Web development
Web development is building a site and measuring it against published thresholds. Accessibility follows the W3C's WCAG standard and speed follows Core Web Vitals; ownership of the code and the domain is settled in writing at handover rather than assumed.
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The search visibility page covers what gets measured; this page covers how the thing being measured is built. The threshold figures themselves live on that page and are linked from here rather than repeated.
01
What does web development cover?
The scope has four headings: page structure and content model, interface design, performance and accessibility. These are not four jobs but four measures of one job, and none is added later, because accessibility added later means rewriting from the start.
- Page structure: where the content lives and how it is updated.
- Interface: typography, colour, spacing and interaction states.
- Performance: load and response time against published thresholds.
- Accessibility: keyboard, screen reader, contrast and tap target.
The four are a whole rather than a sequence. A project that leaves accessibility until the end has to revisit its colour palette for contrast and its component structure for focus states.
02
What is the site built with?
Pages are produced on the server and only the code that is genuinely needed reaches the browser. The reason is measurement rather than taste: every script file sent raises both the page's load time and the cost of processing it on the search engine's side.
A page being interactive does not mean all of it runs in the browser. When the interactive part is kept separate, the rest of the page arrives ready from the server, and that shows up both in the measured time and in how the site is deployed.
03
Which accessibility standard is applied?
The W3C's WCAG standard is applied and the level targeted is AA. The standard defines three levels, and AA is the one public sector and large organisation contracts name; it settles design decisions from the colour palette to the spacing scale.
- Text contrast is measured, and colour never carries meaning on its own.
- Every function works from the keyboard and focus is visible.
- Tap targets are large enough to be used with a thumb.
- Moving content can be stopped and a reduced-motion preference is honoured.
Accessibility is not a feature bolted on; it is the design itself. Contrast decides the palette, focus visibility decides the interaction states, and tap target decides the spacing scale.
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04
How is a site's performance measured?
Measurement uses the Core Web Vitals thresholds, and the assessment reads the 75th percentile of real user loads. A laboratory measurement is not enough on its own: a result taken on a fast connection and a powerful device hides the experience on a slow one.
The threshold figures and what each measures are set out on the search visibility page. What differs here is the vantage point: there they are the measure, here they are the target.
05
What does handover include?
At handover the code, the content and the domain belong to the client, and that is written into the contract. Hosting and domain accounts are opened in the client's own name, because whether the site keeps running without an ongoing agreement depends on it.
06
How does a project start?
Starting is one step: you write what you want to do and we set the scope together in a free thirty-minute conversation. Nothing begins before scope, timing and price are written down, and the conversation itself carries no commitment.
Where a site already exists, the first job is to measure it. Rewriting is not always the right answer, and the measurement is what separates rewriting from fixing.
Sources
- W3C — WCAG is the W3C standard for web content accessibility and defines conformance levels A, AA and AAA. — 26 August 2026
- Google — The Core Web Vitals assessment is made on the 75th percentile of real user page loads, separately for mobile and desktop. — 26 August 2026
- Google — Google publishes its own guidance on what a site owner can influence on the search side. — 26 August 2026
