Skyward Digital
Skyward Digital Before you pay a deposit
For anybody about to commission a website Every figure here includes GST

You are asked to pay for a website before anybody has shown you one.

Nearly everything else a business buys can be looked at first. You walk around the ute. You pick the tool up. You stand in the premises before you sign the lease. A website is the one purchase where the money moves on a description — a quote, a list of inclusions, perhaps a picture of a design — and the thing itself arrives weeks later. That gap is where almost every bad website story actually happens, and price has very little to do with it. What follows is what sits inside the gap, the six things worth getting written down before any money moves, and the one arrangement that removes the problem rather than managing it.

What happens in the gap Skip to the six to get in writing
Where it goes wrongIn the gap, not the price
Things to agree firstSix, all in writing
What a deposit should buyA named thing, by a date
What we ask for up frontNothing at all
01 / THE GAP

The money moves first.
The website turns up
seven weeks later.
That is the problem.

Seven things happen in between, and almost none of them is anybody behaving badly. They are the places where two people who got on well at the start discover they had different pictures in their heads, at a point where money has already changed hands and neither of them wants to be the one who raises it. Read them once and you will recognise which one you are in, or which one you are about to walk into.

01
The start of it

The brief that was a conversation in a driveway

Forty minutes of good talk, a lot of nodding, and nothing written down except a price. Both of you leave certain you agreed on the same website. Neither of you has a document that would settle it, and the first time anybody finds out is when something is built.

When it happensAt the very start, before any money moves, which is also the only cheap moment to fix it. What it costs youEverything downstream. Every argument later in this list is really this one, arriving late and with a deposit already paid.
02
The money

A deposit with nothing written against it

Half up front is an ordinary and reasonable way to work. What is not ordinary is a deposit that does not name what it buys. A deposit should correspond to a thing and a date — a draft of these pages, by that Friday — rather than to a stage of the relationship.

When it happensUsually within a day or two of agreeing, often before the brief exists in writing. What it costs youYour leverage, and your sense of where you are. With nothing named, there is no date on which anybody is late and no moment at which you are entitled to look at something.
03
The reveal

The first draft, which is a template with your logo on it

It is not that templates are wrong. Most good sites start from one. It is that the first thing you are shown is often the only thing you will be shown, and if it arrives as a flat picture rather than as a page you can open, you cannot tell which parts are yours and which parts came with it.

When it happensTwo to four weeks in, at the one meeting that decides most of what the site will be. What it costs youThe chance to say no cheaply. By this point the money is spent, the enthusiasm has gone out of it, and most people say it is fine because the alternative is starting again.
04
The stall

The words, which were always your job and nobody said so

This is the most common reason a build stops, and it is nobody's fault in particular. The studio assumed you would send the text for the services. You assumed writing the website was what you were paying for. Six weeks pass in which neither side wants to be the one chasing.

When it happensRight after the design is signed off, and it can run for months. What it costs youThe launch date, and usually the goodwill. A job that stalls on content is remembered by both sides as the other one going quiet.
05
The squeeze

The revisions that ran out

Two rounds of changes was in the quote and it sounded generous. Then it turns out a round is whatever the studio says a round is, and three separate emails on a Tuesday were one round or three depending on who you ask. Nobody defined it because at the start nobody expected to need it.

When it happensLate, when the site is nearly right and the remaining changes are the ones you care most about. What it costs youThe last ten per cent, which is the part a visitor actually notices. Most sites that read as nearly-finished are a build that ran out of rounds.
06
The drift

A launch date that moved twice and then stopped being mentioned

It slips a fortnight, which is fine. Then it slips again without a new date attached, which is the part that matters. A date that moves to a new date is a project. A date that moves to no date has quietly become whenever everybody gets round to it.

When it happensAny time after the deposit, and it compounds with every row above it. What it costs youA season. Trades and local businesses have months that matter, and a site that arrives in July having been promised for spring has missed the thing it was built for.
07
The end of it

The handover that never quite happened

The site goes live, the final invoice is paid, and everybody is pleased. What was never done is the dull part: the domain, the hosting, the platform login and the Google profile put in your name, written down, and proved to work. A year later you want one price changed and nobody can remember who holds what.

When it happensAt the end, when both sides have stopped paying attention and the job feels finished. What it costs youYour ability to leave, or to change anything without permission. That one has a page of its own, because it is the most expensive of the seven to unpick afterwards.
02 / BEFORE THE MONEY MOVES

Six sentences, in
writing, and six of
the seven stop
being possible.

