Reading your replies I appreciate that you're willing to engage in honest self-assessment and are processing criticism fairly well.
I'm also a 25+ year web developer and have run agencies. I hope this is helpful, please forgive the bluntness.
Update your skills. As others have suggested and your replies indicate you're aware, the design sensibility of the websites you're showing us is stale – decades out of date – and too far out of touch with modern professional standards to say nothing of client or visitor expectations.
You seem to have an old-school appreciation for web standards and wariness of prioritizing aesthetics over content, but much of what you've written here and in your marketing copy reveals a cognitive bias that you critically undervalue design. This is holding you back.
Browse modern and award-winning website design until you understand in your bones how what you're showing us today falls short, and then upskill your front-end capabilities to meet modern standards. You know your tags, now make really learning HTML5, CSS3, and modern Javascript a priority.
Keep the rest of your technology stack if you like. Clients and users don't care or even know if you're using PHP or the latest JS framework. WordPress shade doesn't belong in marketing copy. Small and medium business owners won't understand what you're talking about. But they've heard "WordPress", and if you can sell them one with excellent Core Web Vitals maybe just swallow your pride for starters since you need to build a book.
Stick to your principles that content strategy should inform design and not the other way around, but don't neglect modern aesthetics and conventions of usability. You have some catching up to do to produce work that doesn't just rank, but attracts, engages, and delights clients and users.
Rename the company. Including "Design" and "Photography" limits your brand positioning and skews perception of your service offerings. Keep your brand as flexible and adaptable as possible, and then optimize for SEO on individual service pages.
Rewrite your story. Remove references to "1996", "14400k modems", and the excitement of discovering HTML. This framing doesn't convey expertise through experience so much as a feeling of being stuck in the past. I say this as someone who was there too. I can tell from reading your writing that you understand you're selling your clients on increasing their business. Just keep in mind that's an aspirational vision of their story in which you're just a supporting character. You're an okay writer, but trim the fat. Yes you're trying to rank, but you also need to convert when they land and these walls of text are nonstarters. Cut your text in half, for starters.
Lose the 27 year old screenshots. Those are some big name clients, just show their logos instead.
Reading your replies I appreciate that you're willing to engage in honest self-assessment and are processing criticism fairly well.
I'm also a 25+ year web developer and have run agencies. I hope this is helpful, please forgive the bluntness.
Update your skills. As others have suggested and your replies indicate you're aware, the design sensibility of the websites you're showing us is stale – decades out of date – and too far out of touch with modern professional standards to say nothing of client or visitor expectations.
You seem to have an old-school appreciation for web standards and wariness of prioritizing aesthetics over content, but much of what you've written here and in your marketing copy reveals a cognitive bias that you critically undervalue design. This is holding you back.
Browse modern and award-winning website design until you understand in your bones how what you're showing us today falls short, and then upskill your front-end capabilities to meet modern standards. You know your tags, now make really learning HTML5, CSS3, and modern Javascript a priority.
Keep the rest of your technology stack if you like. Clients and users don't care or even know if you're using PHP or the latest JS framework. WordPress shade doesn't belong in marketing copy. Small and medium business owners won't understand what you're talking about. But they've heard "WordPress", and if you can sell them one with excellent Core Web Vitals maybe just swallow your pride for starters since you need to build a book.
Stick to your principles that content strategy should inform design and not the other way around, but don't neglect modern aesthetics and conventions of usability. You have some catching up to do to produce work that doesn't just rank, but attracts, engages, and delights clients and users.
Rename the company. Including "Design" and "Photography" limits your brand positioning and skews perception of your service offerings. Keep your brand as flexible and adaptable as possible, and then optimize for SEO on individual service pages.
Rewrite your story. Remove references to "1996", "14400k modems", and the excitement of discovering HTML. This framing doesn't convey expertise through experience so much as a feeling of being stuck in the past. I say this as someone who was there too. I can tell from reading your writing that you understand you're selling your clients on increasing their business. Just keep in mind that's an aspirational vision of their story in which you're just a supporting character. You're an okay writer, but trim the fat. Yes you're trying to rank, but you also need to convert when they land and these walls of text are nonstarters. Cut your text in half, for starters.
Lose the 27 year old screenshots. Those are some big name clients, just show their logos instead.
Render real text, not headings as images.
Gotta go. Good luck.