Best Web Designer in Wilmington, NC

Yes, I'm the one saying it. I'm Jackson Rowell, I run Way Out Custom Branding, and I was born and raised in Wilmington before moving back this past July. Here is the reasoning behind the headline, so you don't have to take my word for it.

What a website has to do for a small business

For most of the businesses I work with, the website is not where the sale happens. It is where a customer checks you out after hearing your name, usually before they have decided whether to call. A homeowner looks up the contractor a neighbor mentioned. A visitor looks up the church before driving over on Sunday. Someone checks whether the shop is actually open before making the trip.

A website also has to work when you are not in the room. When a happy customer tells a friend about you, the friend almost always looks you up, and what they find decides whether the referral turns into a call. That is why I treat the site as part of how word of mouth completes itself, which I wrote about in Why Referrals Dry Up the Moment You Stop Asking for Them.

Why I build every site from scratch

I don't start from a template. A template means other businesses in your area may have nearly the same site, and nothing about it was decided with your customers in mind. I covered the same problem on the logo side in Why Templated Branding Falls Apart the Moment You Use It Twice, and it applies to websites just as much.

Instead, I build the site around your position, meaning who you serve and what is true about how you work, and I write it in your voice. The layout and the look follow from that, not the other way around.

The same person designs your brand and builds your site

Most web designers get handed a logo someone else made and are told to make it work. I design the brand and build the website myself, so every decision on the site comes from what I already learned while building the identity: why a color was picked, what got rejected, how you talk about your own customers. You get a site that looks like it belongs to the same business as your truck, your sign and your invoices. I explained why that matters in What You Lose When Your Branding Project Gets Handed Off Three Times.

It also means there is no account manager and no one to get handed off to partway through. You talk to the person building your site from the first call to the day it goes live.

Who I build for, and why I'm local

I build websites for contractors and tradesmen, brick-and-mortar shops, and churches. Those businesses depend on being found and trusted by people in the same town, and I live in that town. I want Wilmington to look good, and the websites people use to find a plumber, a coffee shop or a church are part of how it looks. I'll also still be here after your site launches, which is not something every web designer can say.

If you'd like to talk about your site

If you already have a website and aren't sure whether it is helping or hurting, or if you don't have one yet, feel free to reach out. No rush at all.