Why I built it
Mike is a close friend starting his own cleaning company. His first website was built on Durable, a hosted website builder, and it held him back: the "No charge" box was red and read like an error, the Book button was hidden on phones, and the page ran about eight phone screens long with heavy images. It was a brochure: no instant price, no online booking, no admin page, no cleaner app. His domain was bought through the same platform, so moving it meant going through their support and waiting on a transfer. I didn't want to hand him a nicer version of the same trap. I wanted him to own his site, his bookings, his customers and his data, in a standard database he can take anywhere, so no platform can ever hold his business hostage.
How the layout came together
His logo is gold embroidery on a royal-blue shield, so that became the whole identity: navy, gold and warm cream. I started by auditing the Durable homepage, then made nine homepage options and scored them with a five-second test (can a visitor tell what this is and how to book in five seconds?). The best ideas became Alpha and Beta, then six rounds of Epsilon, each one fixing what the last got wrong, and finally Omega, the full site. Omega now runs on his own Cloudflare account, and his domain moved off Durable to the same account. Start to finish, every step is below.
What's inside
- Book Now on the very first screen, on phone and desktop
- Instant estimate calculator for homes, condos and businesses
- Online booking: card saved, nothing charged until the job is done
- Private admin page: bookings, leads, invoices, staff
- Cleaner app on any phone: jobs, checklist, before/after photos
- Automatic error alerts, backups and a test copy of everything
- About half as long as the old homepage, images about 95% lighter
- Site and domain moved off Durable to his own Cloudflare account
- No invented reviews, prices or promises
