Liquia Design

Liquia Design Custom web design and local SEO for established service businesses across Southeast Michigan.

Nearly 20 years of design experience, UX and strategy structured around how your audience makes decisions.

I'm scheduling January launches now, and I take on only 3 new clients per quarter.Here's who this is for.You run a servi...
10/01/2026

I'm scheduling January launches now, and I take on only 3 new clients per quarter.

Here's who this is for.

You run a service business in Southeast Michigan. Home building, remodeling, senior care, a wellness or mental health practice, a specialty trade. You've grown mostly on referral and reputation, or you haven't redone your site since 2015.

And you've hit the point where that stopped being enough - either because referrals plateaued, or because you're expanding and the website no longer reflects the size of what you've built.

Projects run $8,000 to $16,000. Pricing is on my site, broken down, no form required to see it.

The timeline, again, because it's the whole reason I'm posting this in September rather than November: discovery and strategy, content gathering, and a 6 to 8 week build. A January launch needs to start now. A site that starts in December is finding its footing in June.

If Q1 is when your phone should be ringing, this is the month to decide.

"Why would I spend $10,000 when my nephew can build it for $1,500?"A fair question, and one I'd rather answer directly t...
09/28/2026

"Why would I spend $10,000 when my nephew can build it for $1,500?"

A fair question, and one I'd rather answer directly than dance around.

Sometimes the honest answer is: you shouldn't. If you're pre-revenue, or testing an idea, or you genuinely just need a digital business card - a $1,500 site is the right call. I'll tell people that.

But once you're doing $1M or more, the math changes, and here's how I'd think about it.

What's one job worth to you? For a remodeler it might be $40,000. For a custom builder, far more.

Now ask what your current site is doing. Not what it looks like - what it's producing. How many inquiries came through it last month?

For most established businesses I talk to, the honest answer is somewhere between "a few" and "I'm not sure."

That's the actual cost. Not the invoice. The jobs that went to whoever showed up first in the search results.

A site that produces one additional real job a quarter has paid for itself inside a year. A site that produces none was expensive at $1,500.

The question isn't what a website costs. It's what the current one is costing you.

My pricing is on my website. Most web designers won't do that.Projects run $8,000 to $16,000. My pricing page breaks dow...
09/24/2026

My pricing is on my website. Most web designers won't do that.

Projects run $8,000 to $16,000. My pricing page breaks down what's included at each level and what moves the number.

I get asked why fairly often, usually by other designers, usually with a note of concern. The reasoning behind hiding it is that a number without context scares people off, and that you should get them on a call first so you can frame the value.

I understand the logic. I just don't think it survives contact with how business owners actually behave.

Here's what hiding pricing actually does. Someone doing $2M in revenue, who is busy, who has been burned before, lands on a site with no numbers. They assume it's expensive and unpredictable. They don't fill out the form to find out. They leave.

And the people who do fill out the form now include a meaningful number who were never looking in that price range. So I spend forty-five minutes on a call, they hear the number, and we both wish we'd had it sooner.

Transparency filters. It costs me some conversations I wouldn't have wanted, and it earns me a much better version of the ones I do have. People arrive already knowing the range, which means we spend the call on their business instead of on the reveal.

If you're a service business hiding your pricing entirely - I'd at least think about a range. Your buyer is already guessing. You may as well guide the guess.

Your competitor isn't outranking you because their work is better.They have 200 pages on their website. You have six.Thi...
09/21/2026

Your competitor isn't outranking you because their work is better.

They have 200 pages on their website. You have six.

This is the single most common reason an established business loses search visibility to a smaller, newer one. It's not fairness. It's surface area.

Think about how many distinct things a $3M remodeling company actually does. Kitchen remodels. Bathroom remodels. Basement finishing. Additions. Whole-home renovations. Now multiply by the towns you serve.

That's dozens of real searches happening every month. Each one is a page that should exist.

Instead, most sites have a single page called "Services" with six paragraphs on it. Google looks at that page and has to decide what it's about. It can't decide, so it ranks it for nothing in particular.

One page can't rank for twelve things. That's not an opinion - it's how the system works.

The fix isn't complicated. It's just tedious, and it needs to be planned before anything gets designed, because it determines the entire structure of the site.

Which is why "let's just refresh the design" almost never fixes a traffic problem.

Somebody is looking for assisted living for their mom at 11pm on a Tuesday.They are exhausted. They are probably a littl...
09/17/2026

Somebody is looking for assisted living for their mom at 11pm on a Tuesday.

They are exhausted. They are probably a little scared. And they are on their phone in bed, going through search results one at a time.

That's the person the website has to serve. Not a comfortable buyer doing calm research at a desk.

I've worked with local senior care facilities across multiple redesigns - technical SEO, local search, ongoing strategy. And the thing that has shaped every decision is that specific 11pm moment.

