Services · Tech
This isn't a
web design pitch.
We build the thing.
YLO didn't set out to be a development shop. But running campaigns and operations means someone always has a bright idea, and Doug, our co-founder, loves writing the code. So we build. Trackers, dashboards, scrapers, automations, custom landings, internal tools, full applications, and yes, the websites too.
How this happened
Doug loves the code.
The rest of us love that he does.
A campaign needs a landing that no off-the-shelf builder can quite do. An ops team is spending three hours a week on a job that wants to be a script. A client account needs a tracker that joins three platforms the platforms don't want joined. Someone has a bright idea at 11pm.
That's how 80% of our tech work has started, not as a sales pitch, but as something the rest of the business needed and the rest of the market couldn't quite deliver economically.
The new bit is speed. AI-assisted coding has turned a week of work into a day for a lot of the brief shapes we see. Which means we can take on jobs that wouldn't have made commercial sense even two years ago. What used to need a developer's full attention now mostly needs a developer's judgement which we have a lot of, by accident, after doing it for a living.
What we actually build
Eight shapes of brief we see most often.
The categories blur, most engagements start as one and grow into two or three, but these are the briefs the rest of the business surfaces over and over again.
Trackers & attribution rigs
Server-side tracking, consent-aware analytics, custom event pipelines, attribution that joins ad spend to revenue net of returns. The kind of work that turns 'we don't know what's working' into 'we know'.
Internal tools & dashboards
The thing your team currently does in a spreadsheet, run as an actual tool. Operations queues, ops dashboards, client portals, reporting views. Boring, useful, hour-saving.
Automations that cut hours
Cross-platform glue. A three-step weekly job becomes a script. A daily reporting routine becomes an email. The cumulative effect across a team is usually larger than anyone notices until they get it back.
Scrapers & data enrichment
Pulling, cleaning and structuring data the rest of the stack pretends doesn't exist. Competitor pricing, market signal, product catalogue normalisation, feed enrichment, anything that wants to be in a row but isn't.
Custom landings & funnels
Conversion-focused pages the campaign team can iterate on without filing a dev ticket. Speed budget enforced. A/B and consent handling baked in. Personalisation where it earns its keep.
Marketing sites & web
Astro / Tailwind / MDX stacks for sites that load fast and stay easy to maintain. WordPress when the client needs it. Headless when it makes sense. Whatever doesn't get in the way.
Full custom applications
When the off-the-shelf tool doesn't fit. Engagement platforms, lead-routing rigs, multi-tenant operations apps. Built with the same care as the marketing-facing work, just less of it gets seen.
Migrations & rebuilds
Off legacy CMSes when the legacy CMS is the slowest part of the funnel. Off legacy databases when the schema is fighting the business. Off platforms whose pricing has stopped making sense.
The stack
Whatever the job actually needs.
We have strong opinions about defaults, Astro + Tailwind for marketing surfaces, Node or Python for backends, Postgres when state matters. We don't have religion about it. The job picks the stack.
- Astro
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- Tailwind
- Node
- Python
- PHP / WordPress
- Postgres
- SQLite
- Cloudflare (Workers, R2, Pages)
- HestiaCP / OVH VPS
- Vercel & Netlify
- GitHub Actions
- Background workers, cron, queues
- Claude / GPT / Gemini (API + SDK)
- Anthropic Agent SDK
- Eval harnesses
- Embeddings + retrieval
What we're not selling
No 'cook-you-up-a-cool-site' pitch here.
We're not going to win a beauty contest against a five-person studio that does nothing but quote 'a website' for a flat fee. We're also not trying to. If your brief is any of the below, we're probably the wrong choice and we'll say so on the call.
- ✗ Templated 'cook-you-up-a-design' website builds
- ✗ Rand-per-site quotes before we know what it's for
- ✗ Long discovery phases dressed up as deliverables
- ✗ Maintenance retainers on sites we didn't build
- ✗ Hour-padded estimates designed to inflate the invoice
When to talk to us
Briefs we actually want.
- → You have a problem that code might solve, and you're not sure where to start.
- → You're paying for a tool that should be five lines of script.
- → Your campaign needs a custom landing an off-the-shelf builder can't do.
- → Your operations need an automation that gives the team three hours a week back.
- → You want to build something internal and don't want to hire a full team for it.
- → Your marketing site is the slowest, ugliest part of your funnel.
Where this plugs in
Tech work cuts across the other pillars.
Got something that wants to be built?
Tell us what the business needs to do that it currently can't, and we'll come back inside a day with the shape of a build, a rough size, and an honest read on whether we're the right people for it.
Bring us a brief