None of this needs a lawyer and none of it needs to be adversarial. An email that says "just so we both have it written down" does the whole job, and a studio worth hiring will be relieved rather than offended — most of these arguments cost them more than they cost you. Ask for all six before the deposit, because afterwards you are negotiating and before it you are just being organised.

Closes row 02

What the deposit buys, and by when

Not "to start the project". A thing and a date: the homepage designed and viewable by the 14th, or these four pages drafted by the end of the month. If the deposit buys a named deliverable then everybody knows what late looks like, and you have a natural place to stop if the first thing you see is not what you expected. This single sentence is worth the other five put together.

Closes row 04

Who is writing the words, and when they are needed

The single most common reason a website is six months late. Write down whether the text is yours or theirs, service page by service page, and if any of it is yours, put a date on it and treat that date as seriously as you would treat theirs. If the answer is that they will write it, ask what they need from you to do that and when they need it — there is always something, and it is usually a half-hour phone call nobody booked.

Closes row 03

What you will actually see, and on what

Ask for the first draft as a page you can open on your own phone at its own address, not as a picture in a slide deck or a PDF. The difference is enormous and it costs a studio almost nothing to agree to. A page can be scrolled, tapped, read in the sun and shown to somebody else; a picture of a page can only be approved. Put the word "on a phone" in the sentence, because that is where your customers will be.

Closes row 05

How many rounds, and what counts as one

Two rounds is fine. Two undefined rounds is a disagreement waiting for a date. Define it in one line — a round is one consolidated list of changes sent in a single email, and anything we have got factually wrong is fixed outside the count. That last clause is the important half, and almost nobody asks for it. It is also entirely reasonable: correcting a wrong phone number is not a revision.

Closes row 06

What finished means, and what happens if a date moves

Agree what the last day looks like: these pages live at this address, the form delivering to this inbox, tested on a phone. Then agree the dull mechanic — if a date moves, a new date goes in the same email. Not a penalty and not a telling-off; just the rule that a date is always replaced by another date rather than by silence. Projects do not usually fail on one big slip. They fail on the second one that nobody wrote down.

Closes row 07

Whose name every account goes in, from day one

The domain, the hosting, the platform or site login, and the Google profile. In your name, with you as the owner and them added as a manager, rather than the other way round and sorted out later. Ask for it at the start rather than at the end, because at the start it is a sentence and at the end it is a favour. If any answer is that it has to be in their name, that is worth understanding before you pay rather than after.

That is six sentences and about ten minutes of somebody's evening, and it closes six of the seven rows above. The one it cannot close is row 01 — the gap between what you pictured and what they pictured — because no clause fixes that. Only looking at the thing does. Section 03 is why a picture of a website will not do it, and what will.

03 / SEE IT FIRST

A picture of a
website is not
a website, and
it never was.

Almost everyone commissioning a site is shown a design before they are shown a page — a flat image, in a slide, on a laptop, in a meeting. It is a reasonable way to work and it is how the industry has always done it. It is also the single reason row 03 exists, because there are four things a picture cannot tell you and all four of them are things you will care about later.

A picture cannot show it

What it is like to use with one thumb

Most of the people deciding whether to ring you are holding a phone, often outdoors, often in a hurry. A design shown at full width on a laptop tells you how it looks. It tells you nothing about how far down the number is, whether the menu is reachable, or how long it takes to open on three bars of signal in a van.

Why it is different: this is not a matter of taste that two reasonable people could disagree on. It is either usable with one thumb or it is not, and thirty seconds with the real thing settles it in a way that no amount of looking at a picture ever will.

A picture cannot show it

Which parts are yours and which came with the template

A flat image of a page looks equally finished whether every word on it was written for your business or whether it is a demo with your logo dropped in. The giveaway is usually the text — headings that could belong to any business in your trade, a paragraph about quality and reliability — and in a picture that reads as placeholder you will replace later.

Why it is different: you often do not replace it later. Row 04 is why. The words are the part that stalls, and a draft that already contains real sentences about your actual work is evidence that somebody has done the hard half rather than the easy half.

A picture cannot show it

Whether anything behind it actually works

The enquiry form in a design is a drawing of a form. It does not send anything, nothing arrives anywhere, and the question of where an enquiry ends up has not been answered — it has been illustrated. The same goes for the phone link, the map, and every other thing on the page that is supposed to do something.

Why it is different: a form that quietly does not deliver is the one fault on a website that costs you a customer who had already chosen you. It is worth proving once, at the start, on the first thing you are ever shown, rather than discovering it in March.

