Looking for a web agency in Pau, in south west France, is almost always a way of looking for an answer to a worry: what it will cost, who you will actually speak to, and what will be left once the site is delivered. This page sells nothing. It sets out how Aloha Pixel works, what the agency takes on, what it refuses to do, and what a project really looks like from the first call to going live.
What the words “web agency” really cover
The term is broad to the point of being vague. Very different outfits shelter under the same sign: communications agencies that subcontract the development, design studios that hand over a mockup and never keep it alive, resellers of off the shelf solutions, and web craftspeople who build and maintain the thing themselves.
The distinction is not academic. It decides who picks up the phone when your site goes down on a Friday evening, who updates the security plugins, and who answers when you ask why you are nowhere to be found on Google.
Aloha Pixel belongs to the last category. It is a sole proprietorship registered under SIRET number 523 279 438 00031, based in Poey-de-Lescar, ten minutes from Pau. Justin Deboves designs, develops, hosts and looks after the sites. There is no project manager in the middle, no production floor on the other side of the world, and no salesperson promising what the engineering will not deliver.
One person to talk to, and what that changes
Most of the bad experiences business owners in Pau describe come back to the same cause: dilution. The salesperson sells, the designer mocks up, one supplier builds, another hosts, and nobody is answerable for the result.
With a single point of contact, the chain gets shorter. You describe what you need once. The person listening to you is the one who will write the code, choose the server and call you when a trade off has to be settled. There is a flip side, and it is only fair to say it plainly: a business at human scale cannot absorb ten projects at once. Schedules are therefore announced in advance, and sometimes you have to wait your turn.
In return, response times on sites already live are written into the contract: every request for work is handled within forty eight business hours, whether you are on a subscription or coming through a one off support ticket.
How a project runs, step by step
The sequence is always the same, whatever the size of the site.
1. The first conversation, with no commitment
Thirty minutes, by video call or over a coffee in Pau. We talk about your business, your customers, what you expect from the site. By the end of that conversation you know whether the project is feasible, roughly what it will cost and how long it will take. Nothing is signed at this stage.
2. Scoping
We list the pages, the functions genuinely needed and the ones you can do without. This is the step that saves the most money: half the features asked for at the start of a project are never used. Scoping produces a site structure and a list of the content you need to supply.
3. Design
A mockup of the home page and of one inside page, discussed and then adjusted. We work on real screens, not on frozen images: you see the site behave on mobile from this step onwards, because most of your visitors will arrive on a phone.
4. Build and copywriting
The site is put together on WordPress, with copy written or reworked. Every page gets its heading structure, its tags, its compressed images and its internal links. SEO is not an option added at the end: it goes in at the moment the pages are written.
5. Going live, and what follows
The site launches on managed cloud hosting, with an SSL certificate, daily backups and an application firewall. You get an hour of hands on training so you can publish your own content. Then the follow up begins: updates, monitoring, adjustments.
What we do not do
An honest agency is judged as much by what it turns down as by what it lists. Aloha Pixel does not sell a guarantee of first place on Google, because nobody can hold to it. Does not buy links in bulk, which invites an algorithmic penalty. Does not charge an annual license for a theme you could never take elsewhere. And does not hand over a site without a maintenance plan, because an abandoned WordPress site becomes a security hole within months.
The agency does not build native mobile apps either, nor heavy custom development. When a project runs past that boundary, it is said in the first conversation.
The subscription model, and why it replaces the one off quote
The classic arrangement is to pay several thousand euros once, then discover that hosting, updates and changes are billed separately. Two years later the site is slow, out of date, and everything has to start again.
The subscription turns the logic around: one monthly amount covers the build, the hosting, the domain name, the maintenance and the SEO follow up. The site stays alive because somebody is paid to look after it every month.
| Plan | Who it is for | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Site Web Start | Tradespeople, therapists, freelancers who need a clear presence and a contact form | €59/month |
| Site Web Essentiel | Small firms with several services to spell out, a blog, or fifteen or so products | €109/month |
| Site Web Premium | Mid sized companies and brands that want monthly strategic support and a site that carries their image | €230/month |
On top of those amounts there is a €99 sign up fee, charged once. No minimum term: you cancel from your client area, with effect at the end of the period already paid for. After twelve months, the site is yours. Amounts in euros, VAT not applicable, article 293 B of the French tax code.
The Ocean Friendly commitment, plainly put
Aloha Pixel pays 1% of its revenue to marine restoration programs, Coral Gardeners among them, and runs its sites on cloud infrastructure powered by renewable energy. This is not decoration: sustainable design has a direct effect on page speed, and therefore on rankings and on how many visitors get in touch.
A lightened site loads faster on an average mobile network, which is exactly the situation of a customer looking for you from the street. Lightening is not an aesthetic surrender, it is a design constraint that produces better sites. We go into the subject in detail in our article on sustainable web design.
Pau, the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, and the rest of the world
A good share of our clients are based in Pau, Lescar, Billère, Lons, Jurançon or Idron. For them, being close by is a genuine comfort: we meet, we look at the site together, we adjust. Knowing the ground also helps in writing content that speaks to the people who live here rather than to a theoretical customer.
The other share of the work comes from elsewhere in France and from abroad, and is run entirely at a distance. The two realities sit alongside each other without friction: the technical craft and the care given to content do not change with the mileage. If your business reaches beyond the department, there is no reason for your site to confine itself to a local message.
How to compare two web agencies in Pau
If you are talking to several suppliers, five questions are enough to sort them out.
Who hosts the site, and where? A supplier who cannot answer precisely does not have a grip on the performance of what they sell.
What happens if I leave? You should be able to take back the site, the database and the domain name, with no negotiation.
Who writes the copy? A site delivered with generic content will never rank on local searches.
How are updates handled? You want a concrete answer: how often, backup taken beforehand, procedure if something breaks.
What exactly does the quoted price include? Ask for the detail of what is covered and what will be billed on top. A low price that leaves out hosting, the domain and maintenance is not a low price.
We develop these criteria in our guide to choosing a web agency, which applies well beyond Pau.
Where to start
The most useful starting point is still a conversation. Thirty minutes is enough to know whether the project stands up, what it involves and in what order to approach it. You can book a slot online or go through the contact form.
If your need is already scoped, the dedicated pages get straight to the point: website design in Pau, SEO in Pau, online stores in Pau, website hosting in Pau and WordPress maintenance in Pau.
Read next: How to choose a web agency: the 8 criteria that actually matter
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