About

Hi, I'm Lachlan.

I build websites for small businesses around Torquay, Geelong and the Surf Coast — and I'd rather tell you the truth about what they can do than sell you one.

Elevate Website Designs is me — one person, based in Torquay. When you send an enquiry, I'm the one who reads it. When we talk about your business, I'm the one who builds the site afterwards. There's no account manager in between and nothing gets handed to a contractor you've never spoken to.

That's a deliberate choice rather than a limitation. Small businesses generally get a better outcome from someone who understands the whole picture than from a process where the person who heard what you needed and the person who built it never actually spoke.

How I work

Every project starts with a conversation about the business, not the website. What you sell, who buys it, where they come from, and what would actually count as the site working. Until that's clear, decisions about layout and colour are guesses.

Then you get a fixed price in writing. Not an hourly estimate that drifts, and not a package tier designed to make the middle option look sensible — a number for the work we've agreed on, which is the number you pay.

What I won't do

I won't tell you a new website will fix a problem it can't fix. Plenty of businesses come to me wanting a rebuild when their actual bottleneck is an unclaimed Google Business Profile or a complete absence of reviews — both of which are cheaper and faster to sort out than a new site.

I won't guarantee you first place on Google, because nobody can. Search results are personalised by location, history and device, so there isn't a single fixed position to promise. Anyone offering that guarantee is either targeting searches nobody makes, or is about to do something that gets your site penalised.

And I won't buy reviews, build spam links, or use any of the shortcuts that work for roughly six months and then take your rankings with them when they stop working.

Why custom-coded

Most small business sites are built on page builders, which produce a great deal of code that nobody needed. That's the usual reason a site feels slow on a phone — and speed affects both whether people stay and how Google ranks you.

Building by hand takes longer up front. The result loads faster, holds up better over time, and doesn't depend on a stack of plugins that each need patching. For a business website that should still be working well in five years, that trade is worth making.

Straight answers, free. If you're not sure whether you need a new website at all, ask me. I'll look at what you've got and tell you honestly — including if the answer is that your money is better spent somewhere else. Get in touch.

How I Operate

Four things I hold to.

Fixed prices

Quoted in writing before anything starts. No hourly billing for conversations, no invoice you weren't expecting.

Nothing to manage

Domain, hosting, SSL and renewals are all handled for you. No control panels, no renewal notices, nothing technical to keep track of.

Plain English

You shouldn't need to understand DNS or Core Web Vitals to know what you're buying. If I use jargon, ask me to drop it.

Honest scope

If a smaller job would get you the same result, I'll quote the smaller job. Turning down work beats selling something that won't help.

Want to work together?

Tell me about your business and I'll come back with a plan and a fixed price — no obligation.