A picture cannot show it

What somebody else thinks of it

A real page has an address. You can text it to your partner, to the person who answers your phone, to a customer you get on with, and get an opinion that is not yours — from somebody looking at it the way a stranger would, on their own phone, without you standing over them explaining what it will be.

Why it is different: a slide in somebody's meeting cannot be forwarded and cannot be looked at alone. Of everything in this section, this is the one that most often changes a decision, and it is the one nobody thinks to ask for.

So the thing to ask for, of anybody, is a real page at a real address that you can open on your own phone — before the final money, and ideally before any of it. Plenty of studios will do this if you ask, and asking costs you nothing. What you are after is not a favour or a free sample; it is the ordinary position you are in with every other thing you buy, which is that you get to look at it. Section 05 is how we handle it, and section 04 is what to ask first.

04 / SEVEN QUESTIONS

Seven questions
for anybody about
to take a deposit
off you.

Ask all seven of everybody you are considering, including us, and ask them in the same email so the answers can be read side by side. None of them is hostile and none of them should take more than a sentence. The useful part is not any single answer — it is that a studio without a method cannot get through all seven without saying it depends, and a studio with one will answer the lot before lunch.

  1. Question 1

    Can I see a real page you have built, at its own address, on my phone?

    Not a screenshot in a proposal and not a gallery of thumbnails. An address you can type in. Everything in section 03 depends on this one, and it is also the fastest way to find out whether the work in the proposal is the work you would get. If the honest answer is that a site is not public yet, ask what they can show instead and why.

  2. Question 2

    What exactly does the deposit buy, and by what date?

    A thing and a day, in the quote, in writing. It does not have to be a big thing — a designed homepage you can open is plenty. What matters is that the first payment corresponds to something you will be holding rather than to the project having begun.

  3. Question 3

    Who writes the words, and what do you need from me?

    Ask it even if you think you know, and ask for the answer page by page. Then ask for the date they need your half, and put it in your own calendar rather than theirs. This question prevents more delay than the other six combined.

  4. Question 4

    What is a round of changes, and what is outside the count?

    One consolidated list in one email, and anything factually wrong fixed free. Get both halves. The second half is the one that stops a disagreement about whether correcting your own opening hours used up a revision you were saving.

  5. Question 5

    What will I have seen before the final invoice?

    The whole site, live, at a temporary address, on a phone, with the form tested end to end. Anybody can agree to that and it costs nothing. If the sequence is that you pay in full and then it goes live, you are approving a thing you have only been told about.

  6. Question 6

    What happens if I do not like it?

    Ask it plainly and listen to how comfortable the answer is. There is no right answer here and a studio is entitled to be paid for work done — what you are listening for is whether they have thought about it before, which tells you whether it has come up and how it went.

  7. Question 7

    Whose name do the domain and the hosting go in, and when?

    Yours, from the start, with them as a manager. Any other answer may still be workable but it should be a decision rather than something you find out about in two years. The five accounts a site consists of are set out properly on their own page.

  8. No remedy

    The build that quietly became nobody's job

    This is the one that is nobody's fault and costs the most, and it is why section 02 exists. A deposit was paid, the words never came, both sides decided the other one had gone quiet, and eighteen months later there is a half-built site at a temporary address that neither party wants to raise. There is no clause that rescues it afterwards. If you are in one now, the move is a single plain email — here is what I still owe you, here is what I am waiting on, can we put a date on both — and most of them restart on that sentence. If it does not restart, at least ask for the domain and the accounts to be put in your name so the next studio is not starting from nothing.

05 / OURS

We build the real
homepage first. You
pay nothing until you
have seen it.

Not a mockup, not a picture, not a template with your logo on it. Your actual homepage, written about your actual work, live at an address we send you, which you open on your own phone wherever you happen to be standing. If it is not right we will have another go. If you do not want it, you say so and that is the end of it — there is no invoice, no deposit to argue about and nothing to cancel. The sequence is the whole offer: you are deciding about a thing rather than about a description of a thing.

Step one · about twenty minutes

A conversation, and then we go away

On the phone or at a job, whichever is easier. What you do, where you do it, what you want more of, what you are sick of being asked on the phone, and which competitor's site you have looked at. We will also ask what you have got already — a logo, photographs, a Google profile, an existing site. Nothing is required and a business with none of those is a perfectly ordinary starting point.

