Websites
A website should still be working in five years
Most small-business websites are a WordPress install slowly filling with plugins, and they end the way they end: slow, broken, or compromised. We build static sites instead — every page computed once, at build time, so what the server hands a visitor is a file.
The situation
Why the last one stopped working
Almost nobody sets out to buy a website that decays. It happens because of how the thing was assembled: a theme, a page builder, eleven plugins, and a database sitting behind a login that a bot somewhere is trying a thousand passwords against every night. Each of those is a dependency, each dependency has a maintainer, and the moment one stops being maintained the site starts becoming a liability rather than an asset.
The symptoms arrive in a predictable order. It gets slow, because every page view is a program that runs. Then it gets fragile, because an update to one plugin breaks another. Then somebody quotes you for a rebuild, and the cycle starts again — with a fresh set of dependencies and the same ending.
The rebuild we did on this very domain is the extreme version. The previous site was a compromised WordPress install serving spam doorway pages to Google under the owner's own domain name, and it had been doing it for long enough to poison the search results. It looked fine from the front page. That is what these failures look like from the outside.
What we do
How the work is actually done
Static, on purpose
Astro compiles the whole site to HTML ahead of time. There is no database to breach, no admin login to brute-force, no plugin to leave unpatched, and nothing for a request to wait on. The practical result is a site that loads in a fraction of a second, costs almost nothing to host, and cannot be defaced through a vulnerability in a component you did not know you had.
Designed as a system, not a set of pages
Colour, type and spacing are defined once as tokens, and every component reads them. That is why a site we build still looks like itself on page ninety, and why a rebrand two years out is a change to one file rather than a second project. It is also what makes the accessibility gate below possible at all.
Accessibility as a build gate
Every colour pairing is measured against its WCAG contrast floor by a script that runs on every deploy, and the deploy fails if one drops. This site runs 49 such pairs. Landmarks, focus order, keyboard operation and skip links are checked the same way. Not a premium tier and not a report at the end of the project — a gate in the pipeline, which is the only version of the practice that survives a deadline.
Search visibility from the first commit
Canonical URLs, structured data, an accurate sitemap, and — when we are replacing an existing site — a complete one-hop 301 map from every old address to its successor. Emitted before the canonicalisation rules and with absolute targets, so a legacy URL reaches its final page in a single redirect rather than bouncing through three and shedding equity at each stop.
Yours to keep
Source in your repository. The deploy is a script you can run. The hosting is ordinary. Nothing is locked to a page-builder licence or a proprietary CMS you have to keep renting. The test we hold ourselves to: if you never spoke to us again, could you keep going? The answer has to be yes.
2026, honestly
Where AI actually helps here
Not by generating the site. AI-built websites are easy to spot and easier to out-rank, because they are assembled from the median of everything already published. What AI is genuinely good at on a web project is the work that used to be too expensive to do properly.
Migration mapping at full coverage
Matching a thousand legacy URLs to their successors used to be a sampling exercise — do the top fifty by traffic and 404 the rest. Now every old page can be read, classified and matched, so the redirect map is complete instead of representative. That is the difference between keeping your search equity and keeping most of it.
Content structure before content
Feeding an entire existing site through analysis surfaces what is actually there — the duplicated pages, the orphan pages nobody links to, the six articles that should be one. Most content-migration briefs are wrong because nobody could afford to read the whole site first. Now they can.
Draft copy that a human then argues with
AI drafts a page quickly and a strategist rewrites it into something that makes a point. That order matters and it is not reversible: the value is in the argument, and the argument is the part AI reliably flattens. The industry consensus in 2026 is the same — nobody is paying for raw model output, they are paying for the judgment applied to it.
Generated imagery where a photograph is not honest
Diagrams, illustrated explainers and abstract plates can now be produced to a house style rather than bought from a stock library where they sit alongside a competitor using the same picture. Where a real photograph of a real thing is what the page needs, we take one.
