We are a Basel studio building websites for firms in Lucerne and around the lake. Your site has to convince the visitor and the neighbour.
Fixed price from CHF 499, all year round
From the station across the Seebrücke to the right bank of the Reuss is a five minute walk, and the S-Bahn to Emmenbrücke takes the same five minutes. In between sits a city of around 86,000 residents (end of 2024) where hospitality and corner shops stand door to door.
Bookings are made weeks ahead, from another time zone and rarely in German. So the site needs prices that raise no follow-up questions, an enquiry that goes through without a phone call, and the note that guests staying overnight travel free on bus and train in zone 10 with the Lucerne guest card.
One half of your customers is practically at the door and only needs the opening hours, the other half lives two districts away and buys where it does not have to search. Both want the same three things at the top: what you sell, when you are open, where to leave the car.
A good share of the work here hangs on somebody else's season: rebuilding happens when no guests are in the house, and the window is short. Whoever shows that a floor can be finished in two weeks, and can produce references from hospitality, gets asked for that work in the first place.
Lucerne is an insurance town: Suva, CSS and Concordia are headquartered here, and around them work fiduciaries, law firms and advisory offices for clients who know exactly what they are looking for. Those visitors do not skim a company page, they look for the field, the licence and the name of the person they will end up calling.
Local knowledge cannot be claimed, you either have it or you do not. So instead of telling you about Lake Lucerne, we name three points that end up in the contract and that you can compare with any other offer.
Nobody stands between your question and the answer
What you say on the phone does not have to be translated for a development team. There is no desk that takes the job and passes it on, and no follow-up question that has to travel through three internal calendars first. You notice it most when something has to go on the site at short notice.
Our prices do not move with the season
In a city where rooms, menus and rents climb in summer, that is a fair thing to ask. The sum is set after the first call, in February as in August, and the same job does not cost more in July than in November.
The booking should land with you, not with a portal
A portal brings you guests and keeps a commission for it. Your own site is the channel where nobody else takes a share, so we build it for exactly that: prices without detours, an enquiry that needs no account, a form that runs through in one go on a phone. For a visitor who comes once and moves on after a few nights, that is decided in a single search.
Two direct connections an hour, neither of them with a change: the faster train runs through from Olten without a stop and takes a good hour, the second one also calls at Zofingen and Sursee and is correspondingly longer on the way. We make the trip for the kick-off and again when the site is finished. Everything in between happens on screen, and there it makes no difference where anyone sits.
Three amounts, and no more than that: CHF 499 for the Onepager, CHF 699 for Starter, CHF 1'099 for Business. What gets built for it is written in the quote; what is not in there we discuss beforehand instead of billing it afterwards. Booking, shop, a second language and newsletter each carry their own price, so you can strike them out one by one.
You get an invoice in francs, payable by QR slip or TWINT within 30 days, under Swiss jurisdiction. Customs, currency and import are not a topic between Basel and Lucerne, and your accountant has nothing to explain about the invoice. It looks different as soon as your guests come into it.
Anyone running a hotel, a holiday flat or a restaurant in Lucerne is also addressing an audience in Germany, France or Italy on purpose. That can make the GDPR applicable to your booking form even though the business itself sits in Switzerland. The revised Swiss FADP is then no longer the only yardstick, and we clarify what applies to you before anything is built.
Servers and backups sit in Europe. Seen from Switzerland that is uncritical: the Federal Council counts the EU and the EEA among the states with adequate data protection, and no extra safeguards are needed for it. Trickier are the services a hospitality site likes to collect: review displays, embedded maps, third party booking masks, fonts from elsewhere. Each of them picks up visitor data before anyone has agreed to it.
In Lucerne your site is read by the visitor and by the neighbour. Both should book with you, not through a portal that takes a cut.
How we work
Your question not here? Then just ask it. There is no form to fill in first and nobody who qualifies you before you get an answer.
What does it cost, and what ends up on the invoice?
Onepager from CHF 499; if you want three pages that is Starter from CHF 699, five pages is Business from CHF 1'099. A booking flow, a shop, a second language or a newsletter are add-ons and are listed separately in the quote. After that two items remain: hosting, which you can end at the close of any month, and maintenance, which you never have to book but which carries a minimum term of six months. There is no surcharge for your postcode.
How often are you actually in Lucerne?
Not at all for the first call: a short video call is enough for that. Once the project is agreed we come over for the kick-off and again when the site is ready, a good hour by train. We do not board a train for questions in between, because the travel time would otherwise sit inside your fixed price. The rest of the time you reach us wherever it costs you the least effort: dashboard, ticket, WhatsApp, video.
Our guests come from the US and from Asia. Is English enough?
English is not the second language here, it is the first one a guest tries. We build the English version as its own page with its own address and its own text; it appears as its own line in the quote. For every other country of origin something else matters: prices, hours, directions and photos have to make sense even when not a single sentence is read.
Our business is inland, not on the lake. Does that change anything?
Nothing about the process. Economically the canton is a different animal from the city: machinery and plant engineering around Emmen and Ebikon, food and farming in the Seetal and the Hinterland, mountain railways and hosts on the upper lake, timber and farming in the Entlebuch. Emmen, Kriens, Horw, Ebikon, Rothenburg, Buchrain, Root, Adligenswil, Meggen, Weggis, Vitznau, Malters, Wolhusen, Sursee, Hochdorf, Willisau, Ruswil, Reiden and Schüpfheim are within our catchment area, and so are Hergiswil and Stans in Nidwalden, Sarnen in Obwalden and Küssnacht am Rigi in Schwyz, which are closer to Lucerne than some municipality of its own canton.
Why not someone from Lucerne who knows the trade from the inside?
If you want someone who has stood at a reception desk themselves, knows you from the trade association or drops in for a coffee in January, then take someone from Lucerne or Kriens. That honestly belongs on their side of the scales. What you get here is a price that is fixed before we start, one contact who does not change during the project, and a quote in which every item is listed on its own instead of disappearing into a lump sum.
We want to be online before the season. When do we have to start?
Two to four weeks, whatever the scope. More pages or a booking mean more hours on our side, not more waiting on yours. Counted from the day the texts and images are complete, and that is exactly where most projects lose their time. If you want to be live for the spring season, work backwards: photos turn out best while the house is still quiet, and nobody writes texts voluntarily in May.
We talk over video, in German or in English, whichever you prefer. We ask who books with you and who walks in, and the quote comes out of that. No obligation, even in the middle of high season.