Step two · usually a few days

We build the homepage

Properly, with real words about your work rather than placeholder text, the photographs you have got or none if you have not, and a working enquiry form. It is the same standard of build you would be paying for, because a demo built to a lower standard would be telling you something false about what you would get. No money has moved at this point and none is going to until you have looked at it.

Step three · yours to keep looking at

You get an address and you go away with it

Open it on your phone, in the van, outside. Text it to whoever you talk things over with. Send yourself an enquiry through the form and watch it arrive. Sit on it for a week if you want to — there is no countdown on it and nobody will ring you every second day. The only thing we ask is that you tell us either way in the end, because a maybe that goes quiet is the one outcome that wastes both our time.

Step four · only if you want it

Then, and only then, a price and a deposit

If you want the site, we quote the tier that fits and take a deposit against a named set of pages and a date, exactly as section 02 says you should insist on from anybody. If you do not want it, you owe nothing and we do not keep ringing. And if what you actually need is the $395 Google profile rather than a website, we will say so — that is a smaller sale and it is frequently the right one.

Seeing your homepage

The conversation, the build and the address. No deposit, no deposit to refund, no obligation at the end of it and no sequence of emails afterwards. If the answer is no, the honest thing to say is that we will have spent a day on it and learned something about your trade, which is a trade we were willing to make before you rang.

$0and nothing owed if the answer is no

A website, if you want it

Three tiers. Essential at $2,450 for up to four pages, Standard at $3,450 for up to eight with a page for each service, and Lead Engine at $5,950 with service and suburb pages, a local search campaign, the missed-enquiry assistant for a year and three months of care. The homepage you already looked at is the first page of whichever one you pick, not a thing that gets thrown away, and the founding price takes $500 off any of the three.

$2,450to $5,950, three tiers

Google Business Profile setup

The smaller door, and for a lot of businesses the right one to go through first. Claimed, verified and in your name, with the categories, service areas, hours, photographs and review link all done properly, in a day. You keep it whether or not you ever build a site with us, and if you do build later it comes off the list rather than being done twice.

$395one-off, no website needed

Care plan

Optional on every tier and saying no to it changes nothing about what you own. Hosting, domain and certificates on one bill, unlimited small edits inside 48 hours, a monthly look at the Google profile, backups and updates checked rather than assumed. What a monthly fee is actually made of is written out in full, including the eight jobs you should keep for yourself.

$169per month, or $1,690 a year — two months free

Every figure on this page includes GST and nothing is added at the end. You own the site, the domain and the content, and you hold every login from the first day rather than the last — there is no lock-in, no exit fee and nothing to pay to leave. The founding price takes $500 off any website, for the first ten clients, in exchange for three things written into the job: an honest Google review once the work is done, a testimonial we can use, and permission to publish the build as a case study. It is a trade rather than a discount, and we do not discount off-menu. Full pricing, tier by tier.

06 / STRAIGHT UP

The three awkward
questions about
working for free.

What stops somebody taking the homepage and walking off with it? Nothing, practically. Somebody could take the words, show the page to a cheaper builder and ask for the same thing. We have thought about it and decided we would rather carry that than ask for money from people who have not seen anything — partly because it is the right way round, and partly because the arithmetic favours it. A homepage is a day. A client who went ahead because they had already seen the thing is worth a great deal more than a day, and the ones who would walk off with it were never going to sign anyway. If it turns into a pattern we will say so on this page rather than quietly adding a condition to the offer.

Is this not just free spec work with a better name on it? It is spec work and we are not going to pretend otherwise. The difference, and it is the whole difference, is that nobody is competing for it. You are not one of five studios each building something for a client who will use four of them for nothing — this is one business, one homepage, built once, and the only question at the end is yes or no. The arrangement we would refuse is the other one: being asked to build something alongside two other studios so somebody can pick. That is not a demo, it is an unpaid competition, and section 04's aside says the same thing to you about asking for it.

How can a studio afford to work before it is paid? Because it is two people with AI doing the heavy lifting and a human reading every line, which is how a homepage is a day rather than a fortnight. We say that openly on the homepage and in the questions, for the same reason it is said here: the cost structure is the reason this offer exists at all and pretending otherwise would make it sound like generosity. A studio with six staff and a lease could not do this, and we are not pretending to be one.

And the part we cannot dress up. Skyward is new and has no clients yet, so nothing above is a story about the forty homepages we built last year. There are no testimonials on this site because there are none to print, and the builds in the portfolio are invented businesses, labelled as such on every page of them. Building first is not a technique we settled on after years of trying things — it is the only argument a studio with no track record has got, which is exactly why you can rely on us to keep offering it. The first ten clients also get $500 off for helping with the not-having-any problem, in exchange for a review, a testimonial and permission to publish the build.

