FAQ · Plain-English answers
What people ask before we start.
Short answers to the questions that actually come up. If yours isn't here, write me at jessa@jessaogilvie.com.
How engagements run
How the work happens.
15 minutes on Google Meet. You describe what you're working on, I tell you whether it's a Studios fit, a Labs fit, or neither. If we go forward, the next step is a written scope or a paid Diagnostic. Actual work doesn't start at this call.
Once we agree to work together, I send a written scope before any work starts. It lists what I'm building, what I'm not building, the timeline, the price, and what I need from you to keep things moving. You read it. If anything is off, we adjust. You sign. The scope is the contract. Anything outside it is a separate conversation.
Yes, and it's often the right shape. A brand and a website built together, plus a Claude system set up to run inside your practice, can ship as a single combined engagement. I scope it as one engagement with one price on the proposal.
You do. The contract assigns full ownership of every deliverable to you on final payment. That covers the brand files, the source code, the image assets, the logos. I keep a non-exclusive right to show finished work in my own portfolio. If your engagement is sensitive enough that you'd rather I not, we can write that out of the contract.
Every Studios engagement ships with an Edit-with-AI handoff: a short doc plus a walkthrough video showing where your site files live, ready-to-use prompts for common edits (shorten this, expand this, alternative headlines, warmer tone, translate), and a clear "when to call me back" list. The idea is you can handle copy updates yourself, with AI doing the writing. If you'd rather have a visual editor, the Self-Edit Setup add-on configures a small CMS on top of your site for $600. Either way, a well-built static site doesn't need much attention to keep running.
Every Studios engagement includes a revision round, and honest notes usually get us to the right direction fast. If we finish that round and nothing lands, we stop and you owe only the deposit. Nobody has used that exit yet. I'd rather eat the hours than ship you a brand you don't want.
I draft the site copy from your intake answers and our first call, then you mark it up until it sounds like you. That drafting is included in every tier; heavier copywriting is a priced add-on. Photography isn't something I sell. Most clients bring their own photos or work from a shot list I hand them, and where stock is unavoidable I pick images that don't look like stock.
Custom sites vs. templates
What a custom site gives you that a template doesn't.
For most one-person practices, Squarespace is genuinely fine. People come to me when their brand has a voice no template can carry. Sometimes it's because the site needs to do something a template doesn't, like a custom intake flow or conditional content. Sometimes it's the platform-lock-in concern. They don't want to pay Squarespace forever to host four pages. If your situation is different from those, I'll tell you. I've talked people out of working with me before.
You get the HTML, CSS, image files, brand files, and a written handoff document. The whole package is portable. Host it anywhere you want; Cloudflare and Netlify both have free tiers that handle a site this size. If I disappeared tomorrow your site would keep running. A designer you hire later can read the code and extend it without needing to call me. There's no template lock-in, and no monthly platform fee gating you out of your own work.
No. The contract spells out what you get and when it becomes yours. After delivery, I'm out of the loop unless you ask me back for an update. If you need help later on a new question, you rebook. No monthly retainer, no forever-vendor.
Yes. You receive all source files, credentials, and hosting access. There are no ongoing fees to Jessa Ogilvie Consulting and no platform subscription required to keep the site running. The HTML, CSS, and brand files are yours to host, edit, or hand to any developer you work with in the future.
A custom-coded site is yours permanently. The code lives wherever you host it and never depends on a subscription platform staying in business or keeping your plan available. Squarespace and Wix sites only run as long as you keep paying the platform; if you stop or they change their terms, the site goes with it. A custom site also has no design constraints from a template, tends to be significantly faster to load, and can be picked up and edited by any developer who knows HTML and CSS.
SEO & AEO
What is SEO and AEO, and what's the difference?
Search Engine Optimization. Making sure your site shows up when someone Googles a question you can answer. The old playbook was keywords and backlinks and clever games with Google's algorithm. None of that really works anymore. What works now is content that actually helps the reader, on a page that loads fast and is structured cleanly enough for Google to parse. Studios sites are built that way from the start, which is why "SEO" isn't a separate line item on my invoices.
