Justin Willhite

The short version

I spent nine years at Twitch (acquired by Amazon in 2014) building the systems behind global content operations. I worked at the scale where small mistakes turn into big ones, where performance budgets are real, and where every UI decision has to survive contact with millions of users. That's the operational rigor I bring to every site I build now.

Alongside that, I've been building on the web for over a decade, running my own content operations, shipping products, learning what actually moves a business versus what just looks busy on a dashboard. When I'm building a website for a North Bay business, I'm thinking about the person on the other side of it: the customer walking into the car wash, the homeowner searching for a tradesperson at 9pm, the owner looking at their analytics and trying to figure out what it all means.

Why I started Willhite Strategy Group

After leaving Twitch, I moved to Santa Rosa and started taking on projects for local businesses. What I kept noticing was the same pattern: owners paying agencies that didn't really know them, sites built on platforms that locked them in, websites that looked great on launch day and fell apart six months later because nobody was actually watching them.

I started Willhite Strategy Group to do it differently. WSG is a North Bay web design studio. We hand-code sites, no Wix, no Squarespace, no template churn, built to load fast, rank well in Google and AI search, and stay yours forever. See the Easy Breezy Car Wash case study for what that looks like in practice.

What I believe about this work

Software should serve the business, not the other way around.

Most small businesses end up serving their software, fighting with a Wix template, paying for features they don't use, waiting for someone else to update their hours. I build websites that owners can actually run. Fast, editable, owned by you.

Local knowledge is a real edge.

A web designer who understands the tourism split in Healdsburg, the wine-country drive-through in Napa, the commuter market in Petaluma, or the ferry-line traffic in Larkspur will build you a better site than a national agency that's never been north of the Golden Gate. Cultural context shows up in the copy, the imagery, and the keywords that actually convert.

Measurement beats marketing-speak.

I care about load times, conversion rates, review counts, and actual sales. I don't care about buzzwords. If I can't show you a number that moved, I didn't do my job.

Own what you pay for.

Domain in your name. Code you can take anywhere. Hosting you control. That's not a favor, it's the standard, and anyone who resists it is telling you something about themselves.

Projects & clients

• Easy Breezy Car Wash (Santa Rosa), 14-page custom website, owner dashboard, kiosk system, 417-row member import. Read the case study.
• Additional North Bay builds in progress, case studies forthcoming as clients launch.

Where to find me

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: willhitestrategy.com
• Based in Santa Rosa; available for in-person meetings across the North Bay