Puerto Jiménez, Costa Rica
info@gexpsoftware.com
© 2026 Marcelo Retana
Most websites look fine but fail at the one job that matters — turning visitors into customers. Here's how modern full-stack development, performance-first architecture, and AI search optimization deliver real business results.
Your website looks fine. It loads. It has your logo, your services, a contact page. And it's doing almost nothing for your business.
This is the reality for most small and mid-size businesses. They paid an agency to build a website — or dragged one together on Squarespace — and now it sits there like a digital brochure that nobody reads. No leads. No calls. No growth.
I'm Marcelo Retana, a senior full-stack developer with over 10 years of experience building digital products for companies like Bank of America, IBM, Universal Music, BMW, and Mercedes Benz — as well as startups and small businesses around the world. I've shipped 50+ projects, and the lesson is always the same: a website that doesn't generate leads is a website that isn't doing its job.
Here's how I approach it differently.
Most websites fail for one of three reasons:
They're slow. According to Google's own research, 53% of mobile visitors abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load (Google/SOASTA, 2017). Most WordPress and Squarespace sites fall into this trap out of the box.
They're generic. Template-based sites all look the same. Visitors can't tell what makes your business different. If your site doesn't communicate a clear value proposition in under 5 seconds, people bounce.
They're not built for action. No conversion strategy. No lead capture flow. No structured path from visitor to customer. Just pages of information with no direction.
Web agencies don't solve these problems because they're selling you a design, not a business tool. A high-converting landing page isn't about looking good — it's about guiding every visitor toward a specific action.
I don't start with a template. I start with a question: what do you need this site to do?
Capture leads? Book calls? Sell a product? Launch an MVP? That answer shapes everything — the layout, the copy, the user flow, the technology behind it.
I combine deep technical expertise with a keen eye for user experience. I write code that scales, but I never lose sight of what the visitor sees and feels. Every pixel matters. Every interaction counts.
Then comes technology. I work across the full stack — React, Next.js, Node.js, TypeScript, GraphQL, PostgreSQL, AWS, Docker — and I leverage AI-powered development workflows to deliver faster without cutting corners. This isn't a team of juniors following a checklist. It's one senior engineer who owns the entire process from design to deployment.
The result: products that would take agencies months, delivered in weeks.
I build with Next.js and React — the same frameworks used by Netflix, Nike, and Notion. Here's what that means for your business:
Next.js delivers static generation, server-side rendering, and automatic image optimization by default. My sites consistently score 90+ on Google PageSpeed. Most WordPress sites struggle to hit 60.
Speed directly impacts revenue. Portent's research found that a site loading in 1 second has a conversion rate 3x higher than a site loading in 5 seconds (Portent, 2019). Faster sites rank higher on Google, keep visitors engaged longer, and convert at substantially higher rates.
WordPress relies on dozens of plugins for basic functions — SEO, caching, security, contact forms. Every plugin is a potential security vulnerability, a performance hit, and a maintenance burden. Updates break things. Plugins conflict with each other. It's fragile by design.
My stack handles all of this natively. SEO, performance, and security are built into the architecture — not bolted on with third-party code.
Squarespace is easy until you need something custom. Then you hit a wall. WordPress is flexible until your site becomes a tangled mess of plugins and patches.
I build with clean, scalable architecture. When your business expands — new product lines, a client portal, multi-language support, an API integration — the foundation is ready. No rebuilding from scratch.
I hear this constantly from business owners: "I can't update my own website."
WordPress admin panels look like airplane cockpits. Squarespace editors won't let you do anything beyond swapping text. My CMS setup gives you the best of both worlds: a clean editing experience that's simple enough for anyone on your team, flexible enough to handle blogs, landing pages, product pages, and whatever else your business needs.
More powerful than WordPress. Easier to use than Squarespace. That's not a contradiction — it's what happens when you build a CMS around your actual needs.
Every site I build ships with SEO-friendly structure from day one:
This isn't an add-on package. This is how the site is built from the start. According to Google's own documentation, Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking signal, and pages meeting all three thresholds see measurably lower bounce rates (Google Search Central).
Here's something most agencies aren't paying attention to yet: traditional SEO alone is no longer enough.
