Web Design & Development
Sites that
perform.
We rebuilt an e-commerce store that grew 180% in year one. Not from more traffic — from the same traffic converting at nearly 3x the rate.
The problem
Six failures that prevent most sites from generating leads
These issues are common, often invisible, and directly responsible for the gap between the traffic a site receives and the leads it produces.
Pages loading in 4+ seconds
53% of mobile visitors abandon a page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. Most never come back. A slow site is a lead-generation problem before it is a design problem.
No clear conversion path
Visitors arrive, look around, and leave — because nothing told them what to do next. Conversion architecture is not just a CTA button. It is the structure of every page, above and below the fold.
Google can't understand the site
Missing structured data, broken heading hierarchy, no canonical tags, no sitemap. Google indexes what it can parse — and if it cannot parse yours, your competitors rank instead.
How we think
How we approach every build
Four principles that govern every decision — from stack selection to post-launch refinement.
Speed is a design decision, not a technical afterthought.
Every Machina site scores 90+ on Google Lighthouse — not because we optimize afterward, but because performance is built into the architecture from line one. We chose Next.js for static generation, Tailwind for zero-bloat styling, and Payload CMS for content delivery that does not bottleneck the frontend. A fast site is not the result of clever tricks. It is the result of the right choices, compounded.
A website has one job: get the visitor to act.
We have seen beautiful $80,000 websites that convert 0.3% of visitors. We have built utilitarian sites that convert 6%. The difference is conversion architecture — the invisible hierarchy of prompts, trust signals, and friction reduction that guides someone from curious to calling. Every page we design is built around a primary action. Not a dozen actions. One.
Your CMS should free you, not own you.
WordPress is not a content management system — it is a plugin ecosystem that happens to publish content, at the cost of your security, your performance, and a monthly dependency on plugins that quietly break. We build on Payload CMS: open-source, self-hosted, with a clean editing interface your team can use without touching code. You own the database, the files, and the relationship.
Launch is the beginning. What happens next is the work.
The sites that drive compounding returns are the ones that get refined after launch based on real visitor data — not the ones that ship and sit. We stay close for 90 days post-launch: watching Google Search Console for crawl errors, monitoring Core Web Vitals in the field, and adjusting what the data tells us to adjust. The work does not end at go-live.
What we build
Six kinds of sites. One standard.
Every site we build has a specific job to do. We engineer toward that outcome from discovery to launch — not toward the aesthetic, and not toward a template.
Business websites
5–15 pages, engineered for lead generation. Clear messaging architecture, conversion-optimized layouts, contact and booking integration. Built to rank, built to convert.
E-commerce stores
Custom product catalogs, cart, checkout, and payment processing. Built on Next.js — not Shopify — so you own the platform, the data, and pay zero transaction fees beyond your payment processor.
Booking and scheduling systems
Cal.com integration, custom appointment flows, service-based booking for consultants, clinics, home services, and professionals. Your calendar filled without a phone call.
Content platforms
Headless Payload CMS builds for businesses that publish — insights, case studies, documentation, resources. Your team updates content; we make sure Google finds it.
Landing pages
High-converting, single-purpose pages for paid campaigns. Designed for one goal, A/B test-ready, and fast enough that your Quality Score improves the moment you run them.
Site redesigns
We audit what you have — traffic, conversions, rankings, technical health — then rebuild what needs fixing and amplify what is working. Your SEO equity is preserved throughout.
Results
What this looks like in practice
Two client rebuilds. Different industries, same outcome — more revenue from the same traffic.
How we work
Four steps, in sequence
Discovery before design. Design before build. Build before launch. Each phase depends on the one before it.
Discovery
We spend the first week learning your business before designing anything: your competitors' strengths and gaps, your customers' actual search patterns, your current site's performance data, and the specific conversion goal each page needs to accomplish. Most agencies skip this phase. We consider it the one that makes everything else possible.
Design
We design in Figma — wireframes first to solve the conversion problem, then visual design to solve the brand problem. You review and approve at every stage. No code gets written until you have signed off on the design. Changes in design are free. Changes after build cost time. We do it in this order intentionally.
Build
Next.js on the frontend. Payload CMS for content management. Your forms connected, your analytics installed, your third-party integrations wired. We build in a staging environment so you can review a fully functional site before it goes live. Performance tuned, mobile tested on real devices, structured data validated in Google's Rich Results Test.
Launch & refine
We handle DNS, deployment, and the first weeks of monitoring. Then we stay close for 90 days — responding to crawl errors in Search Console, watching Core Web Vitals in the field, and refining based on what the analytics surface. Post-launch data consistently improves what the build could not anticipate.
How we compare
What a Machina build includes vs a standard agency build
Most of these differences are invisible until they affect your rankings, your load time, or your ability to update your own website.
| Standard agency build | Machina build |
|---|---|
| WordPress + plugin stack | Next.js 15 + Payload CMS — no plugins, no monthly platform fee |
| Lighthouse score 40–60 (fails Core Web Vitals) | Lighthouse score 95–100 (passes Core Web Vitals) |
| SEO bolted on after build as an afterthought | Technical SEO architecture built in from discovery |
| CMS requires a developer to update content | Your team edits content without touching code |
| Delivered at launch, support ends | 90 days of post-launch monitoring and refinement included |
| Ongoing plugin updates and security patches | No plugin dependencies, no recurring patch work |
| Redirects skipped on redesigns | 301 redirects configured — existing SEO equity preserved |
FAQ
What people ask us about web development
Pair with
Web development works best alongside these
Our most significant results come from web development working in concert with traffic and conversion strategy. No one service does it alone.
Ready to build
Tell us what you need built
Custom scope, honest timeline, no cookie-cutter packages
Get started
Ready to build something that performs?
Tell us about your business, your current site, and what you need it to do. We will scope the right build and walk you through exactly how we would approach it.
Service area
Web development across California's Central Coast
Based on California's Central Coast. We work with businesses across the region, Silicon Valley, and greater California — fully remote, with no tradeoff on communication or quality.