Website design and development for small businesses in Raleigh, NC
As a small business owner or marketer, when was the last time you looked at your website and thought, “Yep, this is definitely helping us win business”? For many companies, the answer is somewhere between “a while ago” and “please don’t make us look at it.”
Your website is the always-on, digital face of your business. For manufacturers, home builders, architectural firms, and other service-based companies, that first impression shapes how buyers judge your professionalism, credibility, and quality of work.
Conversion Fox Marketing provides website design and development for companies in Apex, Cary, Holly Springs, and the greater Raleigh, NC area. If you need a sharp, conversion-driven website that reflects your brand, connects with your audience, and you can keep up-to-date on your own without needing a developer, you’re in the right place.
The combination we provide that many agencies simply can't offer
Conversion-focused web design
We build websites around your business, branding, customers, and the way people actually make buying decisions. The end result is a professional website that builds trust, highlights what sets you apart from the pack, and guides visitors toward a conversion.
SEO-friendly website development
Our websites are built to be SEO-friendly so that search engines get a better understanding of your business and potential customers have a better chance of finding you when they search for the products or services you provide.
Easy-to-manage websites
We build websites on an easy-to-use platform called WordPress. This lets you easily update text, add images, create new pages, and make simple changes without needing coding skills or ongoing developer support.
Budget-friendly websites for small businesses
When it comes to the cost of a small business website, our websites tend to be a great option for small companies who need a professional online presence but lack a massive website budget. Lower overhead and a one-fox team means lower costs for us and our clients.
Industry-specific knowledge
We focus on a few industries because we prefer to know a handful of businesses extremely well than claim to be experts in everything. That helps us build websites around the questions, buying habits, and pain points of your ideal customers.
Local insights
We’re an Apex-based web design agency that understands the challenges small businesses face throughout Apex, Cary, Holly Springs, Raleigh, and the surrounding area. As a result, we build sites with local customers, local search visibility, and the competitive Wake County market in mind.
What we mean by "SEO-friendly websites"
There’s a lot that goes in to making your website easy to find in the organic search results. As you’re evaluating web design agencies, you might notice that nearly every company has their own approach to making websites that are “search engine-friendly” or “SEO-friendly.”
The way we build SEO-friendly websites is by applying the foundational pillars of SEO.
To us, this includes the factors outlined below:
- Keyword-focused page titles
- Meta descriptions that entice users to click on your site
- Headers (H1, H2, and so on) that create a natural flow from one section to the next
- Intuitive site structure and clean URLs
- Image alt text to improve accessibility
- Interlinking that guides visitors- and search engine crawlers- to relevant pages on your site
- Schema mark-up that gives search engines more context about the information on your website
- Creation of an LLMS.txt file for content discovery on LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude
- Integration with your Google Search Console account
- Sitemap submitted to Google for proper indexing
Built on user-friendly Content Management Systems
A Content Management System (CMS) is the platform that powers your website and is the tool where you manage your website pages, text, images, and other types of media. There are many CMSs available these days, each with their own strengths and weaknesses based on the specific needs and capabilities of the business. We build websites exclusively on WordPress CMS due to the overall design flexibility, ease-of-use for small businesses, and general popularity.
WordPress CMS
Powering more than 43% of websites worldwide, WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems available. It’s flexible, easy to update, and well suited for many small businesses.
Because WordPress is open source, you own your website and have the freedom to choose the hosting provider that best fits your needs. We often recommend providers like Hostinger and WP Engine, but you’re never limited to those options.
Like any software, WordPress requires occasional updates to its core software, themes, and even our favorite plugins to stay secure and perform well. When it comes to websites built by Conversion Fox Marketing, we offer an optional monthly WordPress maintenance plan so businesses don’t need to worry about keeping plugins and WordPress up-to-date themselves.
Our process for launching new websites in just 3 to 5 weeks
When your choose Conversion Fox Marketing to build your new website, we guide you through a structured process inteded to minimize surprises, keep your project moving on schedule, and launch a website that reflects your business. For an in-depth look at the step-by-step process, our article on how we build WordPress websites walks through the entire process.
Discovery and planning (Week 1)
Every successful website redesign starts with a thorough discovery process.
We learn about your business, ask about your products or services, review your target audience, and evaluate any systems your website needs to connect with, such as CRM platforms, scheduling tools, or lead forms.
Whether you’re a home remodeling company looking to showcase completed projects or a manufacturer explaining complex products, this discovery process gives us the foundation to build a website that reflects your business and supports your sales process.
Design and development (Week 2-3)
With a clear strategy in place, we begin designing and developing your new website. This includes setting up hosting so your new WordPress website has a place to live.
Every page is built to reflect your brand, communicate what makes your business different, and guide prospective customers toward taking the next step, whether that’s requesting a quote, scheduling a consultation, or contacting your team.
Along the way, we implement foundational SEO best practices to help search engines understand your website. This provides businesses like consulting firms, architects, and manufacturers a stronger foundation for attracting qualified visitors over time.
