pixel61/Web design on the Mornington Peninsula

Web design on the Mornington Peninsula.

I'm Alex. I build proper websites for small businesses — wineries, distilleries, cafés, holiday rentals, anyone with customers. I used to live in Dromana.

I'm based in the UK these days, which I'd rather say up front than have you work it out on a call. Below is the honest version of what that means, good and bad.

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Working with someone on the other side of the world.

It sounds like a drawback. For building a website it mostly isn't — here's how it actually goes.

The time difference does the work.

You send me something at the end of your day and I'm just starting mine — so most mornings you wake up to progress rather than a reply promising some. The honest flip side: if you want someone on the phone at 2pm your time, I'm asleep. We'd sort a standing time that works, and everything else happens over email while you get on with your day.

I've built for Australian businesses before.

A Tasmanian distillery selling spirits online — age verification that meets Australian requirements, bottle-size variants with their own stock, shipping built around when a small producer actually dispatches. Not a theory about the Australian market. A shop that's been taking orders for years.

You own everything.

The code, the domain, the hosting account — all in your name, on your side of the world if you want it there. If you ever want to hand it to someone local, you can, and they'll find a normal codebase rather than something only I understand.

One person, start to finish.

I write the code and answer the email. No account managers, no handoffs, nobody subcontracting your site to someone you'll never meet. Whoever you're emailing in week one is the person still there in year two.

Who this is for.

Wineries and cellar doors across the Peninsula
Distilleries, breweries and producers selling online
Cafés, restaurants and pubs in Dromana, Rye and Sorrento
Holiday rentals and short-stays along the bay
Events and festivals on the Peninsula
Trades and service businesses stuck with a site nobody maintains

Some of what I've built

A short list — deliberately. A small distillery in Tasmania, a three-day rock festival, and a website-builder I made for bands.

01·

E-commerce·Drinks & hospitality·Australia

Deviant Distillery

deviantdistillery.com

A small Tasmanian distillery doing things their own way — and selling the results online.

I built Deviant's online shop from scratch — product pages, age-gating, stock management, the lot. The brand had real personality and I wanted the site to feel like the bottle in your hand, not a generic Shopify template.

"pixel61 built a bespoke ecommerce site from the ground up for my business. Their service was professional, efficient, and reliable and the end result was truly fantastic. I would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a quality and user-friendly business site, and will definitely use pixel61 again next time I need to build a website."
— John Hyslop, Deviant Distillery

Read the full case study

02·

Festival·Multi-stage·Ticketing

Pleasure Beach Rocks

pleasurebeachrocks.co.uk

A three-day rock festival in Blackpool — 17 tribute acts, 12 original artists, and three nights at the Big Blue Hotel bundled into the ticket.

This one's a working festival site for a working festival. Everyone arrives Friday and leaves Sunday, so the whole ticketing flow is built around weekend packages rather than day tickets — accommodation, lineup, schedule and checkout all on one site, all working together.

Read the full case study

03·

Music industry·SaaS·Solo build

Band Me Up

bandmeup.com

A website-builder I built specifically for bands, because the alternatives were either generic profile pages or full-fat website builders that didn't understand bands.

Bands have specific needs — tour dates, music players, EPKs, mailing lists, photos, video — and most platforms either bury those behind a hundred features they don't need, or skip them entirely. So I built one that does the band stuff properly and ignores the rest.

Read the full case study

Who you're actually hiring

Alex / pixel61 ltd

I'm Alex. I pick up the phone, write the code, and answer the support email. No team behind a curtain. No account managers. No 47-page briefing document.

I've been building across small sites, large-scale software, design systems, and internal tools for nearly twenty years. Startup, agency, corporate — senior roles by day, solo work alongside it. It means whatever you need from a website, chances are I've built something like it before and can get you there without the guesswork.

When I'm not at the keyboard I'm playing drums, playing in a band, building something, chasing my kids around, or finding a way to bring up Australia in conversation (I lived there, I miss it, sorry in advance).

If you want the proper CV-style "twenty years of frameworks and clients" version, that lives over at devcalledalex.com. This site is for hiring me to actually build something.

devcalledalex.com

BasedSwanage, Dorset

Working since2007

Client locationsUnited Kingdom, Australia

Questions you might have

The stuff small-business buyers actually email me about. Answered up front so you don't have to.

01Do I own the site?

Yes, completely. The code is yours, the design is yours, the domain is yours. If you ever want to take it elsewhere, just ask — I'll hand over everything you need to move it. No lock-in, no hostage situation.

02Can I edit it myself once it's built?

Depends what "edit" means, and on whether we build you an admin area — some sites need one, plenty genuinely don't. If we do: swap a photo, change a price, add a news post, all yours, and I'll show you how. Redesign the whole homepage — that's more of a job than an edit, so that one usually comes back to me.

03What if you get hit by a bus?

Fair question, asked surprisingly often. Your site lives on hosting in your name, the code is yours, and there's a handover document with everything any other developer would need to pick it up. The whole thing is built with popular, well-supported frameworks rather than anything I've invented myself, so you're not stuck with a one-of-a-kind setup only I understand. Bus or no bus, you keep the site.

04I'm not technical at all. Is that a problem?

Not even slightly. Most of my clients aren't technical. I'll never make you "log into the cPanel" or send you a JSON file. If something needs to happen, I'll either do it for you or write you a one-page guide with screenshots.

05How does payment work?

Usually 50% up front and 50% on launch, by UK bank transfer, with 14 days on the invoice. That's just the default though — if spreading it out differently suits you better, say so and we'll sort something that works. If you want me looking after the site once it's live, that's a separate monthly thing — direct debit or standing order, cancel anytime.

06Is the price plus VAT?

No. pixel61 ltd isn't VAT-registered, so what you see is what you pay. (If that ever changes, the pricing here will be updated and the FAQ will say so.)

07Will my site show up on Google?

Yes. I do the proper basics on every site — page titles, descriptions, sitemap, structured data, fast load times. That gets you found when someone searches for your business name or "[your-thing] in [your-town]", which is what most small-business customers are actually doing. What I don't do is promise you'll rank #1 for "web designer" or "best plumber" against people who've spent years and tens of thousands on SEO. Anyone who promises that is selling you something else.

08Can you fix / redesign my existing site instead of starting fresh?

Honestly? Usually no. Most of the time it's quicker, cheaper and better for both of us to start fresh on a small site than wrestle with someone else's old code. If you really want me to look at an existing site, I will — but I'll tell you straight if a rebuild is the better call.

Want to chat about a site?

Festival, band, café, distillery, holiday let, anything. Fill in the boxes and hit send — none of it is required, the more you tell me the more useful my reply will be. Comes straight to my inbox, no team, no triage.

Get in touch

Prefer a quick chat first? Book a 30-minute call

Or skip the form and email me directly: hello@pixel61.com

If it helps, here's what to include

None of it is required, but the more you tell me up front, the more useful my reply will be:

01Roughly what you're building.A holiday let? A café? A festival? Something else?
02Any sites you like the look of?(yours or anyone else's) — saves a thousand words.
03What's driving the timingLaunching something? Old site embarrassing you? Festival in October?
04A rough budgetIf you've got one. A ballpark or "no idea yet" are both genuinely fine — it just helps me point you at something sensible.

I'll come back with either "yes, let's do it, here's how" or "no, here's why, here's who I'd point you at instead". Both are useful — neither will take a week to land in your inbox.