( Service · 02 / 08 )
WordPress for content-driven sites. Shopify for ecommerce. Astro or Next.js when it's custom or SaaS. We pick the tool that fits the job — and we don't bolt React onto WordPress because it's fashionable. Every build ships mobile-first and passes the speed tests Google actually grades you on.
Quick facts
What's included
Content sites
The workhorse for content-driven marketing sites — done properly.
Custom themes, not $60 template soup with 40 plugins. Lean builds your team can edit without breaking, locked-down security, automatic updates, and none of the page-builder bloat that makes most WordPress sites crawl.
Ecommerce
When you're selling online, Shopify is the honest answer.
Theme customization or full custom Liquid builds, product architecture that scales past 50 SKUs, checkout that just works, and shipping logic that handles the reality of getting product to and from Alaska.
Custom + SaaS
For when WordPress and Shopify genuinely aren't the shape of the problem.
Booking engines, member portals, dashboards, SaaS products — built on Astro or Next.js with a real database and modern hosting. This site runs on that stack; sub-second loads are the default, not the stretch goal.
Core Web Vitals
Speed is a feature we build in, not a plugin we add later.
Image pipelines, caching, code splitting, font strategy — engineered from day one so the site passes Core Web Vitals on a mid-range phone, not just your office fiber. Fast sites rank better and convert better; that's the whole pitch.
Phones first
Designed and built for the phone screen, then scaled up.
Thumb-reachable buttons, tap targets that work with gloves on, layouts that survive the Parks Highway's one bar of LTE. We test on real devices, not just a resized browser window on a designer's monitor.
After go-live
We don't disappear the day the site ships.
DNS cutover with zero downtime, analytics and search console wired up, backups and updates on a schedule. Ongoing care runs through our retainers — or we hand you the keys and documentation and you run it yourself. Your call.
Hype vs. the alternatives
| Hype Local · Anchorage · right stack | DIY site builder Wix / Squarespace · nights + weekends | Lower-48 agency Big shop · big markup | Offshore dev shop Cheap hourly · you manage it | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | $4k–$15k project | $16–$50/mo + your weekends | $25k–$75k | $2k–$8k + rework |
| Stack choice | ✓ Fitted to the job | Whatever the builder allows | Whatever they resell | Whatever they know |
| Core Web Vitals | ✓ Engineered to pass | Usually fails on mobile | Hit or miss | Rarely measured |
| Mobile testing | ✓ Real devices, slow networks | ✗ Whatever the preview shows | Emulators | ✗ Rarely |
| Who fixes it at 4pm Friday | Us, same timezone | You | A ticket queue, 4 hrs behind | Tomorrow, maybe |
| Ownership | ✓ Domain, code, content — yours | Locked to the platform | ✓ Usually | Varies — check the contract |
| Knows Alaska bandwidth reality | ✓ We live on it | ✓ You do, the builder doesn't | ✗ "Just use 5G" | ✗ No |
Before and after the build
How a build runs
Is this a fit?
If you've watched a customer wait for your homepage on their phone and felt embarrassed, that's revenue leaking — and it's very fixable.
Wix got you started, and that was the right call then. Now you need booking, ecommerce, or speed the builder physically can't deliver.
Retail, gear, coffee, seafood shipped out of state: a proper Shopify build with Alaska-aware shipping logic pays for itself.
Our developers build what our designers drew — no contractor roulette, no "that's a dev problem" finger-pointing.
Probably no if:
If the current site is five years of patches on a hacked theme, adding one more feature makes it worse. We'll give you the honest rebuild-vs-patch math instead.
Under that, a well-configured template on Squarespace or a lean Shopify theme is genuinely the better buy. We'll point you at the right one — free advice, no hard feelings.
If you're locked into a platform contract that's wrong for the job, we'd be building on sand. Let's talk when the contract's up.
Real builds take weeks because testing takes weeks. Anyone promising a custom site in five days is skipping the part where it works on your customers' phones.
Questions, answered
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