About
We build websites that respect the reader. Not a novel idea.
Apparently still not common practice. We started GBTN to fix that, one site at a time, for companies with something worth saying.
Our thinking
Exact beats impressive.
Who this tends to be for
- Founders whose site was built before the company knew what it was.
- Companies whose product got considerably better and whose homepage didn't.
- Anyone who agreed to use a template just for now, some years ago.
Agency sites mostly describe themselves with words like passionate, innovative and storytelling. We aren't going to pretend we have never reached for them, because those words are easy and precision is work. But precision is the part that actually does something: describe the work exactly and the people who want that exact work can find you. Describe it warmly and vaguely and you're one of four hundred.
GBTN started over a fairly boring frustration. Companies with real things to say, sitting inside websites that said nothing. Template layouts, stock photography of somebody pointing at a laptop, copy that would fit any company in the sector after a find-and-replace. None of that is anyone's fault. It's what happens when a website gets treated as a thing you buy instead of a thing you make.
The companies we're built for are usually in one specific moment: early enough that the website still feels provisional, far enough along that provisional has started to cost something. Usually there's a conversation that prompts it: an investor, a hire, a customer who couldn't find the pricing. We come in and make the case, in type, in structure, and in every small interaction somebody has before deciding whether to write to you.
The technical craft is real and it isn't the point. Speed and structure are what make a page legible; they aren't what make it worth reading. What we care about is whether the site says something true about the company, says it in a way a stranger can follow, and makes the next step obvious. Everything else is in service of that, including all the parts we enjoy most.
What we believe
Five things we believe. Two of them cost us money.
We don't invent urgency. We'll tell you about the calendar.
A countdown that resets every midnight, "only 3 left" on a thing there are infinite copies of, a discount that's always on. Those work once per person and then never again. A real constraint is different. A studio this size can only build so much at a time, and saying so is information rather than pressure. The test we apply to anything we put on a page: could this ever be false? If nothing could make it untrue, it's decoration.
Every element earns its place, or it doesn't ship.
Decorative design is noise. Every section, paragraph, and component has to do something specific for the person reading it, and the ones that can't say what get cut. This makes the work harder to produce and better to use.
Speed is designed in, because it can't be added later.
A page that's on your screen in under two and a half seconds, or we haven't finished. The bar is what people expect from the internet in this decade, which is a harder one to clear than whatever slow site you're replacing. Every decision about images, fonts and scripts gets made against that number while there's still time to change it.
The best handoff is one where you don't need us.
We document, we walk through it, we build for maintainability. You own everything we build, and we make sure you can actually run it, including the parts nobody enjoys documenting.
A small roster is the whole model, and it stays that way.
We take on a few projects at a time, and there's no apology hiding inside that sentence. The person who answers your email is the person drawing the layouts and writing the code, which is the good part, and it's also exactly why the number has to stay small. Growing out of it would mean becoming a different studio, and we would rather be this one.
Who you deal with
Small by intention.
Whoever replies to your first email is the same person who draws the layouts and writes the code. There's no account manager in the middle, no junior doing the build after the pitch, and no pool of contractors you never meet. When you ask why something was done a certain way, the answer comes from the person who did it.
What it costs
Capacity, every time. Working this way means taking on few projects at once, so the honest answer is sometimes not yet. If that's the answer, you'll get it in the first reply rather than after three weeks of holding a slot nobody can fill.
Next step
If any of that sounded like the studio you have been looking for, we should talk.
One conversation, and no proposal before anybody understands the problem. Bring the half-formed version if that's what you have. Most of the good projects arrive that way, and the ones that arrive fully specified are usually specified wrong.
Taking on work now. Each project starts when the one before it ends, which is why the dates we give you hold. Calendar checked .