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You dig up facts that hold up in court. Your website wouldn't survive a background check.

The people who hire investigators — attorneys, insurance carriers, HR departments, business owners doing due diligence — are professionals vetting a professional. They're checking your license, your specialties, and whether your reports will survive a courtroom, and they're doing it from your website before they ever call. If the site looks like a trench-coat cliché or a template from 2011, they assume the reports look the same. We rebuild investigative agency sites to read like the licensed, court-tested operation you actually run.

7
days to launch
0
retainers, ever
98%
Lighthouse score, every build
$1,500
demolition + rebuild starts here
THE MARKET READ

Most investigative work doesn't come from suspicious spouses — it comes from attorneys who need a witness located, insurance carriers running claims investigations, employers who need a defensible background check, and businesses vetting a partner before they wire money. Every one of those buyers is a professional hiring a professional, and they evaluate you the way they'd evaluate an expert witness: license number, years in the field, law-enforcement or military background, and whether your reports and testimony have held up in court. Your website is the first exhibit. A clean, credentialed, plainspoken site says the reports will read the same way. A dark site full of magnifying-glass clip art says the opposite, and the attorney moves to the next result.

The other thing this trade sells is discretion, and most PI websites forget to prove it. A client reaching out about employee theft or a fraud claim is nervous about the call itself — who answers, what gets written down, who ever finds out. The sites winning this work make confidentiality a visible feature: a private intake form, a plain statement of how inquiries are handled, a direct line to the licensed investigator rather than a call center. And because the best clients are repeat clients — law firms and carriers who send file after file — the site's real job is winning that first professional engagement. Land one litigation support file done well and the firm stops googling.

// SOUND FAMILIAR?

The four ways investigations websites lose money

We've audited hundreds of investigative agency sites. The same problems show up over and over — and every one of them costs you a customer who was ready to pay.

01

The trench-coat aesthetic

Fedoras, shadowy figures, magnifying-glass logos, spy-movie taglines. It plays to the one client you don't want and repels the ones you do — attorneys and corporate buyers who need a licensed professional, not a character. The noir theme costs you the exact work that pays.

02

No license number in sight

The first thing a serious client verifies is that you're licensed, bonded, and insured in the state — and most PI sites make them hunt for it. License number, state authority, and insurance belong in the header and footer of every page, not buried on an About page from two redesigns ago.

03

One vague 'Investigations' page

Background checks, insurance fraud and SIU support, process serving, skip tracing, corporate due diligence, litigation support — each is a different buyer typing a different search. Cram them into one page and Google ranks you for none of them, and the attorney searching 'process server near me' finds someone else.

04

No confidential way to make contact

A generic contact form with no privacy language asks a nervous client to spill a sensitive situation into a void. No statement of confidentiality, no sense of who reads it, no direct line. The agency that promises — in writing — that inquiries are private gets the call the others made feel risky.

// THE REBUILD, VISUALIZED

The vibe we'd build for a investigative agency

Investigative work is hired by attorneys and adjusters, not movie characters. The vibe: steel-blue and charcoal, brass-detail serif restraint, the composure of a firm whose reports survive cross-examination — credentials in the first screen, not a silhouette in a fedora.

meridianinvestigations.example
MERIDIAN INVESTIGATIVE GROUP
LICENSED · BONDED · CONFIDENTIAL INTAKE
Facts, documented. Reports that hold up in court.
Background checks, insurance investigations, and litigation support for attorneys, carriers, and businesses. Confidential consultations.
REQUEST A CONFIDENTIAL CONSULTSERVICES FOR ATTORNEYS
STATE LICENSED & INSUREDCOURT-READY REPORTS★ 4.9 · 86 REVIEWS
Concept direction, not a template — your brand, your photos, your words. You watch it take shape live during the 7-day build.
WHAT YOUR NEW SITE WILL DO

Built for how a investigative agency actually wins work

An investigative agency website has one job: convince a professional buyer, fast, that you're licensed, credible, and safe to call. Everything we build serves that.

Credentials above the fold

License number, state, bonded-and-insured status, and years in the field in the first screen. Law-enforcement or military background named plainly. This is the vet every attorney and adjuster runs before calling, so the site runs it for them.

A page per case type

Background checks, insurance and SIU work, process serving, skip tracing, due diligence, litigation support — each its own rankable page describing the work, the turnaround, and the deliverable. You show up for the specific search the client actually typed.

An attorney and law-firm lane

A dedicated page for legal professionals: court-ready reports, chain-of-custody habits, testimony experience, conflict checks, how you take a file and how you return it. Firms are the repeat business — the site should speak their language in their lane.

A confidential intake path

A private inquiry form with plain confidentiality language, a direct line to the licensed investigator, and a stated response time. Making the first contact feel safe is the single biggest conversion lever on a PI site.

Court-ready framing throughout

The deliverable isn't surveillance hours — it's a report and, if needed, testimony that survive cross-examination. Every service page frames the work by its end product, because that's what the attorney is actually buying.

Honest engagement framing

How you work: retainer basics, hourly ranges, what a typical background check or locate costs, what affects the number. Investigators who put real ranges online qualify their callers; the ones who hide everything get tire-kickers and dead air.

Old site gone, new site live, in 7 days.

DAY 1

Audit & quote

60-minute call. We tell you exactly what's broken and lock a fixed price before you hang up.

DAY 2–5

Design + copy + SEO

You watch the real site take shape in the browser. We write the copy and wire the schema.

DAY 6

You review, we polish

One round of revisions, applied the same day. No tickets. No project-manager relay.

DAY 7

Launch — you keep the keys

Your domain, your hosting, your code. No platform lock-in, no retainer, no hostage situation.

// QUESTIONS LICENSED INVESTIGATORS ASK US

Before you call

My work is confidential. How do I show experience without exposing cases?

By describing the work in categories, not case files. 'Three hundred insurance claims investigated for regional carriers' or 'locate work for family law firms across the metro' proves depth without naming a soul. Pair it with credentials — license history, prior law enforcement, court testimony experience — and attorney testimonials that mention the firm type, not the matter. Professionals hire the résumé and the discretion together; the site can show both without breaching either.

Most of my work comes from law firm referrals. Do I still need a website?

That's exactly why you do. A referral isn't a sale — it's permission to be vetted. When one attorney passes your name to another, the second one googles you before calling, and what they find either confirms the referral or quietly kills it. A credentialed, court-focused site converts the referrals you're already generating. It also catches the firms with no referral at all: 'private investigator for attorneys' and 'process server near me' are searched by people ready to send a file this week.

Should I put my rates online?

Ranges, yes. 'Most investigative work runs $75–$150 per hour depending on the case type, with a retainer to open a file' tells a serious client you're in their range and tells a bargain-hunter to keep scrolling — both outcomes save you time. You're not quoting a case sight unseen; you're qualifying the call. The agencies that hide every number online don't look premium, they look evasive, which is a bad look in a trade that sells trust.

What does it cost, exactly?

Three fixed packages: $1,500 for a 5-page rebuild with full SEO in 7 days, $3,800 for up to 20 pages with a blog, lead forms and integrations in 14 days, and $8,000 for 100+ page builds with a custom hero video, calculators and lead funnels. The quote we send before you sign is the number on the final invoice — no scope-creep charges, ever.

Ready to bulldoze your investigative agency's website?

Tell us your domain. We'll send a brutal audit of what's broken, with a fixed quote to fix it. No sales call required.

Free. No spam. We reply within 24 hours, or we'll bulldoze our own site.