Blog
Notes from the studio, since 2016
Opinions, build logs and plain advice from ten years of making websites, brands and worlds for businesses. Everything here comes from something we built, ran or argued about. If a post wouldn't be worth reading without Google, it doesn't get published.
We moved goatpixels.com off WordPress. Here's the redirect map.
How we moved goatpixels.com to a custom Next.js build: the URL inventory, the 27 redirects, the 16 posts we killed, and the timeline to expect.
Your website on the iPhone Duo: the slow-resize test
Apple's first foldable ships 23 October. If your site survives a slow browser resize from phone to desktop, it already works on it. The test and the fixes.
What a custom website costs in the Netherlands in 2026 — and what the money buys
Real 2026 price ranges for business websites in the Netherlands, what drives the number, where our own projects land, and the costs cheap quotes leave out.
We turned our homepage into an ASCII galaxy. Here's the engineering.
How the GOAT Pixels galaxy works: a Three.js scene rendered to text at 22 fps, a gradient painted through background-clip, and what keeps phones cool.
The year restaurants started taking their customers back
Five years after the apps took over, the bill is due: 13–30% of every order, forever. Why own-channel ordering is the quiet restaurant trend of 2025.
Colour: pick two
Most brands use too many colours and none of them mean anything. Two colours, one for the button, and a rule for when each appears.
Why an agency should stay small
Nine years in, still a handful of people who build what they sell. Every extra layer between client and maker costs the client. The case for small.
The three things restaurant websites get wrong
Menus as PDFs, prices hidden, photos that lie. Fix those and a restaurant site does its only job: turning someone who is hungry into someone who is coming.
Google now answers the question itself. What changes for a local business.
AI Overviews launched and Europe follows. For a shop, clinic or garage the map and listing matter more than ever; the site must be what the answer cites.
The audit we run before we say yes
Before we quote a redesign we spend two hours on the current site — and often advise against the redesign. The ten checks, so you can run them yourself.
What a good logo costs, and why
Somewhere between €5 and €50,000, depending on what you count as 'the logo'. What you buy at each level, what an identity includes, when you need one.
Typography does most of the work
Strip the colour and photos from any site you admire and it still looks designed. That's the type. Five decisions that make a site read as carefully made.
AI won't design your brand. It will make the bad ones cheaper.
Image generators make a logo in ten seconds. What a brand actually is, why a generated mark usually isn't one, and where the tools genuinely help.
We tried the AI that writes. Here is where it belongs on a business website.
ChatGPT arrived two weeks ago. We used it on real client work for a week. Useful, confident, occasionally wrong — and never the last word on your homepage.
Crypto crashed. Good websites didn't.
FTX collapsed and a year of Web3 pitch decks with it. What we said in 2017 and 2021 still stands — and what the boom leaves behind that is useful.
Google is switching off the analytics you know. Move now, not next June.
Universal Analytics stops on 1 July 2023 and GA4 counts differently. Waiting means a year without comparable numbers. The plain plan for a business.
NFTs, Web3 and what we tell clients who ask
A JPEG sold for millions and every brand wants a drop. Our honest take for a business owner: what is real, what is theatre, the question to ask first.
The two-second rule
Google's page experience update measures what guests already feel: does the page show up fast, hold still, respond when tapped. The plain version.
The iPhone privacy switch: what happens to your ads now
iOS 14.5 asks every iPhone user whether apps may track them. What that does to Facebook and Instagram ads, and what to build instead of a bigger budget.
The map is the new homepage
For a local business more people see your Google listing than your website. Treat it like the front of the shop — hours, photos, reviews — an hour a month.
QR menus: the good, the bad, and the paper
Terraces reopened with a code on every table. Some QR menus are a quiet improvement; most are a PDF that fights the phone. How to do it properly.
Your restaurant needs its own ordering page. This week.
Dining rooms closed on 15 March; takeaway is what's left and the platforms take a cut of every order. How to take orders on your own site, fast.
Google just got better at reading. Time to stop writing for robots.
Google now reads a search roughly the way a person does. What changes for a business website: less keyword stuffing, more answering the real question.
Buttons people actually press
One primary action per screen, where the thumb already is, with a label that says what happens next. The unglamorous rules behind every tapped button.
Why we say no to templates
A template is someone else's answer to someone else's question. Why every site we build starts from a blank page, and when a template is the right call.
Dark mode is coming to your customers' screens. Does your logo survive it?
Apple shipped a system-wide dark mode; phones will follow. What it means for your brand, emails and website — and the ten-second test to run now.
Google now ranks slow mobile sites lower. Here is what that means for yours.
Page speed is now a ranking factor for mobile search. What changed, how to check your site in two minutes, and the five things that make sites slow.
GDPR in plain English, for people who run a shop
The privacy law starts on 25 May. You don't need a lawyer to get your website right — know what you collect, why, and say so. The short version.
Bitcoin at $19,000 and what it has to do with your website
Everyone is suddenly a crypto expert. What a decade of building on the internet says about booms — and the one word not to put on your homepage.
Seven questions to ask a web designer before you pay them
Most bad website projects were decided in the first meeting. Seven plain questions that show who you are dealing with — and one to answer yourself.
Notes from Berlin: what a city of small shops taught us about websites
A season working from Berlin. What Spätis, bakeries and one-room studios get right that most business websites get wrong: say the thing, show the price.
The four-word homepage test
Show a stranger your homepage for five seconds. Can they say what you do in four words? If not, the design isn't the problem — the first sentence is.
Your website is not a brochure
A brochure sits in a drawer. A website meets customers at 11pm on a phone, alone. What changes when you treat it like an employee instead of a leaflet.
Why we started GOAT Pixels — and why we're staying small
A studio in Amsterdam, opened in 2016, built on one idea: make one remarkable thing at a time, for people who will notice the difference.