Brainerd & the lakes area
I am Sean Swanson, a web designer and web developer in Brainerd, Minnesota. I design and build custom websites by hand for Brainerd, Baxter and lakes area businesses, for one fixed price agreed in writing first. A new business package is $699 and goes live in days, not months.
Text me anytime: (218) 818-1023. Skip the email if you like. I read and answer every text myself.
Why local matters here
Most web designers will sell you the same site they sell a dentist in Ohio. That is not how money moves up here, and your website should know the difference.
Plenty of businesses around Brainerd earn most of the year's money between May and September. Your site needs to convert hard in season and hold the line off season, which means seasonal hours, a booking path that opens and closes, and an off season message that does not read as abandoned.
Cabin owners, weekenders and Twin Cities traffic on 371 do not know you by reputation the way your neighbors do. They find you on a phone, in a car, with one bar of signal. That is a design constraint, and it is the one most local sites fail.
Around here somebody hears your name first and looks you up second. Your site is rarely the first touch. It is the thing that confirms you are real and worth calling, which means it has to look like the business people described.
What I do
Start with whichever one matches what is actually wrong. If you are not sure, ask me and I will tell you.
I build it, put it on a real address, and you look at it before you spend anything. No card, nothing to cancel. Five businesses at a time across all my sites.
A new business package at $699, a landing page from $1,195, or a custom site with a page per service from $1,495. Hand written, live in days, and the source code is yours.
The map results take most of the local clicks and a website alone will not put you in them. Set up with every build, and worth doing even if you never hire me.
What you get
Every quote covers the whole job, not a design you then have to get built. This is the list, so you can hold anyone else you talk to against it.
Before I draw anything I ask how work actually arrives: a phone call, a booking, a quote request, a walk in. The page is laid out so a stranger can do that one thing in the first ten seconds, on a phone, with the sun on the screen.
No Wix, no WordPress, no page builder. The site is written by hand and served as plain files, so it loads in about a second from a cabin on Gull Lake or a truck on 371, and it does not break when a plugin updates itself.
The map results above the normal results take most local clicks. Every build includes claiming or fixing your profile, matching it to the site, and linking the two, because a website alone will not put you in the map.
A page for each service, the towns you serve written on the page in plain text, titles and descriptions that say what you do and where, and the structured data search engines read. Not a monthly SEO plan, just the groundwork most local sites skip.
Enquiries land in your inbox and, if you want, as a text. Your domain stays in your name. Hosting and the security certificate are set up and included in the first year, then $49 a month with the care plan or free to move elsewhere.
When it goes live you get the code, the logins, and half an hour of me showing you how to change a price or a phone number yourself. If you would rather never touch it, that is what the care plan is for.
Designer and developer
They design inside a builder and stop where the code starts, or they develop and it looks like it. You get both from one person, so nothing is handed over halfway and nothing is lost in the handover.
I decide what the page says, in what order, and what a stranger does in the first ten seconds. Layout, type, colour and the words themselves. Your site should look like the business people were told about, not like a template with your logo dropped into it.
I build it by hand. No Wix, no Squarespace, no page builder underneath. That is why it loads on one bar of signal out on the lake, why it does not break when a plugin updates itself, and why another web developer can pick the code up and carry on with it. That last part is what makes owning the source code worth something.
Who this is for
The job changes with what you sell. A resort needs a booking path that opens in March. A roofer needs a quote form that accepts “I do not know.” A salon needs to be found by name and booked in two taps.
Seasonal hours, availability that is actually current, photos that load fast on a phone in Edina on a Tuesday night, and a rate page that does not need a phone call. Lakes Area Web Design is my sister site built just for this.
Roofers, builders, plumbers, electricians, excavators, dock and lift crews. A page per service, the towns you cover, and a quote form built for a homeowner with a leak, not an estimator. Ridge North Roofing is the case study to read.
Hours, menu, directions and the phone number above the fold, because that is all most visitors want. A summer menu that swaps in without a rebuild, and an off season page that does not read as closed for good.
Booking first, everything else second. Halcyon Yoga is a twenty-one page build organised around one job: get a stranger booked into their first class.
Accountants, insurance, real estate, law, therapy. The site has to make a nervous person comfortable enough to call, which means plain language, a real photo of you, and no stock handshake.
Balloon decorators, photographers, comic sellers, people opening their first shop. The $699 new business package exists for exactly this: one strong page, a logo, a Google profile, and three months of help.
Where you are right now
You are getting customers on referrals and a Facebook page. Everyone who hears your name still looks you up, and right now they find nothing, or somebody else. A real site is the fastest credibility upgrade available to you, and the homepage costs nothing to look at.