Answer Engine Optimization. When someone asks Claude, ChatGPT, or Perplexity "who builds custom websites for small therapy practices in Connecticut," the AI reads the open web and decides who to surface. AEO is the work of making your site legible to those models. Most of what makes a page rank well in Google also makes it surface in an AI answer. The piece that's specifically AI-shaped is structured data: business name, services, location, pricing, all in formats the model can read without guessing. A growing share of how people find professionals now starts with an AI query instead of a Google search. Being invisible to AI is becoming the same problem as being invisible to Google was a decade ago.
SEO/AEO is included in every Studios tier and scales up by package. Starter ships the basics: clean meta tags, an Open Graph setup so social shares render right, a sitemap submitted to Google Search Console and Bing, JSON-LD structured data, and server-rendered HTML that AI crawlers can read. Standard adds on-page optimization, a keyword map, and internal linking. Premium adds AEO/LLM optimization, content strategy work, FAQPage schema on FAQ pages (which Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT pull from directly), and deeper structured data so search engines and AI assistants know your business name, services, and pricing without guessing. The technical foundation (Core Web Vitals, clean URLs, server-rendered HTML) is the same in every tier.
Labs & AI work
Why Labs and not a generic AI consultant.
For client work, Anthropic's posture on training data and user privacy matches what I'm willing to put in a contract. Claude also tends to be more cautious about hallucinating, which matters when the output is going to a client. The Projects feature in Claude lets me build a setup that knows your practice and remembers it between sessions, without leaking that context to anyone else. I use Claude as the default. ChatGPT and the other major models are tools I can build with when a specific task calls for them.
No. Most of my Labs clients run small businesses and have never touched an API. Everything you see from me is written in plain English: the calls, the roadmaps, the runbooks, the trainings. The technical work stays on my side. You should never need to read a config file.
Diagnostic is the assessment. Ninety minutes plus a written read on where AI fits in your work. Most people start there. Ops Workflow is the productized build: two weeks of automating the repetitive admin you're already doing: intake routing, scheduling, invoice follow-ups, meeting-notes-to-actions, weekly reports. Beyond Ops Workflow, anything else (content systems, internal tools, custom builds) gets scoped after a Diagnostic so the price matches the scope on the proposal. If a new question comes up after the work ships, you rebook.
Yes, and I tell every client exactly how. Claude is my research and drafting tool. I write and edit the brand voice work myself, and nothing ships onto your site that I haven't shaped. Client data stays out of any tool whose terms I haven't read. If you'd rather I not use AI on your project at all, that's allowed. Tell me on the first call and I'll write it into the scope.
A confidentiality clause is in the contract before I see anything. The automations run in your own accounts; I set them up, document them, and hand back the keys at the end. After handoff I keep no copies of your data and no access, unless you ask me to keep some for a specific reason.
If something I built breaks in the first thirty days, I fix it free. After that, most fixes are small and priced as such. The runbook you get at handoff documents every piece, so you're never locked into me for maintenance.
Practical bits
The boring but useful questions.
Connecticut. Most of my work is remote. For Studios Premium and Labs Ops Workflow engagements, in-person sessions are available within driving distance.
I take Studios projects one at a time, so there's sometimes a wait. I'll tell you my next available start date on the first call. If you need something faster than I can deliver well, I'd rather refer you to someone else than rush the work.
Occasionally. Rush is when you need something in less than half the normal timeline. I take rush work selectively and at a premium, because it usually means I'm working evenings to deliver it. If your timeline is truly fixed and the scope is bounded, ask.
Yes, every time. I'm on the first call, I write the scope, I do the design and the build, and I send the handoff. There's no white-labeling and no junior person taking over once you've signed. If a project needs a specialist I don't have (deep backend development, long-form copywriting), I tell you up front and they're named in the scope.
Starter is half up front, half at handoff. Standard runs 50/25/25 across the engagement, and Premium spreads into thirds over three months. A six-month plan exists on request with a small markup. No retainers, nothing recurring.
Scope. The tier prices hold for what each tier lists. Extra pages, heavier copywriting, a rush timeline, or an industry-specific pack are the usual reasons a proposal lands higher. Every add-on is itemized on the proposal, so you can strike any line before signing.
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