07 / QUESTIONS

Six from people
about to commission
a website.

How long before I see the homepage?

Usually a few days from the conversation, and we will give you a day rather than a vague answer when we have heard what the business is. If it is going to be longer than that — a busy week, or a trade we want to read up on properly first — you will be told the date up front and told again if it moves, which is the same rule section 02 says you should hold anybody to.

There is nothing to pay in the meantime and nothing to sign, so if it takes a week longer than you hoped you have lost nothing but the wait.

What do you need from me before you can build it?

Less than people expect. The conversation, and then whatever you happen to have — a logo, some photographs off your phone, the services you want to be known for. If you have no logo and no photographs we will still build it; the page will just be honest about being a page without photographs rather than filled with stock pictures of strangers in hard hats.

What genuinely helps is five minutes on what you get asked on the phone all day. That is usually the best material on the finished site and it is the thing only you have got.

What if I like it but want it different?

Then say so and we will have another go, still before any money moves. That is a normal outcome rather than a problem — a first build is a proposal about your business made by somebody who has spoken to you once, and being told it is wrong in the second paragraph is useful. There is no round count operating at this stage because there is no job yet.

What we will not do is keep going indefinitely without a decision. If the second one is not right either, the honest conclusion is usually that we are not the right studio for you, and we would rather say that than build a fifth.

Can I show it to somebody else before I decide?

Please do, and it is one of the main reasons it is a real page with a real address rather than a picture. Send it to your partner, to whoever answers your phone, to a customer whose opinion you trust. Ask them to open it on their own phone without you talking over them, because that is the condition your actual customers will be in.

If somebody tells you the number is hard to find or the first line does not say what you do, that is worth more to us than a polite yes, and we would rather hear it before the job than after.

Do I have to take the hosting and the care plan from you?

No, to both, and the price of the build does not change either way. The site, the domain and the content are in your name from the first day, so you can host it wherever you like and have anybody look after it. Plenty of people take the build and run the monthly routine themselves, and the whole of that routine is written out on the care page for nothing.

The one thing worth doing either way is proving the enquiry form delivers once a month. It is sixty seconds and it is the only failure on a website that costs you somebody who had already decided to ring you.

What happens to the homepage if I say no?

The temporary address comes down and that is the end of it. You are not invoiced, you are not added to a mailing list, and nobody rings you in the spring to see whether you have reconsidered. If you want the words we wrote for your own use somewhere else, ask and you can have them — it is a day of our time against the chance you come back in a year, and we would rather be remembered as the people who did not make it awkward.

We will ask you one question on the way out, which is what made it a no. You are not obliged to answer it and it is the most useful thing we could possibly be told.

ALSO WRITTEN

Three places to
go from here.

One if the question underneath this one is really the number, one if it is what you are left holding at the end, and one if you have not actually settled whether you need a website at all.

If it is the number

What a website costs, and what moves it.

Two honest quotes can be four thousand dollars apart without either of them being wrong. What each price band actually buys, the decisions that move the number, and eight questions that make two quotes comparable — this studio included.

 If it is what you keep

The five accounts, and whose name each one is in.

Row 07 above, done properly. A website is a domain, a DNS record, a hosting account, the site itself and a Google listing, routinely held by different people. Six checks you can do tonight without asking anybody.

 If you are not sure yet

Whether you need one at all.

Close to half of New Zealand businesses have none, and whether that is costing you anything depends on where your work actually comes from. A way to find out before you spend, including the answer that you do not need one.
08 / ASK

Tell us what you do.
We will build the
homepage and send
you the address.

No deposit, no obligation and nothing to cancel. A conversation of about twenty minutes, then a few days, then a link you open on your own phone and sit with for as long as you want. If the answer is no you owe nothing and you will not be chased. And if you are already mid-job with somebody else, say so — ask us the seven questions in section 04 and we will answer them about ourselves, which is more use to you than a pitch.

Phone or text022 584 0585 Emailjosh@skywarddigital.co.nz The smaller doorGoogle profile setup, $395

Josh reads these himself. There is no salesperson, no sequence of emails afterwards, and asking for a homepage does not put you on a list.

We use these details only to reply to your enquiry and, if you go ahead, to run the job. We don't sell them, we don't add you to a mailing list, and you can ask us to delete them any time by emailing Josh. No spam, no obligation, no sales sequence. The full privacy statement says who else handles them and for how long.