Progress Update

For Collin Stoddard  ·  The Stoddard Building Group
From Daniel V  ·  9 August 2026

Collin — here's where things stand after the weekend. Two parts: what changed on your Google profile, and a first look at a website.

Your Google profile

I made one change a couple of days ago and then deliberately stopped. Editing the core fields on a Google profile can push it into a verification review, which can take the listing down while they look at it — so I changed the single most important field first and waited to see whether that happened before touching anything else.

Two days on, no review was triggered and the change is holding — so tonight I filled in the rest, all from your own answers:

• Opening date set to 2018
• Website corrected to the secure https:// address — it was pointing at the old insecure one
• Service area expanded to the seven towns you said yes to: Fountain, Security-Widefield, Manitou Springs, Cimarron Hills, Gleneagle, Woodland Park and Castle Rock. I also removed two duplicates — Falcon and Peyton are the same zip code, and Broadmoor sits inside Colorado Springs
• Description — you were using 53 characters of a possible 750. Here's what it says now, so you can read it and tell me if anything's off:

The honest baseline

So we can tell later whether any of this actually worked, here's what the profile produced over the last six months:

That's not a knock on you — it's what a profile filed under the wrong category tends to do. It does mean we're measuring from a low bar, and I'd rather tell you that plainly now than dress it up.

One thing I'd like you to check

Your services list is in better shape than most — someone has already added real deck and pergola entries. Those sit under your new main category and they're good:

But there's a second list underneath Construction company, and I suspect some of it was auto-filled rather than chosen. Would you read through and tell me which ones you don't actually do?

About the text spam

You wondered whether Google's chat feature is what's generating all the estimating and lead-gen texts. I'm fairly confident it isn't. Those come from companies scraping phone numbers off public listings and directories — a completely different pipe. Turning the chat off would cost you a way customers can reach you and, as best I can tell, wouldn't reduce the spam at all. So I've left it on. If it ever starts producing junk itself, that's a two-second switch and I'll flip it.

What actually helps is all on your phone:

• Forward the spam texts to 7726 (spells SPAM). Free, works on every major US carrier, and it reports the sender rather than just hiding it from you.
• Don't reply STOP to the lead-gen ones. For a real business you signed up with, STOP works. For these, replying just confirms a live person is on the other end — it usually makes it worse.
• Turn on your carrier's free filter — Verizon Call Filter, AT&T ActiveArmor or T-Mobile Scam Shield, depending who you're with.
• On an iPhone, Settings → Messages → Filter Unknown Senders moves anything from a number not in your contacts into its own tab. Worth knowing: a first-time customer texting you would land there too, so check that tab.

I won't pretend this fixes it. Your number has to be public for customers to call you, and that's the trade. These take the edge off.

A first look at the website

This is the part I'm most interested in your reaction to.

Three things to know before you look:

• The big background image doesn't move yet — it's a still, not video. I know the moving background is the look you liked on Gowler and Fisk, and it's absolutely doable. I wanted you to see the layout first rather than wait on footage, so don't judge the concept by that. More on the video below.
• There are two colour options. A small switch in the bottom-right corner flips between Cedar and Sage. Your logo is a charcoal wordmark with no brand colour attached to it — that's not a gap, it's just a decision nobody has made yet, and it's yours to make. Look at both and tell me which one feels like you.
• Three railing photos are placeholders, and they're labelled as such right on the page. I'm not going to quietly pass off someone else's work as yours.

The video background — the look without the load

You're right about the aesthetic and I want you to have it. One thing worth knowing first, because I measured it rather than guessed:

Nearly all of that weight is hero video, and Fisk sends the same desktop video to phones. Those firms have people who already know them and will wait through it. Your profile produced thirteen visitors' worth of interest in six months — every one of them is cold and scarce, and page speed is something Google weighs in exactly the searches we're trying to win.

So the fix isn't giving up the video, it's building it properly: an eight-to-twelve second silent loop, a still frame that paints instantly while it buffers, and a plain image on phones. Roughly fifteen times lighter — and at full-screen size behind the text overlay, it reads the same.

Your footage — you already have most of what we need

Lots of good stuff in the Dropbox. Nine 1080p clips of the finished Stensrud deck and fire pit, and a fifteen-minute piece to camera of you at that fire pit — that's an About video already shot. And the five project films on your YouTube channel mean you already own aerials. The look you admire is footage you have.

One no-rush ask: would you nudge David Massey for the original files? YouTube only lets you download your own videos at 720p, which is fine for a draft but soft on a big screen. And whatever he didn't use is probably as good as what he did — a 94-second film is a fraction of what gets shot in a day. No deadline, and nothing is waiting on it.

Reviews

You asked five past clients and three have already come through. Your newest review before that was nearly a year old, and recency is one of the things Google weighs — so that's a real move on the profile, and it's your doing, not mine.

For the next finished job, the version that converts best is a short personal text with their name in it, sent within a day or two of handover while they're still standing on the new deck, using the one-tap link from your profile rather than a long web address.

Two small things

• Which address is the business address of record? Your deck sheet says Ramah, your business card says Peyton. Google cares about your name, address and phone matching everywhere they appear, and it's a cheap fix while I'm in there anyway.
• Your current site loads fast and its bones are fine — this is a redesign, not a rescue. Worth noting its WordPress is a few versions behind. A maintenance item, not an emergency.

No rush with any of this, and this is just a preliminary draft of the mockup so you can see progress.