And where it does notWhat we will not do is ship you a generated site. The reason is commercial rather than principled: a site assembled from the average of everything already indexed has nothing to say that a search engine has not already indexed, and no reason to rank.
How it runs
What the next few weeks look like
- 01
Read what exists
The current site, the analytics, the search console, and the pages that are quietly earning. Nothing is deleted before somebody has looked at what it was doing.
- 02
Structure and design system
The URL scheme, the content model, and the tokens. Approved as a working page in a browser, not as a picture of one.
- 03
Build against gates
Contrast, links and performance are enforced from the first commit, so there is no accessibility sprint at the end that gets cut.
- 04
Migrate and launch
The redirect map, the sitemap, search console, and a staged cutover. Old URLs work on day one, not eventually.
- 05
Hand over properly
Repository, deploy script, documentation, and a walkthrough. Then it is yours, whether or not we ever speak again.
What you receive
Deliverables
Listed plainly, because this is the part a buyer scans first and the part a vague proposal leaves out.
- A design system — colour, type and spacing tokens, contrast-tested
- Responsive build, mobile through to large desktop
- A content model and editing workflow suited to whoever actually updates it
- Structured data, sitemap, canonical URLs, robots policy
- A complete 301 map from the old site, one hop per URL
- Enquiry handling with spam defences that ask the visitor nothing
- Deploy script, source repository, and written handover
Or do it yourself
Not ready to commission a build?
If what you actually need first is to know what the site should say — the positioning, the page plan, the content calendar behind it — that is what AVMint produces. It is our own platform, and it will give you a Business Blueprint in about three minutes. Plenty of people come back to us for the build once they know what they are building.
Before you ask
The questions people actually send
- Can I edit it myself without a CMS?
- Yes. Content lives in Markdown files with a typed schema, and we set up whichever editing route suits you — a Git-based editor for the technical, a lightweight admin for everyone else. What you do not get is a page builder that lets anybody quietly break the design system.
- What about e-commerce?
- Static handles commerce well: the catalogue is built ahead of time and the checkout is a hosted, PCI-compliant endpoint. For a large or highly dynamic catalogue we will tell you honestly if a different architecture fits better.
- Will I lose my Google rankings?
- That is what the redirect map exists to prevent. Every legacy URL is mapped to its successor and reaches it in one hop. Positions typically wobble for a fortnight while the index catches up, then settle — and a faster, better-structured site usually settles higher than it started.
- How long does it take?
- A focused marketing site is a matter of weeks; a content platform with a real migration behind it takes longer, and most of that time is the migration rather than the build. You get a timeline in the proposal, before you commit to anything.
- Do you work with our existing designer or brand guidelines?
- Regularly. If you have a brand, we build to it and extend it into a working system. If you do not, we make one.
- What does it cost to host?
- Very little. Static files can sit on essentially any host, including free tiers, and there is no database or application server to pay for. We will point you at something appropriate rather than reselling you hosting.
Something not answered here? Email info@globalwebproducts.com and you will get a real answer from a person, not a booking link.
Where this has been done
Evidence
AVMint
An AI production platform, built and marketed end to endA pay-per-generation AI platform that produces business blueprints, content calendars, ad campaigns and marketing plans — product, site, brand and campaign, all in-house.Read the case study →Hypnosis & Health
Twenty years of content, migrated without losing a single URLA 2006 reference site rebuilt as a static illustrated encyclopedia — hundreds of pages, a full 301 map, original diagrams and a measured contrast law.Read the case study →Partymetro
A social app built the opposite way round to social appsAn iPhone and Android app for private presence, plans and meeting up — designed so that being seen is always a decision, and the company holds as little about you as possible.Read the case study →
Start a project
Thinking about websites?
Send a paragraph about what you are trying to do. You will get a straight answer about whether we are the right studio for it, and a written scope and quote, before anybody suggests a call.