A website is the tenth people see. We build for the rest.
ANTARCTIX builds company websites, moves them off page builders, and wires the work a site can do on its own. We start with which of your services should actually be sold, what people say just before they don’t buy, and what happens in the hour after an enquiry lands — then build the site that says it.
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The iceberg is not your website. It’s your business.
The design is real and it matters — and it is the tenth every studio shows you, because it is the part that photographs well. Underneath it is how you actually make money, and a site built without that is a nice-looking guess.
A site that gives equal space to every service is a site nobody asked this about. It is the first thing we ask, and the answer usually changes the navigation before it changes the design.
Every business has one sentence that loses it deals. Almost no website answers it, because nobody who built the website was ever on the calls.
This is the part that changed. A website used to be a brochure that could not act — that stopped being true years ago, and most sites are still commissioned as though it were.
The cheapest site to build is often the most expensive to own. That bill arrives later, which is exactly why it is never in the pitch.
Three questions, before anyone opens a design tool.
Every studio claims to understand your business. This is what it has to cash out as — one conversation, before there is a proposal, and the answers decide the navigation before they decide anything about the design.
Which of your services should we be trying to sell?
Almost every company website devotes equal space to every line of business, which is a decision nobody made. Margin, repeat rate and how much you enjoy the work are all different answers, and the navigation should reflect one of them rather than the org chart.
What do people say just before they don't buy?
The real objection is rarely price, and it is almost never on the website. It is usually a doubt about size, timeline, proximity or risk — and once it is named, it belongs on the page rather than in your third call.
What happens in the hour after somebody enquires?
This is where most of the value is, and it is the question no design brief contains. If the answer involves somebody retyping something, the site should be doing it — and that is usually worth more than anything we could change about the homepage.
This is the discovery phase. It is one conversation rather than two months, which is the single biggest reason a rebuild that should take three weeks takes a year.
Six kinds of company, and what we already know about each one.
Not a list of industries we will accept money from. A list of businesses whose shape we have already built, where the first week is shorter because we are not learning how the trade works on your time.
Consultancies and professional services
Nobody buys the service. They buy the belief that you have solved this exact problem before, for somebody who looked like them, and that you will still answer the phone in March.
Manufacturers, suppliers and B2B trade
The buyer is technical, in a hurry, and comparing you against two others in a tab each. They want specification, lead time and whether you have supplied someone their size — in that order, and above the fold.
Service operators and logistics
Demand arrives on a phone, often at an inconvenient hour, and it converts on chat rather than on a form. The winner is whoever is easiest to reach in the ninety seconds the customer has.
Clubs, hospitality and membership
Two audiences who must never read each other's page. The member wants the calendar, the fees and what changed this month; the visitor wants to know whether they are welcome and what it costs to find out.
Training, academies and courses
The site is not the brochure — it is the product. Enrolment, progress, cohorts and certificates are all records that have to stay correct across sessions, and the marketing page is the smallest part of it.
Clinics, wellness and corporate health
When the buyer is a company rather than a person, the case has to be made on budget and administration — not on wellbeing. The person championing it internally needs something they can forward without editing.
Not on this list? The list is where we already know the shape of the problem, which shortens the first week. It is not a filter. What actually matters is whether one person at your company can explain how you make money and where deals get lost — if somebody can, we have enough to start; if nobody can, that is worth solving before anyone builds you a website.
Move it. Build it. Make it do the work.
Three engagements, and most companies need exactly one of them. Which one is usually obvious twenty minutes into the conversation above.
Migration
Off WordPress, Wix, Squarespace or Webflow — with the thing you were stuck on fixed.
Company website
The front door, built to hold up under everything nobody shows you in a mockup.
Automation
The part that changed: a website can do the work, not only describe it.
From $2,400, published in full rather than quoted on request. Every engagement and price, or build the spec yourself.
8 shipped, every one live at an address you can open right now.
Booking systems, a course platform with accounts, an AI trip planner, and 3 that run in two or three languages — which is the part most studios quietly avoid.
Three claims, and each one costs us something to make.
We learn the business before we design a page
Three questions, answered in one conversation and before there is a proposal: which service should actually be sold, what people say just before they don't buy, and what happens in the hour after an enquiry arrives. Every studio says they understand your business. This is what it has to mean, and it is why the navigation is usually wrong on the site you have.
It is measured, or it isn't finished
Named conversion events are instrumented at build and evidenced at handover, never sold as an extra. A site nobody measures is a site nobody can improve, and you will be told to improve it anyway.
You own all of it, from day one
Repository, hosting, domain and analytics in your name from the start — not transferred at the end if the relationship goes well. Conventional Next.js and TypeScript your next developer can read. We are removable on purpose, which is the only version of this promise that means anything.
Nothing here is urgent. That is the problem.
None of these will break anything this month, which is why they are still true a year later. They are not risks — they are costs you are already paying, in a currency nobody invoices you in. Waiting is a decision, and it is usually made by not making it.
The objection gets answered by a person instead
The doubt that ends deals is being handled on every call, by whoever picks up — usually the most expensive person available, usually for the two hundredth time. It never appears on an invoice, nobody is measured on it, and that is exactly why it survives a decade. A page can answer it once and then answer it in your sleep.
Analytics has no rewind
A site that records nothing is not neutral, it is subtracting. The decision you want to make with evidence next year needs data you had to start collecting this year, and there is no supplier who can sell it to you afterwards. Every unmeasured month is permanently unmeasured.
On a platform you cannot leave, waiting compounds
Everything published while you postpone is published into somebody else's database, and it is one more thing the eventual migration has to carry. This is the only item here that actively gets worse — the others hold steady while you decide. Postponing this one is a decision to pay more later.
The site keeps selling what you have stopped selling
A business changes faster than its website. Every quarter the gap widens between the work you want now and the work the site still offers, so the enquiries keep arriving for the thing you were trying to move away from — and the people who wanted the new thing, and did not find it, never tell you they visited.
No figures here, and there will not be any. Every one of these is true by the shape of the situation rather than by a study we could have picked to suit us — check each one against your own week.
Score the site you have before paying for a new one.
14 questions across the 7 layers above, about fifteen minutes. It asks whether the site sells the work that earns and whether it answers the objection that loses you deals — then the result appears on the page as you answer. No email required to read your own number, and it can tell you that you don’t need us.
Already know what you need? Every engagement and price is on the services page, or email hello@orions.agency.
We ship the iceberg. Not the postcard.