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Nikita Morell writes copy exclusively for architects. She'd had The Design Order rebrand her site; what she needed was a developer who'd build it to spec, on budget, on time. Four weeks later it went live identical to the design, and her designer rang me asking to work on the next project together.
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Nikita Morell writes copy exclusively for architects. Just architects. And as far as copywriting goes, I haven't met anyone better. I can't open one of her email newsletters and put it down before I'm finished. Engaging, creative, fun, down-to-earth. The kind of writing that makes architects pick up the phone.
She'd had her brand and site rebuilt by The Design Order in Brisbane and was searching online for a developer to bring it to life. I was recommended to her. We talked. I quoted at the high end of what she'd budgeted for, and she trusted me with the work.
Four weeks. Build the new site faithfully to the design. Make sure she could keep editing it herself afterwards.
WordPress with Divi Builder. Divi gave Nikita the room to keep updating content herself once the site was live. She ships a lot of writing, and she shouldn't have to come back to me every time a new article goes up. Custom JavaScript and PHP handled anything Divi wouldn't natively do.
The build had to translate The Design Order's design exactly. After launch, Zoe from TDO got in touch about working together on more projects: the start of a long-term partnership. We've now done five-plus, SAC Consulting included.
Four weeks from start to live. On budget. On spec.
Nikita and TDO needed to know the live site would behave the way the design said it would, no surprises after launch. Spacing, typography, motion, every detail, translated from the design comp into the build without drift. Four weeks of careful translation, and the site matched the spec end to end.
Nikita has a library of free videos she shares, but only with people who've subscribed to her newsletter. The brief: prompt visitors to subscribe before watching, then leave them alone afterwards. The off-the-shelf plugins kept re-prompting on every page load, even seconds after subscribing. We stored the unlock in LocalStorage with an expiry instead: subscribe once, the prompt doesn't come back until the expiry runs down. Free access for anyone on the list, no login wall, no repeat re-prompts.
Nikita is a writer. She ships words constantly: articles, newsletter previews, course updates, case work. The site had to let her run that without phoning me every time. Divi gives her the visual editor; the structure underneath stays consistent so what she edits doesn't accidentally break what she doesn't. She still edits her own content, years later.
Nikita has a deep library of resources she'd built up in Notion over the years and wanted to share with her paying clients, but only with her paying clients. The off-the-shelf options either cost too much or wanted her to migrate her content out of Notion and into a separate platform. So we built her a side site, lightweight by design. Next.js reads her Notion library directly via the API and surfaces it in a clean viewer: no migration, no double-handling, she keeps editing in Notion exactly like she always has. Auth runs through ActiveCampaign: a client signs up, ActiveCampaign subscribes them and stores a generated password in a custom field, encrypted but lightweight. No separate user database, no auth-as-a-service subscription, no plugin tax. Live for over a year. Still humming.
The site went live in the four weeks Nikita gave me, faithful to the design, within the budget she'd set. She was thrilled. We've kept working together since: a custom client-resource library has been live for over a year on a separate Next.js + Notion + ActiveCampaign stack, and we have a new project together right now with DIRT.
The bigger story for me was The Design Order. Zoe getting in touch after launch was the start of a long-term partnership. Five-plus projects together since, SAC Consulting among them.
Three years on, the site is still humming. Best Practices and SEO sit at 100 in PageSpeed; First Contentful Paint at 0.8s, Largest Contentful Paint at 1.0s on the dot. Fast for a WordPress + Divi site. Performance sits at 85, not 90+, and that's the honest cost of the platform choice. Divi gives Nikita the visual editor she needs to keep updating the site herself, but it adds weight that no amount of optimisation will fully remove. For a writer whose business depends on shipping content constantly, the trade is the right one.
These days I'm also looking after Nikita's site from an AI-visibility angle: making sure her work shows up in the AI models when architects ask them about copywriters. The site that was built to be discoverable by Google is now being tuned to be discoverable by ChatGPT, Claude, and the rest.
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