Alpha Beta Design

A studio marketing site that could sell two published packages ($3,000 and $4,000) to a founder or small-business buyer, bilingual across English and Spanish, without adopting any of the visual defaults that make ninety percent of freelance-designer sites read as interchangeable in 2026.

The site had to argue what the studio actually sells: research before design, four-tier launch review at ship, real portfolio range across ten industries, published pricing at the tier where every peer studio in Portland gates a number behind a discovery call. And it had to hold that argument up on a phone as well as on a 5K display.

A twelve-section home page anchored by a fan-pile hero of the four featured samples that settles into a 2×2 grid as the reader scrolls; a six-more grid below with click-to-open galleries of every sample; a two-package section with published pricing and a no-ship guarantee; a five-step process rendered as an interactive stagger-in list; three long-form case studies; two long-form essays; a sample launch-review PDF; a full parallel Spanish site at /es with locale-aware nav, footer, sample modal, and content.

Sample gallery modal opens on any card, shows five to seven money shots per site with keyboard navigation, thumbnail strip, and a tier pill. Every card is a real Vercel deployment, not a mockup. Ten samples, ten industries.

Fan-pile hero animation drives the whole first-fold argument. Instead of a static device mockup or a video loop, four sample cards start pilled up in the right column and land in the natural 2×2 grid as the reader scrolls. It reads as motion the reader controls, not motion happening to them, and it doubles as the interaction hint for the samples below.

Published pricing was the biggest single positioning bet. Both packages carry a dollar figure on the home page and on the services page. The seven Portland studios in the competitive-scan pass either hide their number entirely or gate it behind an inquiry form. Publishing filters mismatched inbound before it reaches the calendar, and the essay that ran with the ship (Why I publish prices) argues why.

Bilingual is not a bullet; it is a route. /es is a full parallel site — home, services, contact, case studies, essays, accessibility statement — with a Spanish contact form, locale-aware nav, and localized card names and captions. Every peer studio in Portland's demographic list writes 'bilingual' as a footer word, if it appears at all. Wiring it as a route makes it a promise the reader can walk through.

• Fan-pile hero as the interaction primer — motion the reader drives, not motion that happens to them.
• Published pricing above the fold on / and inside every card on /services.
• Full Spanish site at /es with locale-aware nav, footer, sample modal, contact form, and translated content.
• Sample gallery modal with 5-7 money shots per sample, click-to-open, keyboard-navigable, on every card.
• Five-step process rendered as an interactive stagger-in list on /services, hover-emphasized numbered badges.
• No-ship guarantee elevated from FAQ into a callout on every package card.
• Sample launch-review PDF published under /writings so the deliverable is inspectable, not just described.

No 'book a call' CTA on the home page. The contact form is the CTA. A discovery-call widget on a two-published-packages site sends the wrong signal about how the intake works.

No live-chat widget. Every studio in the competitive-scan pass had one or considered one; none of them improved conversion in a category where the buyer wants to write a paragraph and get a reply. The contact form asks for four qualifying answers up front instead.

No stock imagery anywhere except the founder portrait. Every sample screenshot is a real Vercel deployment. Every essay is written by Alfonso in Alfonso's voice, not generated. Every sample vertical translation was written by hand.

No auto-playing hero video, no exit-intent popup, no newsletter overlay, no 'we use cookies' banner beyond the browser's default (Vercel Analytics honors do-not-track without a signup wall).