My first audience that I want to win over is my friends and family. Anyone can convince a stranger to become a client, but your friends and family know you too well. Sometimes to a fault, that they wouldn't actually be a customer ever because they're too close.
Regardless of what's the norm for the world, I'm proud to call so many friends customers. I respect how much that means for them to trust me with the project, and also I feel even more driven to deliver something great!
So I'm proud today to showcase a new website build for my friend, Jeff Maeck.
To become a wedding officiant in Ontario, Canada, you need to go through an organisation that is approved to appoint you, and Jeff has done the hard work to create that organisation in The Togetherness Collective.
](https://ik.imagekit.io/withers/Togetherness_Collective_new_website_build_screenshot_l6Vt2LOAC)
Of course, if I'm building a website it can't just be pretty fluff to make Jeff feel good about himself. it has to serve the Togetherness Collective's mission to appoint more officiants and do more good work.
Which means he needs a website that doesn't just look good, but
- Ranks well on search
- Is found by AI answer engines
- Is fast
- Excellent on mobile
- Works in all the web browsers and on all devices
- Whilst also accurately, thoroughly, efficiently, powerfully tells the story of the TC and how you can become an officiant.
As for the final point, that proof will be in the pudding.
✅ What I can do is make a fast website that doesn't produce any errors or problems on Google Page Speed Insights.
](https://ik.imagekit.io/withers/page_speed_score_of_TC__DxGaG0I6)
✅ It needs to be mobile-friendly,responsove, and fast on mobile.
](https://ik.imagekit.io/withers/iphone_screenshot_2CycTfk9s)
✅ It has good schema on it so when a computer visits the web page it's getting structured data about the organisation.
](https://ik.imagekit.io/withers/Rich_Results_screenshots_qKL5FSnzn)
✅ And the website gets 100/100 on an AHREFs site audit, so I know the code is all correct and without error. There's a few warnings there that I'll get to evvenutally, but no actual problems.
](https://ik.imagekit.io/withers/AHREFS_saUBljVAt)
Now the only thing left to do is to build it's domain authority and it's ciations. It's backlinks time.
](https://ik.imagekit.io/withers/DA_report_from_Moz_r--dYNY20)
Which is why I'm writing this blog post. Firstly to show off the website and to sing Jeff's praises, but this website has a domain authority of 13, which isn't groundbreaking but it's higher than 3. Every on-topic link from a website to yours is worth a motza!
For the nerds in the house, the website is built on Astro in Visual Studio Code, which spits out a static website which means it can be lightening fast, and then it's hosted on Cloudflare Pages. It's such a good solution for the average business website. Squarespace and Wordpress aren't the only ways to build a small business website!