It loads slowly, it fights you every time you try to change a phone number, and it does not look like the business you actually run. Rebuilding a Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy site is the most common job I get. Your domain moves across with no downtime.
Recent work
One is a live client site, one is a complete build for a lakes area trade. Every piece on the work page is labelled for what it is, and all of it was designed and coded by me.
A comic seller who streams on Whatnot and needed one page that turns a viewer into a follower. Logo, site and launch in a week.
Opens with the three ways a homeowner actually turns up, leaking, ageing, storm, instead of a list of services. Read this one if you are a contractor.
All the work, including Be Bold Balloons and the branding tool behind the logos →
Where I work
I live in Brainerd, so the lakes area is home ground. Most of Crow Wing County is inside half an hour, and a coffee in Baxter, Nisswa or Crosby is easier than a video call.
The two towns share one market and one search. A Baxter business competing for “Brainerd” searches needs both names on the page, and a Brainerd business on the 371 strip needs to show up for the traffic that never turns off the highway. I build for both, and the price is the same either side of the river.
Nisswa, Pequot Lakes, Crosslake, Breezy Point, Pine River and East Gull Lake, where most of the year's money arrives between May and September and half the customers are still packing in the Cities when they find you. Then Crosby, Deerwood and Aitkin to the east, Little Falls and Pillager to the south.
Some towns have their own page, because the search is different there: Baxter, Pequot Lakes, Crosby and Deerwood, and Little Falls.
Further out is fine too. The work runs over email and calls, so a business in Bemidji or Alexandria pays the same and waits the same. If you want the whole state, SwansonX is the parent company and covers Minnesota end to end.
How it works
A phone call or a coffee. What you do, who calls you, and what the site actually needs to accomplish. Free, and I will tell you honestly if you do not need me.
Not a stock mockup with placeholder text. Your words, your photos, your services. You see the actual thing before you commit to it.
In plain English. "Make the phone number bigger" is a perfectly good instruction. We go back and forth until you genuinely like it.
Domain, hosting and the security certificate, all handled. Then I show you how everything works and hand you the source code.
What an absolute pleasure to have my website done. It was fast, easy, efficient and cost effective. Sean was always right on top of things and replied to my questions almost immediately. I would definitely recommend him to anyone who is interested in this type of service. 5 stars for sure.Kelly M., Be Bold Balloons
The honest comparison
Three of these four are not me, and for some businesses one of them is the right answer. Decide with the numbers in front of you.
| DIY builder | Brainerd Web Design | Twin Cities agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront | Low | From $699 | $3,000 to $10,000+ |
| Your own hours | 20 to 40, then forever | About two, plus content | Meetings across 6 to 12 weeks |
| Time to live | Your weekends, indefinitely | Days | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Truly custom | Template bound | Yes | Yes |
| You get the code | No, locked to the platform | Always | Sometimes, check the contract |
| Who you talk to | A help center article | Me, directly | An account manager |
| If you stop paying | Site vanishes, you keep nothing | Offline, but the code is yours | Varies, read it first |
Questions
A new business package is $699 if the business is under a year old, a landing page is $1,195, and a custom site with a page per service starts at $1,495. Size and depth decide it, nothing else. You get the number in writing before you agree to anything, and it does not move afterwards.
If you need the words written or the photos sorted out, the number moves up a little, and the quote says so instead of surprising you later.
Most single page sites go live within a week of me having your content. Five page builds usually take one to two weeks. Tell me your deadline and I will be straight about whether it is doable.
The build is a one off. After that the care plan is $49 a month for hosting, maintenance and three hours of work a month, tracked by me, which most people take because they would rather never think about it.
What you are not doing is renting the design. You get the source code, so you can take it to any developer whenever you want.
Good, that is genuinely useful. It tells me what you like and what you do not. I rebuild it properly and move your domain across with no downtime, so nobody visiting notices anything except that it got faster.
Yes, and I will show you how. If you would rather not touch it, that is what the care plan is for. You email me the change and it gets done.
Both, and they are different jobs. The design decides what the page says and how it looks. The development is the code underneath, written by hand rather than assembled in a builder. Hiring one person for both is why there is nobody to blame in the middle when something does not work.
I am here in Brainerd and most of my clients are around the lakes and down in the Twin Cities. The work happens over email and calls, so being further out does not change the price or the timeline.
Tell me what you do and where you are at. You get a reply within 24 hours with honest advice and a fixed price, whether or not you end up hiring me.
