Custom websites
Designed from a blank page and built to fit. For businesses whose needs don’t match a template, or whose template has started to show. You get a site that looks like yours, and code the next person can open without wincing.
Web design & development by James Dawson
Websites that feel natural. Built on purpose.
Internet Makery is me, James Dawson. I design websites and Shopify stores, then I build them, so the person who chose the typeface also wrote the code that loads it. The aim is a site that feels like it was always going to look this way. Getting there takes a grid, a lot of code and several firm opinions about buttons. None of it should show.
Selected work
001–004Designed, built and still running.
A few recent projects. In each case I did the design and the development, which is why the two agree with each other.
001
PV Industries
DesignDevelopmentCRO
Solar panel recycling, which needs explaining quickly and calmly. A site that does the explaining, then gets out of the way of the enquiry form.
002K9health
ShopifyCRO
A supplement that keeps old dogs moving, and a store rebuilt so buying it takes fewer clicks than describing it. Conversion went up; the dogs remain indifferent.
003Anika Craney
DesignAstro
A site for a freediver whose work is mostly visual, so the design keeps quiet and lets the work do the talking. The code keeps quiet too, which is harder — and it loads where she works, which is frequently the middle of the sea.
004Meditate Love Life
DesignDevelopmentBookings
A site that had to feel calm at every screen size, including the one in your hand at 6 am. Structure, pace, a restrained palette, and a booking flow that doesn’t raise anyone’s heart rate.
Plate II · Noctua pixelata
Wings resolve into halftone at arm’s length and into very little at two. Nocturnal. Strongly drawn to backlit surfaces, where it waits for something to load.
Services
Both halves of the job.
Design decides how a site feels. Development decides whether it holds up. I do both, which sounds grander than it is — mostly it means you never have to forward an email between two people.
Shopify
Stores that are easy to buy from and easy to run. Theme design and development, product and checkout work, and the steady conversion optimisation that turns traffic into orders. I know where Shopify bends and where it won’t.
Astro development
For content sites that need to be fast and stay fast. Astro ships almost no JavaScript unless asked, so pages load before the visitor has time to reconsider. I build the site and the editing setup behind it, so you can change your own words.
Care and improvement
A website isn’t finished at launch; it’s just live. Monthly care covers updates, fixes and small changes, plus the measured kind: testing an idea, reading the numbers, making the site better at its actual job. Most of the interesting work happens here, quietly, over time.
Process
One person, start to finish. It’s quieter that way.
- Brief. We talk about what the site needs to do, for whom, and what “working” looks like in six months. I ask more questions than you’d expect about your customers and fewer about your favourite colour.
- Design. Structure first, then the visual decisions. You see real pages early, not mood boards, and often enough that nothing is a surprise.
- Build. I build what I designed, so nothing is lost in the handover, because there isn’t one.
- Launch. Testing, performance, content in place, domain pointed, deep breath.
- Afterwards. The site keeps improving, in small measured changes. If you email, I answer; there’s no account manager for it to go through.
Pricing
Starting points, not small print.
Every project is quoted properly after a conversation, but nobody enjoys guessing. As a rough guide:
Astro marketing sitesfrom $1,800
Custom websitesfrom $4,900
Shopify storesfrom $6,900
Care and improvementfrom $270 a month
Prices include design and development, because they come from the same desk. If your project is likely to land above these numbers, you’ll hear it from me in the first conversation, not the last.
About
The entire team.
I spent five years inside a Sydney agency — long enough to learn how good work gets made, and how often it goes missing between the design team and the developers. Internet Makery is the version with one desk.
I care about strong visual decisions, clear thinking and clean code, and I’ve stopped treating those as separate interests. Design keeps the development honest about what it’s for. Development keeps the design honest about what’s possible. Doing both makes me better at each, or at least more sympathetic to both.
I work remotely and travel a fair bit. The time zone changes; the response time doesn’t, much.
The specimens are mine as well. I draw them when I’m meant to be doing something else.
Work with me ↗
Contact
Tell me about the site.
Email roughly what you’re after and roughly when. A paragraph is plenty. A link to the current site is ideal, particularly if you’re a bit embarrassed by it. I reply myself, usually within a working day, from wherever that day is happening.
hello@internetmakery.com ↗