offline, but the code is yours | Varies, read it first |
Questions
A new business package is $699 if the business is under a year old, a landing page is $1,195, and a custom site with a page per service starts at $1,495. Size and depth decide it, nothing else. You get the number in writing before you agree to anything, and it does not move afterwards.
If you need the words written or the photos sorted out, the number moves up a little, and the quote says so instead of surprising you later.
Most single page sites go live within a week of me having your content. Five page builds usually take one to two weeks. Tell me your deadline and I will be straight about whether it is doable.
The build is a one off. After that the care plan is $49 a month for hosting, maintenance and three hours of work a month, tracked by me, which most people take because they would rather never think about it.
What you are not doing is renting the design. You get the source code, so you can take it to any developer whenever you want.
Good, that is genuinely useful. It tells me what you like and what you do not. I rebuild it properly and move your domain across with no downtime, so nobody visiting notices anything except that it got faster.
Yes, and I will show you how. If you would rather not touch it, that is what the care plan is for. You email me the change and it gets done.
Both, and they are different jobs. The design decides what the page says and how it looks. The development is the code underneath, written by hand rather than assembled in a builder. Hiring one person for both is why there is nobody to blame in the middle when something does not work.
I am here in Brainerd and most of my clients are around the lakes and down in the Twin Cities. The work happens over email and calls, so being further out does not change the price or the timeline.
Tell me what you do and where you are at. You get a reply within 24 hours with honest advice and a fixed price, whether or not you end up hiring me.
