Do you build on WordPress or something custom?

Whichever the project justifies. WordPress when you need to edit content constantly and want a familiar admin. A static build when speed and security matter more than a plugin ecosystem. Custom PHP and MySQL when the logic is genuinely yours. The choice is explained in the quote with its trade-offs, not presented as a foregone conclusion.

Can you migrate my Kobe site without losing rankings?

Yes, and the redirect map is the whole job. Every existing URL is mapped to its new equivalent with a 301 before launch, and anything with no equivalent goes to the closest relevant page rather than the homepage. Sites lose rankings in migration because that mapping was skipped, not because migration is inherently risky.

Do I need to provide the content and images?

Content, yes — you know your business and I do not. I will restructure and edit what you send so it reads for the web, and I will tell you where a section is missing. Photography is worth paying a local photographer for; stock images of people in offices are recognisable as stock and quietly cost you credibility.

Do you actually work with businesses in Kobe?

Yes, remotely. I work with Japanese clients from Islamabad, quoting in JPY and invoicing in JPY. I have no office, address or phone number in Kobe and will not pretend otherwise. If your project needs someone physically present, hire locally — I will say so in the first reply rather than after a deposit.

Can you fix my existing site rather than rebuild it?

Often, yes, and it is usually the cheaper answer. Speed problems, a broken mobile layout, a form that silently fails or missing structured data are all fixable on the site you already have. I will tell you which of the two you need after looking, and a rebuild only gets recommended when the fix would cost more than starting again.

Do you provide ongoing maintenance after launch?

Thirty days of snag fixes are included after launch at no extra cost — anything that does not work as specified gets fixed. Beyond that there are monthly plans for updates, backups, monitoring and small changes. They are optional and cancellable; a site handed over properly does not require a retainer to keep running.

Will the site actually rank in Kobe search results?

The build handles what is technically controllable: crawlable HTML, correct headings, structured data, fast pages, a clean sitemap and Search Console set up on day one. Ranking also depends on your competitors, your domain's age and the links pointing at you, which no developer controls. Anyone guaranteeing a position is guessing or lying.

Japan · Japan

Web developer in Kobe

Websites, online stores and technical SEO for Kobe businesses — built remotely from Islamabad, quoted in JPY, scoped in writing before anything starts.

The useful question is not what a website in Kobe costs. It is what one enquiry is worth to you, because that number decides everything else. A business where a lead is worth four figures should not be optimising a build down to the last hundred; a business selling a low-margin product cannot afford a bespoke platform. I ask this first and it changes the recommendation more often than not.

What working with a Japanese client actually changes

These are the terms that differ by country rather than by town. They apply to every business in Japan, Kobe included, and they are the substance of what this page is claiming.

Quoted and invoiced in	JPY — never a converted figure presented at the end
Tax position	consumption tax at 10%
Your customers' data sits under	the Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI)
Lawful transfer mechanism	the APPI requires consent or equivalent safeguards, recorded in the DPA
Checkout can realistically use	Stripe, PayPay, konbini payment, and JCB card support
My day, in Kobe time	13:00–22:00 — about 5 hours inside a normal working day

One thing worth knowing about building for Japan

Convenience-store payment is still widely used in Japan, and it is asynchronous — the customer pays days later at a konbini. Like Multibanco in Portugal, that means an order state the storefront has to model honestly.

How a Kobe project is paid for, and why it is staged

Payment is split across milestones tied to things you can actually look at — a staging URL, a working checkout, a completed migration — rather than to dates on a calendar. You pay for a milestone after reviewing it, in JPY, which means at no point are you more than one stage out of pocket on work you have not seen.

This exists because the alternative puts all the risk on whichever side pays first, and across a border that asymmetry is the thing that makes people nervous. Staging it does not eliminate the risk; it caps it at one milestone, which is small enough to walk away from. That is a more honest offer than a guarantee I could not enforce from here anyway.

Manufacturing, wholesale and B2B in Kobe

A B2B site in Kobe serves two audiences with opposite needs. A buyer wants specifications, tolerances, lead times and a downloadable datasheet. A procurement officer wants your company registration, insurance, certifications and payment terms. Serving both from one undifferentiated "About" page serves neither of them.

The highest-value feature is almost always a searchable product or capability index carrying real part numbers, because that is what engineers search for. It is unglamorous, it is a database problem rather than a design problem, and it produces enquiries that arrive already qualified.

Structured data that is missing, wrong, or quietly lying

Schema markup is how a search engine reads what a page means rather than only what it says. Missing it costs you rich results. Getting it wrong is worse: marking up review stars you do not have, or a LocalBusiness at an address that is not yours, risks a manual action rather than a ranking.

Every page I build carries schema matching what is actually on it and nothing beyond that. The restraint is deliberate — this page uses Service and areaServed rather than LocalBusiness, precisely because there is no physical presence in Kobe to assert.

