The portfolio proves you can build it. The process helps someone trust you to build theirs. Show the finished work up close, then explain how an idea becomes a commission, from first conversation through materials, build and delivery. Built from a 10-to-30-minute questionnaire, in front of you in 48 hours. $40 a month, sent from your account.
Open the sample website to try it on your phone.
Open hartwellfurniture.com ›An example, not a template. Dan Hartwell is not a real maker — the furniture is public-domain museum photography standing in for a real portfolio, and the demo says so on every page. What it shows is the shape we’d build for a working furniture maker: five pages — home, the portfolio, the commission process, the shop, the way in. Walk the full five-page demo ›
Nobody has a furniture emergency. Your buyer browses from wanting, compares you to a showroom and to two other makers, and commits when the work convinces them and the process stops being a mystery. What carries the site:
One finished piece fills the first screen. Every portfolio entry carries the gallery-card facts: piece, wood species, dimensions, year, price, availability. The species named exactly, walnut or cherry or white oak or figured maple, is the credential.
Commission pages that convert describe steps, not vibes: conversation, dimensioned drawings, deposit, the build, delivery. Stated plainly, it turns “custom” from intimidating into a plan.
Half down to hold the schedule slot is this craft’s standard, and saying it on the site reads as a working shop, not presumption. Same for the fixed price: the number set before the first board is cut.
Two to four months is normal for commissions, and the one recurring complaint in this craft is the piece that took twice as long as implied. The buyer who will wait four months needs to be told it is four months.
Sold pieces remain on the page, marked. Most can be commissioned again, and a portfolio where things sell is the strongest proof a maker has.
“If a joint ever fails, I fix it” is lifetime language, and on a maker’s site it lands harder than it does anywhere else. On a maker’s site, next to joinery photos, it’s worth more than any award.
Not a template with your name on it. It is a structure that matches how a buyer moves: struck by one piece, then browsing, then wondering how it works and who you are, then writing to you.
We’ll tell you if the photos aren’t there yet. A maker’s site can only ever be as good as the photography of the work. A buyer commissioning a $4,000 table decides from the photographs alone.
What it takes is not a studio: the finished piece in a real room, straight-on and evenly lit, big files, plus the shots only you can take: the joinery up close, the shavings, the clamps mid-glue-up, the wood before it was a table. If the photos aren’t there yet, that’s the first thing to fix, before design.
We studied how furniture makers turn one striking piece into a signed commission — these are the conventions your customers already expect. The questionnaire is where you pick which of these belong on your site.
The joinery close-up, the drawer slide, the finish in raking light. Craft claims are words until a photograph proves them at four inches.
First conversation, design and deposit, build photos along the way, delivery, with a typical lead time named. A process that’s written down is a process a stranger can trust with a five-figure piece.
Walnut or white oak, two to four months: plain facts that set expectations early and tell serious buyers you’ve done this before.
Dimensions, photos of the space, the budget range, gathered up front, so your first reply is about their table instead of about whether they can afford one.
Every site we build comes with a console — tools or no tools. It is the back room of your own website at yourdomain.com/console, on the phone at the bench and the desktop at home. For a woodworking shop, the screens that earn their place:
What is in build and what stage it is at, so a customer asking how it is going gets a real answer.
The inquiries that are waiting on you and the ones waiting on them — a distinction worth knowing before you chase.
Who has paid to hold a slot, and the week you promised each of them. When somebody writes asking where their piece is, the answer is on this screen rather than in your head.
You answer questions in your own words: what you build, which piece opens the site, how a commission actually goes in your shop, what you charge and what moves the number. If long-form writing is hard, answer as voice memos and we shape the words without changing their character. In front of you in 48 hours, live on your own domain when you approve it, $40 a month, or $400 for the year, and five edit requests a month for as long as the site is yours. Your domain is billed separately at exact registry cost, about $11 a year, in your name from the first day. Cancel anytime, with 14 days to change your mind; $499 less your plan credit buys the site outright and ends the monthly, whenever you want.