It changes what goes first. Not the mission statement. Not the founding year. What it actually looks like inside, what it costs, who's there, and how fast someone can get a real human on the phone.

It changes the tone. No corporate language. No "resident-centric care solutions." Plain sentences from people who understand the weight of the decision.

And it changes the SEO. Families in that moment aren't searching "senior care." They're searching the specific town where mom lives.

A long-term partnership works because we keep asking the same question every round: what does the person on the other end actually need right now?

Most sites never even ask it once.

Open your website on your phone right now. Give it five seconds. Then look away.Can you answer these three questions fro...
09/14/2026

Open your website on your phone right now. Give it five seconds. Then look away.

Can you answer these three questions from memory?

What does this company actually do?

Where do they do it?

What am I supposed to do next?

If any of those took more than five seconds, that's not a nitpick. That's your bounce rate.

Most visitors give you less time than that. They're comparing you against two other tabs, usually on a phone, usually not fully paying attention.

The most common failure I see with established businesses isn't a missing answer. It's a buried one. The information is there, it's just in paragraph four, on the About page.

Second most common: a headline that says something like "Excellence in Every Detail." Which sounds nice and communicates nothing. A remodeler, a law firm, and a dental practice could all use it.

Try the five-second test on a competitor's site too. It's usually clarifying, and occasionally annoying.

What did yours score?

Your website isn't underperforming because it's ugly.It's underperforming because nobody decided what it was supposed to...
09/10/2026

Your website isn't underperforming because it's ugly.

It's underperforming because nobody decided what it was supposed to do.

I've been designing for many years, and the pattern is always the same. A business hires someone to make their site look better. It looks better. Nothing else changes. The phone rings the same amount it did before.

That's because "looks better" was never the job.

Every site I build has to do three things, and every decision - page order, headline placement, what goes above the fold - traces back to one of them:

Show up. Local SEO, proper site structure, keyword research for your services and your area. If someone in Rochester Hills is searching for what you do and you're on page three, the design doesn't matter.

Build trust fast. People decide within seconds whether you're credible. Clear messaging, proof where they need it, and answers to the questions they're already asking in their head.

Make the next step obvious. No hunting for a phone number. No wondering what happens if they reach out. Every page points somewhere.

Pretty is table stakes. It's the price of being taken seriously. It is not the product.

A homeowner in Brighton and a homeowner in Rochester Hills are not searching for you the same way.But most service busin...
09/07/2026

A homeowner in Brighton and a homeowner in Rochester Hills are not searching for you the same way.

But most service business websites treat them identically.

Here's what I mean. The typical setup is one page called "Service Areas" with a list of thirty city names on it. Sometimes it's just a paragraph: "We proudly serve Oakland, Livingston, and Washtenaw counties."

Google reads that page and learns almost nothing. There's no depth. No signal that you actually work in Brighton specifically.

Meanwhile the competitor who's outranking you has a real page for Brighton. With Brighton projects on it. Brighton testimonials. A sentence about the neighborhoods they've worked in.

That's not a trick. That's just being more useful for that specific search.

Now, this only works if the pages are real. Thirty near-identical pages with the city name swapped out is a well-known way to get ignored, or worse. Google got good at spotting that years ago.

The rule I use: if you can't put genuinely different content on a location page, don't build the page yet.

Better to have five real ones than thirty thin ones.

If you want a new website live in January, the decision gets made in September.Not November. September.Here's the actual...
09/03/2026

If you want a new website live in January, the decision gets made in September.

Not November. September.

Here's the actual timeline, because most business owners have never seen it laid out:

Discovery and strategy - 2 to 3 weeks. This is keyword research, competitor review, and figuring out what your site actually needs to say.

Content gathering - this is the bottleneck. Every single time. Photos, service descriptions, team bios, testimonials. Budget 3 weeks, because you're running a business at the same time.

Design and build - 6 to 8 weeks depending on how many pages and how much SEO structure is involved.

Then launch. And then the part nobody tells you about: it takes another 4 to 8 weeks for Google to fully index and settle a new site.

Add it up. A site scoped in September is generating search traffic by early spring. A site scoped in December is still finding its footing in June.

If Q1 is your busy season, that gap is expensive.

Where are you in that timeline right now?

You don't need to panic.And you don't need to chase every shiny object.Here's what still matters:✔ Great customer experi...
08/28/2026

You don't need to panic.

And you don't need to chase every shiny object.

Here's what still matters:

✔ Great customer experiences

✔ Positive reviews

✔ Helpful content

✔ Strong websites

✔ Clear expertise

✔ Consistent visibility

AI changes how people find businesses.

It doesn't change why they choose them.

Trust still wins.

Address

Clarkston, MI

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Liquia Design posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Liquia Design:

Shortcuts

Share

Category