I'm Matthew Kerr, a web designer in Grand Rapids. I write, design and build each site myself, for one business and one goal. A 1 to 3 page site is $999. A 5 to 8 page site with the copy written for you is $2,499. The price and the launch date are in writing before you pay.
Half to start, half at launch, or the Starter Site at $149 a month for 12 months, then it stops and the site is yours. Cancel before I start work and your deposit comes back in full.
My prices are on this page, because a price you can see beats a "contact us for a quote." Every project still gets a fixed quote in writing before I start, and that quote does not change halfway through.
1 to 3 pages, built around one action. Tap-to-call, a short form that reaches your inbox, on-page SEO and Google setup. Live in days.
5 to 8 pages with the copy written for you: services, a gallery, reviews. Local schema, on-page SEO and analytics are included.
The full site plus one custom tool built for your business, such as an instant-quote calculator or a booking or intake bot.
Optional. Hosting, backups, monitoring and monthly edits, handled for you. Or run it yourself: a static site can sit on free hosting.
These are starting prices that depend on scope. They are also introductory rates while I build my West Michigan client list, and the price in your quote holds. For comparison, the Grand Rapids rates agencies and freelancers publish run $3,000 to $15,000 for most small business sites, and $2,500 to $6,000 for a hand-built five-to-seven page site. What Grand Rapids web designers charge has the ranges and the reason for the gap.
Prefer to pay monthly? The Starter Site is $149 a month for 12 months, and at month 12 the payments stop and the site is yours. Paying up front is cheaper: $999 against $1,788. If you stop before month 12 the site comes down, and you can still buy it out for 90 days.
The guarantee is short. I rework the first version until you approve it. The launch date is in writing before you pay. If you cancel before I start work, you get a full refund.
The build itself is short. A five-to-seven page site is two to five working days of work. A Starter site typically goes live in days, and a multi-page Business site in one to two weeks. Published agency timelines for a custom multi-page site run two to eight weeks, and most of that is queue time and waiting on content. I explain the difference in how long a small business website should take.
What slows a project down is usually waiting for text and photos. So I write the pages first, from our call, your current site, your reviews and your listings, and you edit them. You send photos of your work, or I use stock until you have them. The launch date goes in writing before you pay.
Plenty of "custom" sites are a purchased theme with a logo dropped in. Mine are written from a blank page: your words, your offer, your one most important action, then a design built around getting a visitor to take it.
Copy comes from a call about your business: what you sell, who calls, what a job is worth. Not from a placeholder that says "Lorem ipsum" or "quality service you can trust".
A plumber wants calls. A salon wants bookings. A manufacturer wants a request for quote. The whole page is arranged to make that action the obvious next step.
When you want a feature the theme does not have, a template site stalls. A custom one gets the feature: an instant quote, an intake bot, a booking tool.
Domain, hosting and code sit in your name from day one. Move it, edit it, hand it to someone else. Nothing is locked to a builder subscription. Here is how to check who owns yours.
| Custom (Kerr & Co.) | Purchased theme | DIY builder | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copy | Written for your business from a call | You fill in the blanks | You fill in the blanks |
| Layout | Designed around your one action | Whatever the theme ships | Drag blocks around |
| Speed | Plain code, tested before launch | Depends on the plugin count | Builder scripts on every page |
| Adding a real feature | Built for you | Find a plugin, hope it fits | Usually not possible |
| Starting cost | $999 | $300 to $1,000 plus setup | $20 to $50 a month, ongoing |
| Ownership | Yours | Yours, tied to the platform | The builder's |
Theme and builder figures are typical published 2025 to 2026 ranges, not quotes from any specific company. Every project gets its own fixed quote.
Twenty minutes, recorded, on what you sell, who buys it, what a new customer is worth and what the site has to do. The copy comes from that call.
Scope, price and launch date in writing before I build anything. If you want more later, that is a new quote, not a surprise on the invoice.
You see the actual site at a shared link within days, not a slide deck. I rework the first version until you sign off.
Launch includes on-page SEO, local schema and Google Business Profile setup, pointed at the town your customers search from.
