Method
How a Maticweb project is born.
A structured process in 5 steps: from understanding your business to a live, growing website.
1. Context reading
Understand your industry, territory, competitive advantage and goals before designing any page.
2. Offer structure
Organise services, packages and pricing clearly to avoid the classic generic, confusing services page.
3. Persuasive design
Build a premium, readable, performant visual language: the site must look strong without becoming heavy.
4. Build & launch
Develop, test and deploy with solid SEO structure, clear CTAs, forms, analytics and conversion-ready content.
5. Growth
After launch we work on SEO, content, ads, chatbots, hosting or VPS based on the real needs of the project.
In detail
What actually happens at each step.
The cards above describe the intent. Below is the deliverable, the anti-pattern and the timing for each phase, so you know what to expect at every milestone.
Step 1 — Context reading
Understand your buyer before designing anything
A site that converts is never the product of a faster Figma file. It is the product of a clear reading of who actually buys from you, what they are comparing you against and why your offer is defensible. We start every project here, even when the brief says “just rebuild the existing site”.
For European buyers this step matters even more: we map who closes deals (an Italian sales team, a German parent company, a Dutch procurement office), the buying language they use, the comparison set they have in mind and the contractual constraints (NDA, DPA, EU VAT reverse charge). The output is a short, written context document we both agree on before any design work begins.
- You receive
- A two-to-four page written context brief, the agreed positioning statement and the shortlist of three-to-five reference competitors we will measure against.
- What this is not
- We do not ask you to fill in a 40-question generic form. We do not start designing mock-ups in week one to look fast.
- Typical timing
- Typically 3-5 working days of focused work, mostly async, with one 45-minute call at the start and a 30-minute review at the end.
Step 2 — Offer structure
Make the offer legible before the visual design
The most expensive mistake on a small or mid-market website is a beautiful homepage attached to an unreadable services page. Buyers leave the site not because the design is weak but because they cannot tell what they are buying, at what price and against which alternative.
We rewrite the offer architecture before any pixel work. That means deciding how many services live as standalone pages versus packaged bundles, where the pricing anchor goes, how the comparison pages are structured and which decision questions deserve a dedicated landing page. For European buyers we usually split the offer in three layers (entry, growth, enterprise) with separable maintenance and SEO retainers, so EU procurement teams can shape the budget across cost centres.
- You receive
- A written information architecture: list of pages, internal linking map, pricing structure, comparison angles and lead form logic. Approved before any visual mock-up is opened.
- What this is not
- We do not push you into a single, opaque monthly bundle. We do not let a marketing-style copywriter invent claims your business cannot deliver.
- Typical timing
- Typically 4-7 working days, often overlapping with the context reading review.
Step 3 — Persuasive design
A premium look that stays under three hundred kilobytes
Persuasive design here means three things at the same time. Visually premium so the site feels worth its price tag. Readable on a low-end phone in the corner of an industrial estate north of Milan. Performant enough that Core Web Vitals stay green even when you add chatbots, video and an EU cookie banner.
We design in-browser more often than in Figma, with a small token system (typography scale, spacing scale, two or three colour intents) that the developer and the editor can both speak. Mock-ups exist but they are the by-product of the live system, not its master copy. This is also where we plan the bilingual experience for IT and EN buyers and the accessibility baseline (WCAG AA contrast, keyboard nav, semantic headings) without bolting it on at the end.
- You receive
- Approved design system tokens, three key page templates (home, service, comparison), the responsive logic for mobile and tablet and the accessibility checklist signed off.
- What this is not
- We do not deliver a pixel-perfect mock-up of every single page just to make week three feel productive. We do not approve designs that ship more than around three hundred kilobytes of weight to the user.
- Typical timing
- Typically 5-8 working days for design, with one or two checkpoints to keep direction tight.
Step 4 — Build & launch
Ship a real production site, not a polished demo
This is where most projects quietly slip: a beautiful staging URL goes live as production with broken redirects, missing structured data, no SEO baseline and analytics that nobody trusts. We treat go-live as a checklist, not as a finish line.
Build runs on Next.js, with TypeScript, server components where they help and static pre-rendering where possible. Forms hit a real CRM or email inbox you actually monitor. Analytics is configured server-side where the cookie banner allows, and the SEO baseline (titles, descriptions, JSON-LD per page type, sitemap, robots, hreflang for bilingual sites) ships on day one rather than being patched two months later.
- You receive
- Production deployment on a domain you own, redirects map from the old site, SEO baseline checklist with screenshots, working CRM or form delivery, analytics dashboard and a written go-live note for your team.
