Premium websites
that perform
without the large
price tag.
Nine web design companies rank on page one in Des Moines. Not one of them shows you a price before you book a call.
Since 2011 • You own everything • Technical SEO built in • Veteran-owned
Web design · WordPress web design · Web development · E-commerce web design · Website redesign · SEO · Content marketing · Advanced schema · Custom CRM & software · Website hosting · Website maintenance · Security & recovery · Web design · WordPress web design · Web development · E-commerce web design · Website redesign · SEO · Content marketing · Advanced schema · Custom CRM & software · Website hosting · Website maintenance · Security & recovery ·
You are probably here for one of four reasons.
Some people come to us excited about a new site. Most arrive because something has gone wrong, or is about to. Either way it usually starts like this.
Maybe fifteen. There was a discovery phase attached, and a proposal, and a feeling the number had been decided after somebody looked you up. You are not against paying for good work — you just could not see what the number was for.
It looks a decade old, or it falls apart on a phone, and you have started noticing that the competitor who gets the call has a better one. Nothing is broken enough to be urgent. It is just steadily losing you the comparison.
The person who built it stopped answering, or a text change takes three weeks, or nobody can tell you who actually owns the domain. You are not looking for a redesign so much as a way out.
It started well, then went quiet, then needed one more round, and you paid for a while before anything went live. You would do it again — but not like that, and not without knowing when it ends.
Most people decide about you before they ever call.
Someone searches, lands on your site, and forms a view of your business in a few seconds — how serious you are, whether you are still trading, whether you are the safe choice. That judgment happens without you in the room, and it happens whether your site is any good or not.
If it does not turn up when someone searches for what you do, nothing else on this page matters. Structure, headings, schema and page-by-page targeting decide that.
What you do, who for, roughly what it costs and what happens next. Every question you leave unanswered is a reason to click the result underneath yours.
Most people searching for a local business are on a phone, standing somewhere, deciding between you and one other option.
A number to call, a form that actually arrives, one clear thing to do. Interest that has nowhere to go is not a lead — it is a visit you paid for and did not keep.
That is the whole difference between a website that exists and a website that works — and it is worth considerably more than the gap in price between the two.
You approve the design before anything gets built.
That one step is what keeps a quote from moving, because almost every overrun in this trade comes from a client discovering at launch that the thing they pictured was not the thing being built.
Before a word is written we read the pages currently winning your searches — how long they are, what they cover, which questions they answer.
Not a mood board. The actual layout, on a real page, at real widths, with the real type. Reasonable changes at that stage are included — that is the point of it.
Written page by page, structured for search, compressed and cached before launch. We fill in your contact form, send it, and confirm it arrives.
Domain in your name, hosting under your billing and login, every file handed over on request. If you ever leave, we export it and send it on, free.
The number is on the page.
Ask what a website costs in this market and you will be asked to book a call first. We would rather lose the inquiry we were never right for than win it by being vague about the cost. Three tiers, one-time — these are starting figures.
Up to 15 pages
- Design approved before the build starts
- Every page written against what ranks
- Search structure, schema and metas built in
- Domain, SSL and hosting in your name
- A WordPress walkthrough for your staff
Best for a single-location business, a trade, or a practice with one core service.
16–50 pages
- Everything in Starter
- Every service given its own page
- Location pages for the metro you serve
- FAQ blocks built from real search data
- A blog template your staff can actually use
Best for a multi-service business covering the Des Moines metro.
51+ pages
- Everything in Growth
- Full location and service coverage
- Industry pages for each market you serve
- Duplicate and keyword-overlap audit pre-launch
- Accessibility pass to WCAG 2.1 AA
Best for a business competing across the metro on many services at once.
This is the tier, and it is the honest driver of cost — every page is written and structured individually rather than duplicated.
A store, a booking system, a member login or an integration with software you already run is quoted individually — the work is not predictable from a page count.
Medical, legal, government and education carry a WCAG 2.1 AA bar, quoted on its own. Retrofitting it later costs several times what building it in does.
Specialized work — e-commerce, franchise and multi-location, legal and medical — is a custom quote, priced on product count and integrations, and scoped in a free call.
The same nine things, at every tier.
Nobody in this trade publishes an exclusions list either, which is exactly why ours is at the bottom of this section.
You see the real layout on a real page, at real widths, with the real type. Reasonable changes at that stage are included, before anything gets built.
Each page is written against what currently ranks in Des Moines for that page’s search — its length, its topics, the questions it answers.
Heading hierarchy, descriptive URLs, internal links, schema, and a title and meta written per page. Part of the build fee, not a retainer.
The phone layout is drawn first and desktop follows from it. Most people searching for a local business here are on a phone.
Images compressed and served in modern formats, scripts limited to what the page needs, caching configured before launch.
We fill it in, send it, and confirm the message arrives in your inbox before launch.
The domain is registered to you. SSL installed. Hosting opened under your billing with your login. We manage it; we do not hold it.
Built on WordPress with an editor your staff can work in, plus a walkthrough of how to change text, swap an image and add a page.
The build itself takes days. The calendar is set by how fast design approvals and content answers come back — worth knowing before we start, not after.
