Hourly web design, dev & strategy for freelancers and small businesses.

Hey, I’m Dave Bloom, an independent web designer, developer, and hired gun, headquartered in Toronto.

I’ve been designing, building, and fixing websites and web applications for freelancers and small businesses since 2012. Stuff like clarifying messaging, sharpening user flow, tightening performance, and building custom features your page-builder (or your outsourced agency) can’t handle. I build sites and tools that connect and convert, not brochures that just sit there.

I work across design, development, and strategy: a knack for good design, a strong read on UX and user behavior, and I’m very good with AI, I know how to get it to do exactly what I need it to do. I’m an expert in WordPress (I’ve built my own page-builder and plenty of plugins over the years), and I also work in Shopify.

How I work

I work by the hour. Buy a block of my time, draw it down, and we stop the moment the problem’s solved, or move on to the next thing. No giant proposals, no limited rounds of revisions, no five-figure quotes. We go at your pace. You’re never locked into more than you paid for a given sprint, and pausing is totally fine.

More than a coder

Most projects don’t need a coder. They need someone who can see the whole picture: the design, the build, the user, the business underneath it. I’m a multi-disciplined problem solver, which means you get one person instead of three.

That shows up in the work. For a cannabis dispensary in BC, I handle the website, the brand identity, and the marketing art, so it all actually looks like one thing. For a DJ client, Julian Bevan, I moved his mixes to a CDN that cut his monthly hosting bill, then built a player that keeps the music going as you browse his site, fixing the cost and the experience in a single move. For a local clinic, I built a weight-management assessment tool that landed them dozens of new patients.

I care about the business model, not just the code. I want my hours to be worth more than they cost you.

I build my own products, too

I don’t just consult. When I see a problem worth solving for more than one client, I build a product around it. Yoursellf is a platform that gets independent professionals a real web presence without the design project (this page is running on it). Aviator is a WordPress development environment I built for myself and other developers. Shipping and maintaining my own software keeps my skills sharp.

Want to know how they work and why I built them? [Ask me about them.]

Let’s talk

Most small businesses don’t need a full-time developer. They need a trusted partner they can plug in when something needs doing, and unplug when it’s done. That’s me.

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