Web design & marketing · Boulder County
A website that brings in work. Built by the person you actually talk to.
I'm James Lerner. I design, write and build websites for small businesses in Boulder County, then run the marketing that keeps them working. Fixed prices, a written scope, and one point of contact from the first call to the last change.
Counted, not claimed
- live sites across three projects, each built by hand and open to visit from its case study. See the work
- 10
- requests to any third party from any page of this site, and no JavaScript at all. How it's measured
- 0
- for this whole homepage, lighter than one photo from your phone. How it's measured
- 345 KB
- codebase running seven town guides and the hub above them, maintained by one person. How it scales
- 1
Selected work
Case studies, with the reasoning shown.
Each one covers what was actually wrong, what I built, the tradeoffs I made, and what can be measured. Nothing here is presented as client work unless it was, and every number is one I can show you how I measured. A fourth, TownofNiwot.com, the single-town guide Inside the Towns grew out of, is on the Work page.
Client project · Industrial supplier · 2026
AragoCor Minerals
A marketing site for a mineral supplier selling one product into five technical markets, plus the AI sourcing tool that turns visitors into quote requests.
5 markets, 1 siteRead the case study →
Own project · Network of community guides · 2026
Inside the Towns
Seven independent guides to Colorado Front Range towns and the hub above them, built from one Astro codebase. Each site carries its own color and local research; none is special-cased in code.
1 codebase, 8 sitesRead the case study →
This site · 2026
lernerworks.com
The site you're reading, built the way I'd build yours: hand-written pages, self-hosted fonts, no JavaScript, no third-party requests. Every claim on the page is measured.
0 third-party requestsRead the case study →
How I work
Four things you can hold me to.
01
Diagnosis before design
The first thing I produce is a written account of what is actually costing you customers, with evidence. Sometimes the answer is not a new website, and I'll tell you that on the first call.
02
Specific beats polished
Real service names, real numbers, real photographs of real jobs. A page that says exactly what you do and for whom converts better than one that merely looks expensive.
03
Fast, plain and yours
Hand-written pages that load quickly on a phone with a weak signal, and no platform holding your content. You get every file, and a short video on how to change things yourself.
04
Measured, not admired
Calls and form submissions are the score, not how the homepage looks. I report them monthly in one page of plain English, and I'd rather be judged on that.
What I do
Three jobs, in the order they matter.
A well-designed site nobody visits is an expensive business card. So the work runs in sequence: get found, turn visits into inquiries, then keep customers coming back.
01 · Get found
Local search
Show up when someone in Boulder County searches for what you do: on the map, in the results, on their phone at nine at night.
- Google Business Profile, set up properly
- Local SEO and service-area pages
- A review process that isn't awkward
- Google Ads, only where the numbers work
02 · Convert
Website design & build
A site that loads in under two seconds, says what you do in the first line, and makes calling or booking obvious on a cracked phone screen.
- Design and build, mobile first
- Copy written for your customer, by me
- Booking, quote forms, tap-to-call
- Photography direction
03 · Retain
Follow-up & marketing
Most of the revenue is in the second job, not the first. Steady follow-up that runs without you having to remember it.
- Email list and seasonal campaigns
- Automated quote follow-up
- Retargeting
- A one-page monthly report
Pricing
Posted, so you don't have to ask.
Every project is a fixed price, agreed in writing before anything starts. If yours doesn't fit one of these, I quote it the same way: one page, one number.
Starter
$2,400
one-time · half to start, half at launch
For a business that needs a clear, fast site and a working Google listing.
- Up to 5 pages
- Copy written with you
- Booking or quote form
- Google Business Profile set up
- Live in two to three weeks
Most common
Growth
$4,800
one-time · half to start, half at launch
For a business that wants to be found across the county and keep the leads it earns.
- Everything in Starter
- Service-area pages for local SEO
- Photography direction
- Email list and welcome sequence
- 90 days of tuning after launch
Care & marketing
$850
per month · cancel any time
For a business that wants the site kept up and the marketing run without thinking about it.
- Hosting, updates, backups
- Ongoing SEO and content
- One campaign a month
- Ad management if you run ads
- Monthly report, plain English
The guarantee
See the first design before you're committed.
You pay a deposit, I design the homepage, and you look at it. If it isn't right and you don't want to continue, I refund the deposit in full and you owe nothing. No argument, no invoice for hours spent.
I can offer that because the diagnosis comes first. By the time I'm designing, I already know what your customers are looking for. The risk sits with me, which is where it belongs.
Who you're hiring
One person. The one you talk to.
When you hire me, I'm the person who takes the call, writes the scope, designs the pages, writes the copy, and answers the phone eight months later when something needs changing. There is no account manager, no junior handoff, and no team I'm quietly outsourcing to.
That's the trade. I take on a small number of projects at a time, so I can't start six clients next Tuesday. What you get instead is someone who knows your business well enough to make the small judgment calls without a meeting.
Straight answers
The questions people ask before they call.
Who owns the website when we're done?
You do. The domain is registered in your name, the site and all its content are yours, and if you ever want to move it elsewhere I'll hand over everything and help the next person get set up.
How long until I see results?
The site goes live in two to three weeks. Local search results usually move in six to twelve weeks; that's how long Google takes, and anyone promising faster is guessing. If we run ads, you'll see traffic within days, though tuning takes a few weeks.
What do you need from me?
About three hours in total: the first call, a session where I ask about your customers, and one round of feedback on the draft. I write the copy, so you don't have to. If you have photos of real jobs, send them; they beat stock photography every time.
How does your pricing compare with an agency?
An agency's quote carries an office, salespeople and account managers. Mine doesn't. What you're paying for is the work itself, done by the person you spoke to, and the fact that I'm still answering emails next spring.