The five phase process: discover, derive, design, build, deploy
Every ThatDeveloperGuy engagement runs through the same five phases. Discover your business in a 30 minute call. Derive every design decision from a real constraint. Design and ship a working demo to staging inside 48 hours. Build hand coded with schema and performance tuned. Deploy with Lighthouse verified and IndexNow submitted. No taste debates, no scope creep, no Dribbble aesthetic for its own sake.
Phase 1: Discover
A single 30 minute video call that covers business model, ideal customer, and search surface in three discrete blocks. Output is a written one page project brief defining success criteria, scope, and binding deliverables. Every subsequent phase references this brief. No design or code work begins until the brief is signed by both sides.
The discovery phase is a single 30 minute video call that covers three specific areas before any design or code work begins. First, the business model: what is sold, how it is delivered, and what makes the offer different from regional competitors. Second, the ideal customer: who buys, where they search, and what triggers a purchase decision. Third, the search surface: the five specific Google or AI Overview queries that should bring qualified inbound leads when ranking is achieved. Joseph documents constraints, technical requirements, brand assets, and timeline. The call output is a written one page project brief that defines success criteria, scope, and binding deliverables. Every subsequent phase references this brief.
Phase 2: Derive
The unusual phase. Every visual element must be derivable from a constraint: a ranking factor, an accessibility requirement, a user journey, a business metric. Color, typeface, and headline choices that cannot be derived do not ship. Derivation is the reason every TDG site reaches v2.3 binding Core Web Vitals thresholds without performance heroics.
This is the unusual phase. Most web design starts with taste. This one starts with constraints. Every element on the page must be derivable from something: a ranking factor, an accessibility requirement, a specific user journey, a business metric. If a color, typeface, or headline cannot be derived from a constraint, it does not ship. Derivation is why every TDG site reaches v2.3 binding thresholds without heroics.
Phase 3: Design
A working homepage demo lives on staging within 48 hours of the derivation brief. You click through, iterate, and confirm direction. This is the review that matters because it happens before any deposit. No payment is required to see a live demo of your own homepage on staging.
Within 48 hours of the derivation brief, a working demo of your homepage is live on staging. You click through it, iterate with me on anything that does not feel right, and confirm direction. This is the review that matters because it happens before you pay anything.
Phase 4: Build
Hand coded HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript. No page builder, no framework overhead, no drag and drop. Schema first, mobile first, accessibility first. Core Web Vitals targets: LCP under 2.5 seconds, CLS under 0.1, INP under 200 milliseconds. Lighthouse runs on every commit and a regression blocks deploy.
Hand coded HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. No page builder, no framework overhead, no drag and drop. Schema first: Organization, Person, WebSite, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList wherever applicable. Mobile first: every page rendered on a 360 pixel viewport before a desktop viewport. Accessibility: 48 pixel touch targets, focus visible, reduced motion support, skip link. Core Web Vitals: LCP under 2.5 seconds, CLS under 0.1, INP under 200 milliseconds.
Phase 5: Deploy
Production deployment runs off hours, zero user impact. Lighthouse on five sample pages confirms v2.3 thresholds. IndexNow fires to Bing and Yandex on first save. Google Search Console reverifies new URLs. Full documentation handoff: file locations, copy editing procedure, image swap procedure, TLS renewal. You own the site from launch day forward.
Production deployment happens off hours to avoid any user impact. Lighthouse run on five sample pages confirms v2.3 thresholds. IndexNow fires to notify Bing, Yandex, and partner engines that the site has changed. Google Search Console verifies new URLs. Full documentation handoff: where every file lives, how to edit copy, how to swap images, how to renew TLS. You own the site completely from launch day one.
Then what?
If you stopped at the one time build, you keep everything you paid for indefinitely. If you continue into a monthly retainer (Basic $250, Full Visibility Stack $397, Premium $500), engine optimization layers in month by month. Rank tracking, content additions, schema refinements, and AEO citation work follow a predictable monthly cadence with documented deliverables.
If you stopped at the one time build, you keep everything you paid for indefinitely. If you continue into a monthly retainer (Basic, Full Visibility Stack, or Premium), we layer in engine optimization month by month. Rank tracking, content additions, schema refinements, and AEO citation work happen on a predictable monthly cadence.