Web developer · Full stack · Italy

Andrea Ghidara, full stack web developer

Illustrated portrait of Andrea Ghidara

Your website, cut to fit your company.

Measurements first: what you sell, and to whom. Then a site that explains, a store that sells, a platform that gets the work done.

Let's talkSee the work

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Let's start here

The five requests I get asked most often

They rarely turn up alone: a single project usually holds most of them, and deciding which to answer first is already designing it. I rewrote them, they aren't anyone's mail, but the answers are the real ones.

The five requests I get asked most often

Open one. The replies are the ones I actually write: not a quote, but where I'd start. And one in five ends with «you don't need this».

From
a request like yours
To
Andrea

Our site doesn't reflect our direction

What it usually meansIt's almost never a wording problem.

A test you can run today, in ten minutesWrite down the three questions people ask you on the phone before they buy. Then open your homepage and count how many it answers in the first screenful. If it's none or one, the problem isn't how it's written, it's the order it's in: the site describes how the company is organised instead of answering the person who just arrived.

What kind of work it isThe real work is deciding what comes first, not producing copy. A few weeks, and you don't need to redo the design to find out.

Andrea Ghidara
Web developer · Full stack

This one's mine, write to me

From
a request like yours
To
Andrea

One step costs us hours a week

What it usually meansIt's the only one of the five where you know if it's worth it before you start.

The maths you can do todayHours a week, times what an hour of that person costs, times forty-five weeks. If the number that comes out isn't at least double what the tool costs, the step to automate is a different one.

What kind of work it isA small, self-standing piece, wired into what you already use. Then it gets calibrated: how you really need it only shows once it's in use, and from there it gets taken in.

Andrea Ghidara
Web developer · Full stack

This one's mine, write to me

From
a request like yours
To
Andrea

The platform is there, but it needs to do more

What it usually meansAlmost always the platform was built for the company you were, not the one you are.

The two numbers to compareCount how many people use it today against how many used it in the first month, and how many things it does today against how many it did. If either number has doubled, what you're asking for isn't one more feature: it's the structure underneath that has to grow with you.

What kind of work it isIt starts with reading, not writing: first you look at what already holds up, then you say whether what you're asking is an addition or the first piece of a new structure.

Andrea Ghidara
Web developer · Full stack

This one's mine, write to me

From
a request like yours
To
Andrea

Every morning I log into five different tools

What it usually meansThe problem isn't the five logins. It's that nobody knows which of the five holds the right number.

The number to look up twiceTake a number you need every day, open orders or active clients, and look it up in every tool where it might live. If you get two different answers, that's the job: not merging the logins, deciding which one is right.

What kind of work it isIn stages, and the first one has to genuinely replace something. One piece that people actually use is worth more than ten that are finished and switched off.

Andrea Ghidara
Web developer · Full stack

This one's mine, write to me

From
a request like yours
To
Andrea

I have an idea, but I don't know if it fits our processes

What it usually meansNobody arrives knowing whether they need a tool or a platform.

A question you can answer on your own, todayIf one single person disappeared from the company tomorrow, what would stop? That thing is where any sensible project starts, and it's almost always the same thing costing you too much time right now.

What kind of work it isNone, for now. Answering that question is worth more than any quote, and you don't need me to do it.

Andrea Ghidara
Web developer · Full stack

Write to me anyway

The method

Everything you don't see

A finished website. From here on, everything underneath it.

the project

What it's made of

  1. The site

    What you see. Colour, type, hierarchy, words, images. And how all of it holds up on a six-inch screen.

    • Colour
    • Type
    • Sections
    • Copy
    • Images
    • The phone

  2. The logic

    What the site does. Everything a visitor can do is a written rule, an edge case anticipated, an error handled before it happens.

    • Enquiries
    • Accounts
    • The catalogue
    • Payments
    • Bookings
    • Your back office

  3. The infrastructure

    What keeps it standing at three in the morning. You never see it, until it's missing. And then it's all you see.

    • Where it lives
    • The data
    • The copies
    • The domain
    • Security
    • Speed

  4. The services

    What makes it grow after launch. A site going live is where the work starts, not where it's delivered.

What you call «a website» is the screen in the middle. The rest is the work behind it.

Four pieces, and they fit together

Each one stands on its own: you can ask me for just a site, or just the automation that saves you two hours a week. But they're built to fit, and together they become the place where the work actually happens. You start with the piece that weighs most, the rest gets added when it's needed.

  1. 01

    Sites and landing pages

    No bought themes filled with text. It starts from what a visitor has to understand in the first three seconds; structure, words and images follow from that. Then speed and indexing: the difference between having a site and being found.