I'm based in Grand Rapids and build for businesses across the county: Wyoming and Kentwood along 28th Street, Grandville and Walker on the west side, East Grand Rapids, Rockford and Cedar Springs up US-131, Byron Center and Caledonia to the south, Ada and Cascade out east, Comstock Park to the north, Lowell and Sparta at the edges.
Kent County has nine cities (Cedar Springs, East Grand Rapids, Grand Rapids, Grandville, Kentwood, Lowell, Rockford, Walker and Wyoming) and five villages, Caledonia and Sparta among them. Plenty of customers search by names that are not cities at all, like Ada, Byron Center, Cascade and Comstock Park, so I use the names your customers actually type. (Source: Wikipedia, "Kent County, Michigan", read 28 October 2026.)
The build is the same everywhere because it happens over one recorded call and a shared link. What changes is the local search setup. I put the right town names on your pages and in your schema, set your Google Business Profile service area to the places you really serve, and fix your listings so your name, address and phone match everywhere. A Kentwood plumber who also covers Wyoming and Grandville gets all three named. The Google Business Profile page covers that side in more detail.
If you are outside the county (Holland, Muskegon, Kalamazoo, the lakeshore), see web design for West Michigan.
If you searched for a custom WordPress designer, here is the straight answer. For a new site I default to hand-written HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript on a content delivery network. There is no theme and no plugin waiting for a security patch, and I test every site with Google's Lighthouse before launch. If you already have a WordPress site that is doing its job, I work inside it instead of rebuilding it.
WordPress is the common choice around here. On 23 September 2026 I read the home pages of 266 working trade websites in seven West Michigan towns: 130 (49%) run self-hosted WordPress and 82 (31%) sit on a hosted builder such as Wix, Duda or Squarespace. The platform count has the method and the full table. Speed varies a lot too. In September I ran Google's Lighthouse test on ten Grand Rapids contractor home pages and the mobile scores ran from 31 to 99, with a median of 59. The speed article shows how I measured.
Whichever platform you end up on, three questions matter more than the logo. Who owns the domain and the hosting account? Can you move the site? Is the phone number on the first screen?
Three demonstration builds you can open on your phone: a roofer, a restaurant and a salon. The businesses are fictional and each page says so. I do not pass demo work off as client work.
With me, a 1 to 3 page site is $999 and a 5 to 8 page site with the copy written for you is $2,499. A site with one custom tool, such as an instant-quote calculator, is $4,999. Published Grand Rapids rates for most small business sites run $3,000 to $15,000. You get a fixed quote in writing before any work starts.
Not with me. A custom Starter site is $999 once. A DIY builder at $20 to $50 a month costs $240 to $600 a year, every year, and a purchased theme runs $300 to $1,000 plus setup. Custom means the copy, structure and design are written for your business, not that the price starts at $10,000.
The build is two to five working days for a five-to-seven page site. A Starter site typically goes live in days and a multi-page Business site in one to two weeks. I use AI for the mechanical parts, so the slow part is usually waiting on photos and approvals.
All of it: Grand Rapids, Wyoming, Kentwood, Grandville, Walker, East Grand Rapids, Rockford, Byron Center, Caledonia, Lowell, Cedar Springs and Sparta, plus Ada, Cascade and Comstock Park. Everything happens over a call and a shared link, so a business in Sparta gets the same build as one downtown.
For a new site I default to hand-written HTML on a content delivery network, with no theme and no plugins to keep patched. If you already have a WordPress site that is doing its job, I work inside it. Of 266 West Michigan trade sites I read in September 2026, 130 run WordPress.
Yes. Small text and photo changes are simple to make yourself, and I show you how. If you would rather never touch it, the care plan includes a set number of monthly edits: you email the change and I make it.
You do. The domain, the code and the hosting account are in your name from day one. If you leave, you take the whole site with you, with no export fee and no rebuild.
A 20-minute call, your logo and photos of your work. I draft every page from the call, your current site, your reviews and your listings, and you edit. If you do not have photos yet, I use stock until you do.
I rework the first version until you approve it. The price and the launch date are in writing before you pay, and if you cancel before I start work, your deposit comes back in full.
Tell me about the business and what a new customer is worth. I'll tell you what I'd build, what it costs, and how fast it goes live.