Ronen Hirsch
Web Developer & Designer, Abra Web Design & Development
Los Angeles, CA
Q What do you do?
“I design and build websites and custom web apps for businesses that need their digital presence to actually pull weight.”
That covers three main areas: Shopify stores for brands selling online, WordPress websites for businesses that need a strong informational or content-driven presence, and bespoke web applications that automate the manual, repetitive operational work that quietly eats up hours of someone's week.
On the Shopify side, aside from creating the online stores themselves, I also develop premium theme sections that store owners can drop into their sites through a Shopify app I built (https://abrasections.com), which gives them custom-quality design elements without needing to hire a developer for every tweak.
The thread connecting all of it is taking something a client describes out loud and turning it into a working, reliable, well-designed product they can hand to their customers or their team.
Q What steps did you take to get to where you are now?
I've been designing and developing websites for over 21 years, the past 12 of them based in Los Angeles.
The path here was not a straight line. I started with Computer Science, studied Product Design at the Design Academy in The Netherlands, which sounds like a hard pivot but turned out to be the foundation of how I work now. Knowing how things get made physically, with materials and constraints and users, changed how I think about building things digitally.
After graduating I built a portfolio site for myself, then one for a friend, then another, and realized I genuinely loved the combination of design and code in a way I hadn't loved either one separately. I gave a traditional design studio job a try, lasted three months, decided being my own boss suited me better, and have been running my own shop ever since.
Q How do you stand out in your field?
A few things. The first is that I'm not a designer who can sort of code, or a developer who can sort of design. I do both at a professional level, which means projects do not get lost in the translation gap that usually exists between those two disciplines.
Second is the range. Two decades of hands-on Shopify and WordPress work, plus the ability to architect and build custom web apps from scratch when an off-the-shelf tool will not solve the actual problem. Most agencies will steer you toward a templated solution because it is faster and more profitable for them, and the client ends up adapting their business to fit the tool. I would rather understand how your business actually runs and build something that fits the business.
Third is service, which sounds basic until you talk to anyone who has hired a developer before. I do what I say I will do and I am still around after the project goes live. That alone seems to put me in a small group.
Q What are you working on right now?
A handful of projects in parallel, which is honestly how I work best. The biggest is a Digital Contract web app for a moving company. Their world is full of paperwork: inventory lists, insurance forms, high-value item declarations, addendums, customer signatures, and approvals at multiple stages of every job. I'm replacing that entire stack with a web-based system that integrates with their existing tools, so the whole job lives in one place from quote to delivery. Alongside that I'm deep into a bespoke management web app for another client, building out the workflows that let them run their operations without a dozen open browser tabs and a shared spreadsheet.
Recently wrapped a private referral app for a business that needed a controlled way to manage incoming referrals, and shipped several custom WordPress websites in the past few months.
There are also Shopify and WordPress website builds in motion, so I'm quite busy!
Q What’s your style?
Clean, intentional, and functional, but not in the sterile minimalist sense. I like designs that feel inevitable: smart use of color, typography that earns its place on the page, and layouts that direct attention without shouting. The visual side gets a lot of attention because it is what people see first, but the part I care about just as much is what happens underneath. Code that is fast, maintainable, and built to outlast trends.
The bespoke web app work is where my taste shows up most clearly. When you are designing a tool that someone will use every single day to run their business, every extra click, every confusingly labeled button, every loading state that does not communicate what is happening becomes friction that compounds over hundreds of uses. I obsess over that level of detail because it is the difference between software people tolerate and software people actually like.
Q Out of all your slashies, which one do you wish you could do more often?
The early-stage strategy and discovery work. The conversation that happens before any pixels exist, where a client walks through their business, their friction points, their goals, and what they have already tried. That phase is where the most valuable design and development decisions get made, because it is where you decide what to build in the first place, and most projects fail or succeed based on whether that question got answered well.
Most clients do not know to ask for that part of the work, so it gets compressed into a quick kickoff call when it really deserves a few proper sessions. I would love to do more projects where I am brought in early enough to shape the thinking, not just execute on a brief that has already been written.
Aside from that - social media, SEO, marketing, and learning how to utilize AI capabilities.