  2. 02

    E-commerce

    I connect the catalogue to what you already run (back office, warehouse, courier) instead of asking you to update two systems by hand. Payments and shipping stay configurable: tomorrow you can switch provider without rebuilding the shop.

  3. 03

    Web apps and platforms

    We start from the smallest version that stands up and put it in front of a real person early. Roles, permissions and subscriptions get built from the start: adding them later means rewriting.

  4. 04

    AI and automation

    Connected to your real data, not to a model that guesses. And one rule I don't negotiate: when the assistant doesn't know, it hands over to a person instead of inventing an answer.

Work

Four projects, and how they were run

Four real projects. For each one: what the job was, the solution I chose and why that one, and how the work was run through to delivery.

From here on

How we can carry on

It isn't a rulebook, it's a convenience: four moments agreed up front, so neither of us has to ask the other where we are. If your case wants a different order, we change it.

  1. 01 · Within 48 hours of the first meeting

    A document

    Two pages: what the project needs, and how long each piece takes.

    • The basics we need before we can start
    • What's essential to go live, and what can wait
    • What's worth leaving out, or turning into something else

    It's the project's instruction booklet: from there on it's only a matter of building it.

    We can write it together: if something needs changing, this is the moment when changing it is cheap.

  2. 02 · Before a single line of code exists

    A drawn screen

    The screens that matter, before they exist. Not all of them: only the ones where somebody decides something.

    • The screen where someone who doesn't know you lands
    • The one where somebody buys, books or writes
    • The one you'll use yourself, every day, for years

    It isn't finished design, and it's black and white on purpose: colour gets discussed later, order gets discussed now.

    We make the important decisions looking at this, together. Changing a drawing costs an afternoon; changing something already built costs a week.

  3. 03 · Every two weeks, until the end

    A link where you can look and try

    Not a screenshot and not a presentation: an address you open on your phone while the work goes on.

    • You can click around inside it
    • You can show it to a colleague without explaining it
    • You can reject it, which is exactly why I give it to you

    It isn't a release. It's the same thing, incomplete, but real: what's there actually works.

    It's the difference between finding a problem two weeks in and finding it two days from the end.

  4. 04 · From launch on, with no end date

    A phone number

    After launch a person answers, and the person is me. Not a ticket, not a form, not another supplier.

    • Fixes: if I broke it, I fix it
    • Changes, quoted one at a time
    • «Can this be done?», even when the answer is no

    It isn't a support contract you have to sign. If you don't need it you don't pay for it, and if you do, you already know who to call.

    It's a contact that stays with you, both for support and for the ideas that come later.

Background

Where I learned

  1. present

    Freelance web developer

    No badge

    What it left me

    How to talk to people who aren't technical: it's the skill I use more than any language. And the work I do now: moving a business from several tools onto a single platform, running video streaming for clients, holding documents and contracts together, letting many operators work on the same things at the same time.

    My own clients' projects, plus backing up other freelancers: from the dashboard that centralises a business to the small tools orbiting it.

  2. Front-end Developer / UI and UX Designer

    D.lab

    What it left me

    I learned to sort the work and to be on several projects at once, deciding with the team what came first. And to build inside applications already in production, still billing every day: there, every change you make is made while somebody is buying.

    Four products, some the company's and some its clients': a B2B platform to migrate, an AI assistant, an image archive and an analytics platform.

  3. Web Developer

    E.ROI srl

    What it left me

    Holding several technologies together instead of using one at a time: Vue and Inertia on top of Laravel, with load times coming down because the two halves stop redoing each other's work. And the first grounding in authentication, which is where a site stops being a shop window.

    E-commerce platforms across Vue and Laravel: interfaces, authentication, APIs and the panels people actually work in.

  4. Freelance developer

    No badge

    What it left me

    I learned to work on a project that was already running, where I had to put the code in context, understand what each piece did and how the whole product logic was built, so I could implement what I was asked for.

    First commissioned work: development and interface for a reselling business's dashboard.

Nobody hands you a badge when you work for yourself.

years building for the web
3
response time
24h

Contact

Your turn

I have a project

Tell me what you need

Two lines are enough. I answer within 24 hours, even when the answer is no.

What happens next

  1. Within 24 hours
    An answer, even if it's no

    Not an automated quote and not a «thanks, we'll be in touch». If it isn't work for me I'll say so, and I'll tell you who I would look for.

  2. If we talk
    Half an hour, no strings

    On the phone or on video. It is for me to understand the problem and for you to see how I think. Nothing gets sold.

  3. Only after that
    The same two pages, with the numbers

    It's the document from the section above, plus what it costs and how long it takes. Before the call those numbers don't exist, because there'd be nothing to count.

The other way out

Are you considering me for a role?

Then you don't need a form. Here's the up-to-date CV, and the two places where the code I write can actually be read instead of described.