Hiring a developer who is not in Kobe

What makes remote work fail is almost never the distance. It is the absence of a written record — decisions made on calls, nothing agreed in text, two people remembering different things six weeks later. Every Kobe project runs with the scope, the change log and the decisions in writing, which is dull and is the entire reason the fixed price holds.

What I build for Kobe businesses

Fixed-scope, fixed-price, quoted in JPY. The full list is on the services page.

E-commerce website development I build online stores end to end — catalogue, cart, Stripe checkout, order emails and the technical SEO that gets them found. Six of the fifteen sites I have shipped are e-commerce builds, and every one of them takes real payments. From $150 · 7 days Technical SEO audits and implementation Most SEO audits hand you a 60-page document and an invoice. I am a developer first, so I find the problems and then fix them in the codebase — crawlability, indexation, schema, Core Web Vitals, and whether AI answer engines can read your site at all. From $80 · 3 days Business website development Most small business websites fail at one job: turning a stranger who searched for your service into a phone call. I build the version that does — three days, mobile-first, live on your own hosting, with the enquiry form tested before anybody sees it. From $80 · 3 days Custom website development A template is the right answer more often than developers like to admit. This page is about the times it is not — when the thing your business does has a shape no theme author anticipated, and forcing it into one costs more in permanent workarounds than building it properly would have cost once. From $200 · 10 days Web application development A website presents information. An application does work — it holds state, enforces rules, and produces something at the end. Most businesses that need the second one are running it on a spreadsheet nobody is allowed to sort, and paying for that in errors rather than in software. From $200 · 10 days

What I am not claiming about Kobe

A location page is the easiest place on a website to imply something untrue, so here is the other side of it plainly:

I have no office, postal address or phone number in Kobe
I cannot meet you in person, and if that is a requirement you should hire locally
I am not claiming existing clients in Kobe specifically — my live work is listed on the work page and you can check it
Nothing on this page is a guarantee of search rankings, which no developer can honestly offer

Kobe web development — common questions

Do you build on WordPress or something custom?: Whichever the project justifies. WordPress when you need to edit content constantly and want a familiar admin. A static build when speed and security matter more than a plugin ecosystem. Custom PHP and MySQL when the logic is genuinely yours. The choice is explained in the quote with its trade-offs, not presented as a foregone conclusion.
Can you migrate my Kobe site without losing rankings?: Yes, and the redirect map is the whole job. Every existing URL is mapped to its new equivalent with a 301 before launch, and anything with no equivalent goes to the closest relevant page rather than the homepage. Sites lose rankings in migration because that mapping was skipped, not because migration is inherently risky.
Do I need to provide the content and images?: Content, yes — you know your business and I do not. I will restructure and edit what you send so it reads for the web, and I will tell you where a section is missing. Photography is worth paying a local photographer for; stock images of people in offices are recognisable as stock and quietly cost you credibility.
Do you actually work with businesses in Kobe?: Yes, remotely. I work with Japanese clients from Islamabad, quoting in JPY and invoicing in JPY. I have no office, address or phone number in Kobe and will not pretend otherwise. If your project needs someone physically present, hire locally — I will say so in the first reply rather than after a deposit.
Can you fix my existing site rather than rebuild it?: Often, yes, and it is usually the cheaper answer. Speed problems, a broken mobile layout, a form that silently fails or missing structured data are all fixable on the site you already have. I will tell you which of the two you need after looking, and a rebuild only gets recommended when the fix would cost more than starting again.
Do you provide ongoing maintenance after launch?: Thirty days of snag fixes are included after launch at no extra cost — anything that does not work as specified gets fixed. Beyond that there are monthly plans for updates, backups, monitoring and small changes. They are optional and cancellable; a site handed over properly does not require a retainer to keep running.
Will the site actually rank in Kobe search results?: The build handles what is technically controllable: crawlable HTML, correct headings, structured data, fast pages, a clean sitemap and Search Console set up on day one. Ranking also depends on your competitors, your domain's age and the links pointing at you, which no developer controls. Anyone guaranteeing a position is guessing or lying.

Also covering Japan

Same terms, same currency, same process — these are the other Japan towns with a page here.

Where this page sits

This page covers Kobe. Every other town in Japan is listed on the Japan coverage page, and the full worldwide list is at all locations.

Before you enquire: pricing is published rather than quoted on request, how I work covers the process end to end, the work page lists live client sites you can open, and vendor information answers the procurement questions.

Building something in Kobe?

Send the brief and you get a reply within one business day — questions or a scoping call, quoted in JPY. If it is not a project I should take on, I will say so then rather than after a deposit.

Start a project WhatsApp

Response: Replies within 1 business day
Hours: Mon–Fri, 09:00–18:00 PKT — overlaps 05:00–14:00 UK, 00:00–09:00 US Eastern
Booking: Booking projects from October 2026