Projects

Five real businesses, each with the problem the owner came in with, the decisions I made, and what got built. Where I have a verified result, it's here. Where I don't, the reasoning is.

Esthetician practice · Santa Cruz

Turning a service menu into a booking journey

Work completed

Squarespace build
Acuity booking
RepeatMD rewards integration
Domain and account reconciliation
Local SEO

Visit the live site

Situation: A growing solo skincare practice with a loyal client base and a full calendar.
Problem: Bookings came in by text and Instagram DM, which meant the owner was the scheduling system. The existing domain and website account had been set up by someone else and nobody could fully access them.
Approach: Rebuild on Squarespace with self-service booking as the spine of the site, and untangle the domain and hosting so the owner controls all of it. Follow with a local SEO pass so the practice shows up for the searches that matter.
Key decisions: Booking is the primary call to action on every page, because an esthetician's revenue is appointments, not inquiries.
The service menu is structured so each treatment leads directly into its own booking step rather than a general contact form.
Mobile came first: clients book from their phones between appointments, so the booking flow was designed for a thumb, not a desktop.
Account ownership was reconciled before launch, not after, so nothing the client depends on lives under someone else's login.
Outcome: [ADD VERIFIED RESULT OR CLIENT TESTIMONIAL — otherwise delete this row and let the reasoning above stand]

Coffee shop · Santa Cruz

Moving a neighborhood café off a dead-end platform

Work completed

Homestead-to-Wix migration
URL preservation
Photography
Social media program

Visit the live site

Situation: A well-loved neighborhood coffee shop with regulars who found it by walking past, not by searching.
Problem: The site was on an aging Homestead builder that was hard to update and looked nothing like the shop people actually walked into. The old URLs had accumulated years of links and search history that a careless move would throw away.
Approach: Migrate to Wix with the existing URLs preserved, replace the photography so the site looks like the room, and set up a social media program so the new visual identity carries across the site and Instagram.
Key decisions: Preserve every existing URL through the migration, because a café's search visibility is mostly its history and that isn't worth losing for a cleaner sitemap.
Lead the homepage with photography of the space and the drinks. For a walk-in business, the site's job is to make someone want to be there.
Hours, location, and the menu sit above everything else on mobile, because that's what someone standing on a corner is checking.
Wix chosen for how easily the owner can update seasonal items themselves, rather than for the design ceiling.
Outcome: [ADD VERIFIED RESULT OR CLIENT TESTIMONIAL — otherwise delete this row and let the reasoning above stand]

Activewear brand

Making a Shopify store look like the brand

Work completed

Custom Shopify theme
Visual identity
CSS refinement
Product and brand copywriting

Visit the live site

Situation: An independent activewear label with a distinct point of view and a product line ready to sell online.
Problem: The store was running on a stock Shopify theme, so it looked like every other store. The product pages didn't sound like the brand and the visual identity stopped at the logo.
Approach: Build a custom theme that carries the brand's identity through every template, refine the product and collection pages in CSS, and write product and brand copy in the brand's own voice.
Key decisions: Identity is carried through the collection and product templates, not just the homepage, because that's where the buying decision actually happens.
Product copy written for how the clothes feel and what they're for, not for a spec sheet.
Kept Shopify's native checkout untouched: the theme layer is where the brand lives, the checkout is where trust lives.
Outcome: [ADD VERIFIED RESULT OR CLIENT TESTIMONIAL — otherwise delete this row and let the reasoning above stand]

Gym · Santa Cruz

Giving a local gym a clear front door

Work completed

Website design and build
Membership page
Recovery page
Owner content collaboration

Visit the live site

Situation: A local gym with a training floor and a recovery offering the owner saw as the thing that set it apart.
Problem: There was no site that explained memberships clearly enough for a first-time visitor to commit, and the recovery offering, the real differentiator, had no place to live.
Approach: Structure the site around two questions a prospective member has: what does it cost to join, and what's different here. Give recovery its own page and work closely with the owner on how it's presented.
Key decisions: Memberships are explained on one page in plain terms, because uncertainty about pricing is the main reason someone doesn't walk in.
Recovery gets a dedicated page rather than a section, since it's the reason to choose this gym over the one down the street.
The owner was involved directly on the recovery page's content. For a differentiator, the owner's language beats a copywriter's.
Outcome: [ADD VERIFIED RESULT OR CLIENT TESTIMONIAL — otherwise delete this row and let the reasoning above stand]

Café · Santa Cruz

Bringing a long-standing café online for the first time

Work completed

Website design and build
Social media program
Photography

Visit the live site

Situation: A café with decades of loyal customers and almost no presence online.
Problem: The business was known by word of mouth and had nothing for someone searching, and nothing to point new customers to.
Approach: Build the website and a social media program together, so the café's voice is the same whether someone finds it on Google or Instagram, and so there's finally a single place to send people.
Key decisions: Website and social built as one program, not two projects, so the tone, photography, and information stay consistent.
The site leads with what regulars already love about the place. The goal was to make the online version feel like the real one, not to reinvent it.
Hours, menu, and location are the first things visible on a phone.
Outcome: [ADD VERIFIED RESULT OR CLIENT TESTIMONIAL — otherwise delete this row and let the reasoning above stand]