Our Process

Yes, once a project is underway. The first conversation is always a free 30-minute Zoom call — it covers everything an in-person meeting would, and it gets you an answer on fit, scheduling, and pricing without either of us committing an afternoon to find out.

After that, in-person works are available. The office on Crockett Street in Fort Worth is by appointment, and on-site visits to your location — your yard, your job site, your city hall — are available for an additional fee. Meetings outside Texas are handled the same way, with the client covering business-class travel.

Some projects benefit from being in the room. Walking a facility before designing its website, sitting with a city's communications staff, seeing how a crew actually uses a field app — those are worth the trip. Most projects don't need it, and the clients who've done both usually say the Zoom calls were just as productive.

Yes. Black Anchor has run remotely since 2020, and the process is built for it: the discovery call is on Zoom, proofs and approvals happen in a shared folder, and the milestone schedule works the same whether you're in Fort Worth or Fort Stockton.

Most clients are in Texas — construction, trades, and municipal work across DFW, Austin, and the rest of the state — because that's the market I know and where the referrals come from. Out-of-state clients are welcome when the fit is right, especially in the same industries. The one difference is travel: if a project outside Texas needs an in-person meeting, the client covers business-class travel.

What doesn't change is who you work with. Distance doesn't add an account manager or a handoff. You get the same person on the call, the same person building the site, and the same response window on support, wherever you are.

Four phases, in a fixed order, with your approval gating each one.

Phase 1 — Strategy. It starts with a free 30-minute call, then a proposal outlining the scope, timeline, and milestone schedule. Once the Phase 1 payment clears, the work begins with discovery: who your buyers are, what they need to see, and what the site has to do. That becomes a written strategy and site architecture you approve before anything is designed.

Phase 2 — Content and design. The copy gets written first, because the design is built around real words. Then the design: wireframes, then full page designs, reviewed in rounds until you sign off. Changes to approved copy after this point are new scope, which is why the approval matters.

Phase 3 — Build. The approved designs become a working site, including pages, forms, integrations, schema markup, accessibility, and analytics. You'll see it in a staging environment as it comes together, and the Phase 3 payment is due when build begins.

Phase 4 — Launch. Fifteen days before launch, the final payment is due, and the site goes through testing: every page on every screen size, every form, every link. Then it goes live, you get the logins and files, and post-launch support runs for the period in your package.

Every request after launch goes through the support ticket system, which keeps a record for both of us.

Four to sixteen weeks from kickoff, depending on the build — a focused site for an owner-operator at the short end, an enterprise platform at the long end. Most projects land in the six-to-ten-week range. Branding on its own runs for four to ten weeks; print pieces run for days to a few weeks; brand strategy runs for four to six weeks.

That clock starts at kickoff, not at signing. Add the booking lead time — most projects start two months or more out — and the honest answer from first call to launch is three to six months.

The two things that stretch a timeline on the client side are content and approvals that come back slowly, and scope that grows after the plan is approved. The two things that keep it on schedule are also on the client side: an available decision-maker and on-time file delivery. Tell me about a hard deadline on the first call, and I'll build the schedule backward from it, including whether it needs a rush fee.

By making it structured so it doesn't depend on anyone remembering to check in.

Every project has one point of contact on each side — me and the decision-maker at your company. That's not a formality; a project with three approvers and no owner is the most common way for a timeline to die. We agree on that person on the first call.

The work is visible the whole time. Strategy documents, designs, and the staging site live in a shared folder you can open any day, not just when I send a proof. Each phase ends with a review and a written approval, so there's never a question about what was agreed. Milestone dates are on the schedule from day one, and if something moves — on my side or yours — you hear about it before the date, not after.

For questions between reviews, email is the default, and you'll receive a reply within one business day. Larger plans include scheduled Zoom check-ins. After launch, every support request goes through the website's ticketing system, which keeps a record for both of us and guarantees the response window in your plan.

What you won't get is an account manager relaying messages. The person you email is the person doing the work, so the answer comes from someone who actually knows.

Bobby Robinson. The person you talk to on the first call is the person who writes your strategy, designs your pages, builds your site, and answers your email at week six.

That's the whole model. There's no account manager between you and the work, no project coordinator relaying your feedback to a designer who wasn't on the call, no support team that has to look up your project before answering. When you ask why a page was built a certain way, you get the reason from the person who decided it.

On large projects that bring in specialists — a photographer, an industry copywriter, a developer for a custom integration — you'll know who they are and what they're doing, but they don't become your contact. The questions still come to me, and the decisions still come from me.

Your side needs a counterpart: someone who can approve and gather feedback from everyone else. We name that person on the first call, because a project with a clear owner on both ends is the one that finishes on time.

Yes, and it comes in two forms: an included support window, then an optional monthly plan.

Every build includes post-launch support — 15 days for The Commander, 30 for The Captain and The Vice Admiral, 60 for The Master Chief Diver, and three months for The Fleet Admiral. That window covers what a new site needs in its first weeks: fixes to anything that isn't working as approved, small adjustments as you see the site with real traffic, and help with the handoff — logins, analytics, how to make basic updates yourself.

After that, monthly maintenance plans take over if you want the site looked after. Base Camp, Forward Operating, and Full Command include a set number of maintenance hours each month, daily backups, security monitoring, and a guaranteed support response window that gets faster with each tier. Plans require hosting with Black Anchor, and unused hours don't roll over.

Either way, every request goes through the website's support ticket system. That keeps a record for both of us, keeps work scheduled instead of ad hoc, and is how the response and completion windows are enforced.

What isn't support: new pages, new features, redesigns, or copy changes to approved content. Those are new scope, quoted separately, and the ticket system is where you ask for them too.

Whatever you need it to be, and nothing you don't. Builds are project-based with no long-term contract, so the site is yours the day it launches, and the relationship continues only if it's worth continuing.

Most clients keep three things going. Annual hosting, so the site stays on infrastructure I manage. A maintenance plan, so someone is watching backups, security, and updates, and there are hours each month for the small changes every business needs. And for those who want the phone to keep ringing, a local SEO plan that adds content, listings, links, and month-over-month reporting.

Some clients want more than that — a standing strategy relationship where I'm in the room for the next brand decision, the next division, the next building. A small number of those retainers are available, and they go to clients I've already built with.

What stays the same regardless: you own the site, the domain, and the files. Plans run month-to-month, with 30 days' notice to cancel. And the person you email is the person who built the site, so the answer comes from someone who remembers why it was built that way.