Q What is frustrating you right now?
Marketing my business. It is the textbook cobbler's-children situation. I am so focused on shipping good work for clients that updating my own website, writing blog posts, posting on social, and doing the consistent outreach that brings in new projects keeps slipping to the bottom of the To Do list. I know exactly what I should be doing, I know it would bring in more of the kinds of projects I actually want, and somehow client deadlines win every single week. The irony of being someone who builds digital presences for a living and then under-investing in my own is not lost on me.
Q If you could hire someone for $20/hour, what would you have them do to make your day easier?
Sales and outreach. Someone who could go find the right kinds of clients, qualify the leads coming in, handle the back-and-forth of scheduling intro calls, and only hand me the conversations actually worth having. The reality of running a small studio is that a real percentage of every week goes to inquiries that were never going to turn into projects, either because the budget is wrong, the scope is wrong, or the fit just is not there. Someone shielding me from that, so I can spend my hours building, would change the shape of my business almost immediately.
Q What do you wish you could have told yourself, when, and why?
Spend a few years working inside other studios before going out on your own. I went solo almost immediately after my one short studio stint, and while learning everything by doing has its own kind of value, I would have moved faster and made fewer mistakes if I had seen a few different studios up close first. How pricing works, how to scope projects, how to manage clients, how to build and lead small teams, how to say no, how to handle the awkward conversations.
All of that is real expertise that takes years to develop alone, and most of it can be absorbed in months when you are watching someone good do it. I figured a lot of it out the long way.
Q If you could talk to an expert to gain more insight on something, what would it be about?
Sales and positioning for higher-ticket bespoke work. The custom web app side of what I do is the area I most want to grow, and selling a $30K custom build is a fundamentally different conversation than selling a $8K Shopify project. The buyer is different, the decision-making process is different, the way you have to talk about value is different, and the proposal process is different. I have done enough of these to know what good work looks like on the delivery side. The part I want to get sharper on is everything that happens before the contract gets signed.
Q What kind of opportunities/projects are you looking for?
Two main directions, and I am genuinely excited about both.
First, custom web apps and bespoke automation work. Internal tools, customer-facing portals, integrations between systems that were never designed to talk to each other, and anything that takes a manual, repetitive process and makes it run itself. These are the projects where I get to do the most interesting thinking and the deepest building.
Second, Shopify and WordPress website projects. That can be a full end-to-end design and build, or coming in as the developer for a designer who needs a strong technical partner.
Both halves of my practice feed each other, and I am happy to take on either.
Q Describe your ideal job/client/collaboration.
A client who is solving a real problem, has the budget to solve it properly, and treats the project as a genuine collaboration rather than a transaction. The best work I have done has come from clients who showed up to meetings prepared, gave honest and timely feedback, trusted me on the things I know better than they do, and pushed back on the things they know better than I do. That dynamic produces results neither of us could have built alone. The opposite of this is the client who hands off a brief, disappears for three weeks, then returns with a list of changes that contradict the direction they originally approved.
Q: What is your rate?
Every project is different, but a few starting points.
A standard Shopify or WordPress design-and-build based off of a pre-built theme typically starts around $6,000, and goes up from there based on scope, complexity, custom functionality, and how much of the strategy and content side I am also handling.
Custom web apps and bespoke builds vary much more widely because they are defined by the problem being solved rather than a familiar template. Smaller, more focused projects like landing pages, add-ons, integrations, or website tune-ups can come in well below the standard starting range.
I am genuinely flexible and would rather have a real conversation about what you need than quote off a price list. Tell me what you are trying to build and I will come back with a real number.
Q How should someone approach you about working together?
Easiest path is to head over to www.thisisabra.com and click "Get Started", or email me directly. The more context you can share up front the faster we can figure out if we are a good fit.
Useful things to include in that first message: what you are trying to build or solve, who it is for, the timeline you have in mind, and a ballpark budget if you have one. Even rough answers to those questions save us both a round of back-and-forth and let me come into the first call already thinking about your specific situation.
Q Oh! and… how do you stay creative?
Bass guitar, cooking, photography, house plants, crafts.
This member profile was originally published in January 2018, Updated in May 2026.