Web design / Portland, OR
Get the sextant right
Portland addresses carry a direction, and locals read it before the number. North, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, Northwest, and since 2020, plain South for the strip along the Willamette that the city renamed South Portland. If your business sits in South Waterfront or Johns Landing and your site still says SW, it’s out of date; the city changed those addresses that year and dropped the leading zeros at the same time.
That sounds like housekeeping. It is, and it matters, because a delivery driver, a first-time customer and Google’s map listing all read your address literally. Fix it on the site, the footer and your Google profile in the same afternoon.
The sectors also work as identities. A shop on Alberta and one on Hawthorne both sell to Portland, but the east-side neighborhoods have their own crowds and their own sense of what looks right, and Northwest around 23rd is something else again. Your site can say which one you belong to.
Across the Columbia
The metro crosses the river into Washington, where Vancouver and Camas sit in Clark County and Skamania County runs up the Gorge toward Stevenson. Oregon has no sales tax and Washington has no state income tax, so plenty of people live on one side and shop on the other, crossing the I-5 and I-205 bridges as a matter of routine.
For service businesses that cross over, the details differ. Contractors are licensed separately in each state, through Oregon’s Construction Contractors Board and Washington’s Labor and Industries department, and customers in Vancouver want to see the Washington number. Give your Clark County work its own page instead of a line that says “we also serve SW Washington.”
Wine country counts as Portland
Yamhill County is part of the metro, and it’s pinot noir country. Newberg, Dundee and McMinnville are full of tasting rooms that sell to visitors from Portland and far beyond, and their websites carry a heavy load: reservations, wine club sign-ups, events, and online orders. A winery site that makes booking a tasting hard loses the visitor to the place down the road with a working calendar. Our e-commerce guide covers selling online, and we can design around the booking tool you already use.
The west side runs on engineers
Out past the West Hills, Washington County is home to Nike’s headquarters near Beaverton and Intel’s large campuses in Hillsboro, and to the suppliers, consultancies and contract manufacturers that grew up alongside them. Their buyers are engineers and procurement teams, and they’re unimpressed by mood photography. A clear web design with capabilities, certifications and a real contact path beats atmosphere here. Clackamas County to the south, around Lake Oswego, Oregon City and Happy Valley, and Columbia County to the northwest, around St. Helens and Scappoose, are mostly about home services and local retail, and their customers search by town.
About Portland taste
Portland has a long memory for anything that looks corporate. Customers here like to know who they’re buying from, and an independent shop that dresses its site up like a national chain is working against itself. Photos of real people in the real space, a short honest story, and a brand identity that looks drawn by a person go further. Makers and artists will find more in our photographers and creatives guide.
We don’t keep a Portland office. Work happens remotely, on Pacific Time, and ends with a Framer site your own team can keep current.
A Portland question
Does changing our address from SW to S affect search?
It can, mainly because Google and the directories may still show the old version. Update it everywhere you control at once, then check your Google profile and the big directories so they all match. Consistency does more than any single listing.