SwansonX
Brainerd & the lakes area

Web design in Brainerd, without agency pricing.

I'm Sean, and I actually live here, not in an agency two states away. I build custom websites for lakes-area businesses: one fixed price in writing, from $1,495 for a site, and the code is yours to keep.

  • Based in Brainerd, not outsourced
  • Fixed price, agreed up front
  • I reply within 24 hours.
Why up here is different

Half your customers are searching before they even get here.

A lakes-area business isn't just selling to its neighbors. A lot of the money arrives from somewhere else, having already decided on a phone three hours south.

Found by people who haven't arrived yet

Someone in Edina is planning a weekend at the lake on a Tuesday night, and they're picking the guide, the rental, the restaurant and the repair shop before they load the truck. If you can't be found and judged that evening, the decision is made without you.

Seasonal hours that are actually right

Nothing costs a business up here more than hours left over from last October. A real site puts the season, the hours and whether you're taking bookings somewhere you can change in a minute, instead of buried in a Facebook post from eight months ago.

Fast on one bar of signal

A lot of your customers load your page from a cabin, a boat landing or somewhere off 371 with barely any service. A site that builds to static files loads in about a second on a weak connection. A builder site carrying a megabyte of plugins doesn't.

The honest advantage

Ranking up here is genuinely winnable.

In the Twin Cities, ranking for a competitive trade takes months and a real budget, because you're up against dozens of businesses and several agencies being paid to outrank each other. Around Brainerd there are simply fewer of you.

That means the ordinary things actually work. A page for each service, your towns written on the page in plain text, a properly filled-in Google Business Profile and a site that loads quickly will often put a lakes-area business at or near the top — not because of a trick, but because a lot of local competitors are still running on a Facebook page and a phone number.

It's one of the few situations where a small budget genuinely competes. If you're the only business in your trade around here with a real website, that's an advantage you keep for years.

What it costs

The price is on the page, same as everywhere else on this site.

No discovery call before you're allowed to know what something costs. These are the same prices whether you're in Baxter or down in the Cities.

Custom website

$1,495

Mobile-first, forms wired to your inbox, SEO foundations, launch and a handover walkthrough. Half up front to book, half on launch.

Site Care

$49/month

Optional, month to month, no cancellation fee. Hosting, domain and SSL, patches, backups and monitoring. A website builder alone is $16 to $46 a month and you still make your own edits.

Custom software

$950

One module to start, if the bigger problem is what happens after the enquiry arrives. Software for lakes-area businesses →

Where I work

Across the lakes area, and the rest of Minnesota.

I'm in Brainerd, so this is home ground. The work itself runs over email and video calls, and if you'd rather sit down with someone about it, that's easy to arrange here.

  • Brainerd
  • Baxter
  • Nisswa
  • Pequot Lakes
  • Crosslake
  • Breezy Point
  • Little Falls
  • Aitkin
  • Crosby
  • Staples

If you only want the town, not the whole company: Brainerd Web Design is my site for Brainerd and Baxter businesses specifically, same person, same prices, same phone number.

Pages for the towns up here

Pages for the kind of business you run

Further out, or out of Minnesota entirely? Still fine. Tell me where you are.

Questions

Questions from lakes-area businesses.

Are you actually in Brainerd, or is this a page targeting the town?
Actually here. SwansonX is run from Brainerd and it's where the business is registered. That's also why there's no storefront address on this site: it's a service-area business, and inventing a shopfront would be dishonest.
My business is seasonal. Is a website worth it for five months a year?
Usually yes, because the searching happens outside those five months. People book summer in March and ice season in November. What matters is that the site says clearly what's open when, which is a five-minute edit rather than a rebuild.
Most of my customers come from the Cities. Does a Brainerd page help me?
It helps more than you'd think. Somebody searching “cabin rental Nisswa” or “boat repair Brainerd” is usually not in Brainerd when they type it. Naming the towns you serve is how you get found by people who are still packing.
I only have a Facebook page. Is that really a problem?
It's a problem in two ways: you don't own it, and it barely shows up in search. Keep the Facebook page, which is good for regulars, but a site you own is what gets found by someone who has never heard of you.
Can we meet in person?
Yes, if that's what makes you comfortable. Plenty of this gets done over email because it's faster, but I'm local and a coffee isn't a problem.

Let's get your lakes-area business online.

Tell me what you do and which towns you want to be found in. I'll reply within 24 hours with a fixed price and a date, and if a website isn't what you need right now, I'll tell you that instead.

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