Hosting and domain fees, paid to the host and registrar directly — we do not resell them at a markup, so we never profit from you staying. Ongoing maintenance, which is a separate service plenty of clients handle themselves. Paid advertising and media buying — we do not run ad accounts, and if you want that we will say we are not the right people. Logo and branding; if you have no logo we will point you at someone who does branding properly. And stock photography licenses or paid plugins, billed at cost with the receipt attached.
New in Des Moines. Not new at this.
Founder & Web Development Lead
“A place that was neither fancy nor pretentious. Quality work at a fair price.”
Des Moines Web Design Co is our own brand, built for this market. The work is delivered by Salterra, which has been designing and building websites since 2011 — that is where the experience comes from, and we would rather tell you than have you wonder.
That is how Elisabeth described Salterra when she started it in 2011 — before this website, this brand, or this city were part of the plan. Twelve years in web development, owner of Salterra, LLC and SEO Spring Training, LLC, and still in the day-to-day of designing.
The domain is registered in your name. Hosting is opened under your billing, with your login, at a host you could have chosen yourself. If you leave, we export the site and send it to whoever you are moving to, at no charge, and we do not sit on DNS while it happens.
Salterra runs SEO University, which trains agencies and business owners in technical SEO and schema markup, and founded the SEOST Digital Marketing Conference. The people building your site also teach other agencies how to do it.
Because nobody can honestly make one. What we will show you is what currently ranks for your pages’ searches, and build against that.
Twelve services, each with its own page and its own price.
Sorted by what you are trying to fix. The last three are things we do constantly and almost never advertise.
A complete site, designed and approved before it is built, mobile responsive, with search structure and speed handled during the build.
From $499
The same build on WordPress specifically, with an admin your staff can work in and a walkthrough of how to use it.
From $499
Custom functionality rather than pages. Integrations, calculators, booking flows — anything a page builder cannot do.
Quoted individually
An online store: product pages, cart, checkout, payments, shipping and tax.
Quoted separately
Rebuilding a site without losing what it has earned. URLs that bring traffic are kept; replacements get a redirect mapped before the build starts.
From $499
Search engine optimization as ongoing work: what ranks, what does not, and what to change.
Ongoing
Writing pages and posts against what is actually ranking for each topic. Writing and on-site structure only.
Ongoing
Structured data done properly — entities, relationships and nesting, not a plugin’s defaults. It is how a search engine understands what your business actually is.
Quoted individually
Business software rather than pages. Client portals, quoting tools, job tracking, and integrations with what you already run.
Quoted individually
Server, uptime, SSL, backups and speed. Opened in your name and under your billing — we do not resell it at a markup.
Monthly
Software and plugin updates, security monitoring, content edits and new pages as you need them.
Monthly
Hardening, malware removal and getting a hacked site back. Most people meet this service on the worst morning of their year.
Monthly or one-off
Some of these have rules. We know which ones.
Des Moines is an insurance and financial services town — Principal, Nationwide, EMC, Athene, and a deep bench of independent agencies and advisers. Those sectors carry advertising rules most web designers have never read.
State licensing and disclosure requirements built into the page, not bolted on after a compliance review.
SEC and FINRA advertising rules govern what a site may claim. We build to them.
Professional standards on advertising and client confidentiality.
Disclosure requirements, rate presentation, and licensing display.
State bar advertising rules, practice-area structure, and consultation intake.
WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility is the expected bar, and it is quoted on its own.
Treatment pages, new-patient intake, and the local searches that actually convert.
Service-area structure, project galleries, and quote request flows.
Listing integration, neighborhood pages, and agent profiles that rank.
Across the metro, at the same price.
A West Des Moines job and a downtown job cost the same. Prices are by scope, not by where your business sits.
Des Moines
The whole city, including the neighborhoods people actually name when they describe where they are.
Beaverdale · Sherman Hill · East Village · Ingersoll/Grand · Drake · Downtown · Highland Park · Merle Hay
We do not have an office in any of them. Every one of these businesses is served remotely, and we would rather say that here than have you assume otherwise.
The awkward ones, answered.
Most single-location businesses land at the starting figure. The number moves for three reasons, all listed above: more pages, functionality a page builder cannot do, or an accessibility compliance requirement. You get the quote in writing with a timeline before any work starts, and the design-approval step is what holds it.
Two reasons, and neither is that we cut the work. We do not carry an office, an account management layer, or a new-business team. And the process is standardized — the same nine things happen on every build, so we are not re-inventing a workflow per client. What you are not paying for is overhead, not craft.
You do, entirely. The domain is registered in your name, the hosting account is under your billing with your login, and every file, template and image we produce is yours and is handed over on request the same day. If you leave, we export the site and send it to whoever you are moving to at no charge.
Four to six weeks. The build itself takes days — the calendar is set almost entirely by how quickly design approvals and content answers come back from your side. We would rather set that expectation before we start than use it as an excuse afterwards.
No, and anyone who does is not being straight with you. What we do is look at what currently ranks for each of your pages’ searches — the length, the topics covered, the questions answered — and build against that.
Tell us what you sell. Get your number.
No discovery phase, no scoping fee, no call required before you hear a price. Send us what your business does and roughly how many pages you think you need, and you will get the number and a timeline in writing.
Takes about a minute. No call, no obligation.
We reply to everything within one business day.