ChatGPT Search has over 200 million users. Perplexity has 50 million. Claude Search is growing fast. More and more people are getting answers from AI — not from Google's blue links. If your website isn't optimized for AI search engines, you're becoming invisible to a massive and growing audience.
I use advanced AI search optimization techniques, including the SEO-GEO skill — a tool built for Claude Code that automates optimization for AI search engines using Princeton research methods proven to increase AI citations by 40-70%.
The SEO-GEO skill hit 1,000 installs in just 3 weeks. It's already delivering measurable outcomes:
What it automates:
I don't just build websites that rank on Google. I build AI-optimized digital assets designed for the future of search — so your business stays visible as the way people find information fundamentally changes.
Every site I build has one job: move visitors to action.
That means intentional page structure, clear calls to action, fast load times, and mobile-first design. Not decorative elements and filler sections. Every component exists because it serves the conversion goal.
Whether the objective is booking a call, capturing an email, or completing a purchase, the entire user experience is engineered around that outcome. HubSpot's benchmarking data shows that the average landing page conversion rate across industries is 5.89% — but pages with a single focused CTA and streamlined design consistently outperform that benchmark by 2-3x (HubSpot, 2024).
I maintain a 5.0 rating on both Clutch and Google with 100% client satisfaction across 50+ projects. Here's what some clients have said:
"Their speed and ability to adapt to changes are top-notch. They over-delivered, and operated like an extension of our team." — Clay McIlrath, Founder, Unicorn
"The page turned out spectacular; it honestly exceeded my expectations. Their attention and step-by-step explanation was incredible." — Leonel Chinchilla, Business Owner
"Their approach created a mutually beneficial relationship that resembled a unified team. Their proactivity and creativity stood out." — Don Hayley, CPA, Founder, Mavrix AI
"An extremely professional team. They supported us every step of the way to achieve the website we dreamed of." — Stefany Ramírez, Business Owner, Nature Escapes
These aren't cherry-picked quotes from hundreds of reviews. This is the standard. Every project, every client, every time.
Agencies charge premium rates for WordPress sites that need constant maintenance. Squarespace charges monthly fees for limited functionality. Neither gives you a site that actually drives revenue.
I offer something different: a modern, high-converting website built on a tech stack that performs better, costs less to maintain, and lasts longer. You get premium quality — the same level of engineering I've delivered for Fortune 500 companies — at a price that makes sense for growing businesses.
No ongoing plugin subscriptions. No maintenance contracts for things that shouldn't break in the first place. Just a site that works harder for your business from day one.
Your website should be your best salesperson. It works 24/7, never takes a day off, and talks to every potential customer who finds you online.
If your current site isn't generating leads, it's not a website problem — it's a strategy and technology problem. And that's exactly what I solve.
I build modern, fast, SEO-optimized, conversion-focused digital products — websites, apps, ecommerce, MVPs. They're designed for how people search today (including AI search engines) and architected for how your business will grow tomorrow.
No templates. No plugin chaos. No guesswork. Just results.
Most projects are delivered in 2-4 weeks, depending on scope. That includes strategy, design, development, and deployment. Traditional agencies typically quote 3-6 months for comparable work because they spread the process across multiple teams and approval layers.
The upfront investment is higher than a DIY Squarespace site, but lower than what most agencies charge for WordPress builds. The critical difference is total cost of ownership: my sites require virtually no ongoing maintenance fees, plugin subscriptions, or emergency fixes. Over 2-3 years, the total cost is typically lower.
Yes. Every site I build includes AI search optimization using methods from Princeton's Generative Engine Optimization research. This includes structured data, FAQ schemas, and content formatting designed specifically for AI citation — something most agencies aren't even aware of yet.
Absolutely. Every project includes a CMS tailored to your team's needs. You can update text, images, blog posts, and pages without touching code. My clients consistently tell me it's easier than WordPress.
I offer audits that identify exactly why your current site isn't converting. Common issues include slow load times, poor mobile experience, missing conversion paths, and invisible SEO. From there, we can either optimize what you have or rebuild on a modern stack.
Ready to turn your website into a lead generation machine? Book a call and let's talk about what your business actually needs.