A pest control site is not priced like a brochure. When a company asks me for a quote, I skip the page count and ask these first: 1. Which pests do you treat? Each one should get its own page. A visitor with carpenter ants wants a page about carpent...

When a moving company asks for a website, I skip the page list and start with one question: what happens after someone presses Submit? That answer sets most of the cost. Here is the checklist I run through before estimating: 1. Form depth. A shor...

When a store reports "No shipping options were found," the first useful question is where in the pipeline the rates vanish. Zones and methods are only one possibility. A plugin can filter them out, or the rates can exist and fail to display. WooComm...

Most local-service sites treat the contact form as an afterthought. For a painting contractor it is the main conversion point, so it deserves the same care as the design. Why painters are different from emergency trades: nobody calls a painter at mi...

Electricians look like an easy client: a few pages, a phone number, done. In practice the site is a trust check. Customers cannot judge wiring, so they judge the website before they call. That changes how I scope the work. First, proof. I plan a blo...

HVAC contractors look like an easy client. Five pages, a phone number, done. I have learned to scope them more carefully, because the real work hides in a few places. First, I split visitors into two groups: someone with a dead furnace tonight, and ...

A client message I see often: "the site went white after I installed a plugin," and the log shows an allowed memory size error. Here is the order I work in, because the usual advice skips a step. First, I do not touch any file. I read the error. The...

A landscaping owner once told me, "I just need a simple site." Ten minutes later we had listed a gallery, five services, four towns, a quote form with photo upload, and weekly mowing sign-ups. Here are the questions that turned a vague request into a...

A repair shop owner asked me for a "basic website" last month. After ten minutes of questions it became three different projects with three different prices. These are the questions I now ask before I quote anything. 1. How do customers contact you ...

When a tutor or learning center asks for a website quote, I do not start with design. I start with five scoping questions, because the answers decide whether the project is a $2,000 build or a $10,000 one. 1. Who needs to book, and with whom? A solo...

When a store owner messages me "my product options disappeared," the first thing I do is resist the urge to start changing things. Missing variation dropdowns look dramatic, but the cause is usually small. What matters is the order you check in, beca...

I build WordPress sites for local service businesses, and cleaning companies are one of the most common requests. They also tend to ask for a price before they know what they need. Over time I have settled on a handful of questions that turn a vague...

Daycare and preschool inquiries look uniform and aren't. "We need a website for our center" can mean a five-page brochure or an admissions funnel with tour booking, a waitlist and secure forms. Here are the questions I settle before I price anything...

When a therapist or counselor asks for a website quote, the visible work a clean theme, five to eight pages is the easy part. Three decisions underneath decide whether the project stays on budget. 1. What happens to the form data? A contact form ...

"I can type my password but WordPress just sends me back to the login page." I get this one a lot, and it nearly always shows up right after an SSL install, a www change, or a host move. Here is how I triage it. Step 0: Backup. Most fixes touch wp-c...

Over the years, coupon complaints have been one of the most common WooCommerce support requests I handle. The surprise is how rarely it is a code bug. Here is how I triage one. Step 1: Get the exact error text. Ask the customer for a screenshot, or ...

When an interior designer asks for a website quote, the number depends on a handful of decisions that are easy to overlook in the first call. This is the checklist I run through before pricing one. 1 What does the site need to do? Credibility only, ...

Flower shops look like an easy WooCommerce project until you list the rules. Most online stores sell items that ship in a few days. A florist sells a perishable product that has to arrive on a chosen date, so nearly every order carries conditions. H...

When a photographer asks for a quote, the first surprise is usually the price gap between quotes. The second is that most of the difference comes from work nobody sees: how the site handles images. I build WordPress and WooCommerce sites for a livin...

When a client reports "the cart doesn't update," the instinct is often to dive into the theme's cart.php template first. That's usually the wrong place to start — in most real cases, the cause is upstream of any custom code. Here's the triage order ...