Website testing (Week 3-4)
Before your website goes live, we carefully test every aspect of the site to ensure it delivers a smooth experience for your visitors.
We verify that forms, links, integrations, navigation, and mobile layouts all work properly so potential customers don’t encounter unnecessary obstacles when they’re ready to contact you. We also make final refinements to ensure the website looks polished and performs reliably across today’s most common browsers and devices.
Training and launch (Week 4-5)
Once you’ve approved the finished website, we launch it and provide hands-on training so you feel comfortable managing your content through the website’s content management system (CMS). We’ll show you how to update text, replace photos, publish blog articles, and make other common changes, allowing you to keep your website current without relying on a developer for every update.
Whether you want to add photos of your latest remodeling project, publish a new case study, or announce a new service, you’ll have the knowledge to keep your website working for your business long after launch.
Case study: Website redesign for components supplier near Raleigh, NC
Hawk & Bear Tactical needed a modern website that better showcased its products and strengthened its online presence. See how Conversion Fox Marketing redesigned the entire site in a mere 4 weeks, switching from a GoDaddy template to a new platform. The end result: a better navigation, SEO-friendly foundations, and a streamlined user experience.
Website design rates
Not all web design agencies publish prices, but we believe it’s better for prospective clients to at least have a general sense of how much a new website might cost if you’re considering working with Conversion Fox Marketing.
Our new websites typically start between $4,000 – $4,500 for the cost to design and develop a 5-10 page, SEO-friendly website with blog functionality. As the scope of the website project grows, so too does the overall project cost.
Feel free to get a ballpark estimate for a new website by using our Website Cost Estimate Calculator, or request a consultation so we can better understand your business and website goals and provide a detailed quote.
WordPress website hosting recommendations
A reliable, secure hosting provider plays an important role in keeping your small business website online, fast, and accessible around the clock. If you choose a new WordPress website, we’ll recommend a hosting provider based on your needs. We also explain the differences between several of our recommended WordPress website hosting platforms so you have the information needed to make an informed decision.
Hostinger
Hostinger provides several options that are generally suitable for many small business websites. Hostinger’s Premium hosting option may be sufficient for many small business websites, though you’re welcome to browse all of their options.
WP Engine
Another hosting option is WP Engine, which has been around for quite some time. While WP Engine’s plans are relatively pricier than some of Hostinger’s plans, it still gives small businesses another option to consider for WordPress website hosting.
Frequently asked questions
How involved is a website design process?
Since you know the ins-and-outs of your business, industry, and customers’ burning questions, we’ll lean on you to understand these things so that we can put together a site plan (i.e. the pages that will be on your website) and provide guidance on what type of content to include on the primary pages of your site. If you’d like for us to develop the content (i.e. text and imagery) for your new website then we’ll include that in the proposal. We’ll need your approval on how your new website looks and functions before launch, and of course we’ll do a 1-hour training session to familiarize you with how to manage the content on your new website (e.g. adding pages, updating text, replacing images).
All in, for a 5-10 page website where the client creates content, we’d estimate most clients should expect to invest about 10 hours into the project.
What are some ways to keep web design costs manageable?
We get it – a new website can seem like an expensive investment for some businesses, especially if this is your company’s first professionally designed, new website. A few ways to keep costs managable include:
- Writing page content yourself and then use a third-party tool for copy edits
- Taking photos of your business and/or incorporate professional photos from free stock photo sites like Unsplash
- Getting the pages and functionality you’ll actually use (developers can create some amazing functionality, but ask yourself if those features will be worth the additional expense)
- Choosing a design template that fits your overall style to avoid lots of revisions
Do you build sites from scratch or use templates
We build off of WordPress templates as a way to keep costs manageable for our clients, both in the short and the long-term. Since many companies get a new website every 3-5 years, it can be easier to digest the cost of a new website when the design fees are lower as a result of using a template (which can be customized to an extent to align with your branding) versus starting a new design from scratch.
How should my company prepare for a new website?
You’re already on your way. In addition to researching web design agencies, follow these steps to better prepare for a new website or redesign.
What's the process for getting started?
Once you’ve decided you’re ready to pursue a new website, fill-out the form on our Contact page to tell us a bit about your needs. We’ll schedue a pressure-free, no-hassel consultation to better understand your goals and determine if we’re the right fit. If everything sounds good, we’ll send over a proposal with a detailed quote for you to review. Once we receive a signed copy of the proposal, we’ll get things moving by scheduling a kick-off meeting to map the path forward.
Do I have to purchase a website maintenance plan?
No, your website belongs to you and you’re free to manage updates yourself or work with another provider.
If you’d rather have someone else handle WordPress updates and monitoring, we offer optional monthly maintenance plans designed to keep your website secure and running smoothly.
Still comparing web agencies? Good.
You should compare your options before investing in a new website. If Conversion Fox Marketing ends up on your shortlist, let’s talk. If we’re not the best fit, we’ll tell you. That’s how this should work.