Behind the Builds: 7 Websites We Launched This Summer

JH Vinyl was the winner of my birthday website giveaway, and this project turned into one of the most creatively fun builds of the summer.

The man behind JH Vinyl is John Humphrey, a real-life rock star drummer who has spent much of his career touring and recording with Seether and The Nixons. He is also a lifelong music fan who has been collecting vinyl for more than 30 years.

Over the years, that collection grew into something pretty incredible. John now buys and sells new, used, vintage, and harder-to-find records through Discogs and eBay, and JH Vinyl gives the collection a home and identity of its own.

Because there is so much personality behind this business, a generic record-store website was never going to feel right.

We leaned into John's story and created a design inspired by vintage record shops, old newspapers, classic Billboard magazine layouts, concert memorabilia, and decades spent on the road. The site uses a mostly black-and-white foundation with vintage photography and pops of color to give it the feeling of flipping through an old music publication or discovering something great in a record bin.

More than anything, we wanted the website to feel like John.

That is one of my favorite parts of building websites for small businesses and personal brands. Sometimes the best strategy is not following what everyone else in an industry is doing. It is figuring out what makes the person or business genuinely interesting and building around that.

Fun little sidebar: Growing up in Oklahoma in the '90s, I was a big fan of The Nixons, so getting to work on this project felt especially fun.

Over the years, we've become friends with John and his family, and both of his sons have actually taught my son drums. We also got to take him to a Sons of The Nixons reunion show, where the band members' sons took the stage with their own bands.

It was one of those really fun full-circle moments, and it made getting to build JH Vinyl feel even more special.

Another full-circle moment: The One was written and produced by a friend of mine from high school, the brilliant Erin Cook, which made getting to work on the website especially meaningful.

Long before either of us were building businesses or producing films, we were on stage together at Yukon High School in A Midsummer Night's Dream where I played Hermia, and she played Hippolyta. Getting to reconnect all these years later through a project she created felt incredibly special and made me even more excited to help bring attention to the film.

The One follows Hawk, a Native American former foster youth who travels to Enid, Oklahoma, to experience the city's Christmas tree lighting. Along the way, he forms relationships within the community, including with a runaway teen named Alexis, while navigating PTSD, anxiety, his past, and questions of faith, healing, and belonging.

The film was shot in Oklahoma and features a cast that includes Martin Sheen, Jana Kramer, Olivia Sanabia, and Noah Redclay.

Building this website was very different from creating a site for a local service business. The goal wasn't lead generation. It was storytelling.

We wanted the website to introduce people to the film and the heart behind the story before they ever watch it, while also giving visitors a place to follow its journey toward release.

The One tells an important story about foster care, trauma, faith, healing, and the power of connection and belonging.

The movie comes to theaters this November, so be sure to watch for it near you and add it to your Christmas movie watchlist!

We started working with Jennifer Sise on her brand earlier this spring and carried that work into her new website over the summer.

Jennifer is a time and business coach, and I've personally had the opportunity to work with her as a coach. Because of that, it was special for me to get to help bring her brand and website to life.

The site needed to feel professional and established while still being warm, approachable, and true to who Jennifer is.

The branding gave us the visual foundation, and the website allowed us to bring the entire experience together.

This is one of the reasons I love working on branding and websites as part of the same project. When the colors, typography, messaging, photography, and site experience are all developed with the same strategy in mind, the final result feels much more cohesive.

Jennifer's new site feels elevated and polished without losing the personal side of her brand, and it was an honor to get to create something that reflects the work she does so well.

Xtreme Rolloff Service had been successfully operating without a website, but they were ready for a more professional online presence.

For a local service business, a website needs to do more than look good. It needs to immediately answer a few important questions:

• What do you offer?
• Where do you serve?
• How does someone get started?

We focused on creating a clean, straightforward site that clearly explains their dumpster rental services and makes it easy for potential customers to take the next step.

It also gave the business a stronger digital foundation for search visibility and future marketing.

We were thrilled when we received word that they had selected The Mustard Seed Agency out of the agencies they interviewed!

Summit Advisory Team is a group of highly experienced supply chain consultants doing sophisticated work for their clients.

Their website needed to communicate that same level of expertise.

We focused on creating a polished, professional presence that better explains who they are, what they do, and the value they bring to the organizations they serve.

This is a common issue we see with established businesses: the company has grown, the work has evolved, but the website doesn't grow with it.

Sometimes the goal of a rebuild is not to completely reinvent the business, it's simply to make the online presence finally match the business that already exists.

Stanley Plumbing came to us after trying several different approaches to digital marketing and still feeling frustrated by the lack of leads coming through their website.

For this project, the strategy went much deeper than design.

We focused heavily on SEO and AEO, expanded service and service-area content, improved calls to action throughout the site, and added stronger lead-capture tools, including a chat widget.

The goal was to make it easier for both search engines and potential customers to understand exactly what Stanley Plumbing offers, where they provide service, and how to contact them.

This is the kind of project I especially love because the website becomes more than an online brochure.

It becomes part of the business's lead-generation system.

Quality Window Tint was another local service business where visibility, clarity, and conversion were major priorities.

Their new website gives them a more polished way to showcase their services while creating a stronger foundation for SEO and future marketing.

We focused on making the site easy to navigate, clearly communicating their window tint services, and giving visitors obvious ways to reach out.

One issue we discovered was that their Google Business Profile was still linking to an old, broken website. Previous vendors had not been successful in getting the website updated, which meant customers finding the business through Google were being sent to a dead link.

We were able to get that corrected, and their Google listing now sends customers to the current website.

For local businesses, details like this matter. Clear service pages, strong calls to action, local relevance, mobile usability, accurate Google listings, and good site structure all work together to turn online visibility into actual inquiries.