- What this is not
- We do not push to production at 6pm on a Friday. We do not consider the project done until you have logged in, sent a real test enquiry and received it.
- Typical timing
- Typically 6-10 working days of build, plus a 2-3 day stabilisation window after go-live.
Step 5 — Growth
Post-launch is where the agency relationship is actually tested
A launched site is the start of the working relationship, not the end of the project. Most of the value we deliver to European buyers happens after week three: the SEO retainer that catches the first ranking signals, the small landing pages that capture a new vertical, the chatbot that filters bad-fit enquiries before they hit your sales team.
We work with separable, readable retainers. SEO and content live on one monthly line, maintenance and hosting on another, evolutive development on a third. Each one can be paused independently without breaking the others. We share a monthly written note that records what changed, what we observed in analytics and where we suggest investing the next forty euros.
- You receive
- A monthly written growth note, ranking and analytics summary, separable invoices and a clear escalation path with response times documented in writing.
- What this is not
- We do not bundle maintenance, hosting, SEO and content into one opaque monthly fee. We do not lock the post-launch relationship behind a yearly contract you cannot exit at three months notice.
- Typical timing
- Ongoing, billed monthly, with quarterly written reviews.
What this method is not
A few things this process deliberately avoids.
Some choices look efficient on a sales call but quietly damage the project later. We name them upfront so you can compare us fairly to other Italian agencies.
No mock-ups before context
We do not produce a Figma file in week one to make a kick-off feel productive. A mock-up without context locks the project into the wrong shape and is one of the main reasons mid-market sites stop converting six months after launch.
No bundled opaque monthly fee
Maintenance, hosting, SEO and content live on separate monthly lines. You can pause one without breaking the others, and your finance team can attribute each line to the right cost centre — a hard requirement for most EU procurement reviews.
No “ready in 48 hours” promise
A real custom site for a European business does not ship in 48 hours. We do ship landing pages or microsites in two to three weeks when the scope is genuinely narrow, but we never agree to a deadline that would force shortcuts on the SEO baseline or accessibility.
No yearly lock-in on the post-launch retainer
Step 5 is billed monthly with thirty days written notice on each line. If we are not the right post-launch partner you can walk away without paying penalties — which is the only way an agency relationship stays honest over the long run.
FAQ
Method, timing and contract questions.
How long does a full Maticweb project take from kick-off to go-live?
For a standard business site the full process — from context reading to a stable production go-live — runs between five and eight weeks of calendar time. About three of those weeks are async work on our side, the rest is review cycles, content collection and your sign-off. Landing pages or single-section microsites can compress to two or three weeks. Sites with heavy bilingual content, custom integrations or strict procurement reviews can extend to ten or twelve weeks. We always agree the calendar in writing before the kick-off invoice.
Can a European company outside Italy run the whole process remotely?
Yes, and the majority of our work for non-Italian buyers runs that way. We schedule meetings in CET to remain compatible with most European business hours, deliver written summaries after every call so nothing depends on a single person being awake at the right time, and use shared tooling (Figma, Notion or Google Workspace, GitHub) where access is controlled at the company level rather than tied to individuals. The only step that often benefits from one in-person visit — optional — is the kick-off, especially for procurement-driven projects in larger groups.
What happens if I do not like the direction at the end of step 2 or step 3?
Steps 2 and 3 are explicitly designed as decision points. After offer structure (step 2) and design system (step 3) we expect you to either approve in writing, request a bounded revision or stop the project paying only for the work delivered so far. We do not believe in the all-or-nothing contract: half a website is a sunk cost, and forcing a client to continue an unhappy project is the fastest way to ruin a working relationship. The contract documents this explicitly with an exit clause and a fair pro-rata clause.
Do you work with our existing brand and visual identity, or push your own design language?
Both options are normal. If you arrive with a working brand (logo, palette, typography, tone of voice) we treat it as a hard constraint and build the persuasive design layer on top of it — only flagging when a specific choice would actively hurt readability or conversion. If you do not have a defensible identity yet, we build the minimal visual system needed for the site to look premium without inventing a full brand identity you do not need. We do not push a Maticweb house style on every project.
What does growth (step 5) cost and how is it billed?
Each growth service has its own separable monthly line. Maintenance and hosting typically run between EUR 99 and EUR 299 per month depending on the size of the site and the response time you need. SEO retainers run between EUR 590 and EUR 990 per month for an active editorial and technical plan. Chatbot or content production lines are billed only when activated. You pause or resume each line independently with thirty days written notice. Detailed ranges live on the pricing page.
Call to action
If your website needs to look professional, sell better and stay clear, let's talk now.
We can start with an audit, a quote or a quick call. Pick the step that saves you the most time.