Our work · Case study
Mowie: a lawn-mowing marketplace, built from the ground up
Mowie lets Melbourne homeowners price their lawn from an aerial photo, take private quotes from verified local mowers, and pay only after they've seen the finished lawn. We designed and built the whole thing. Here's the work.
- Live at
- mowie.com.au
- Where
- Melbourne, VIC
- Type
- New build, marketplace
- Scale
- Around 300 pages
Why Mowie exists
It started with two problems that turned out to be one. A mate with a mowing round was losing half of every Saturday driving out to quote jobs that went to someone cheaper on the phone. A neighbour in Mill Park couldn't get a single mower to call her back.
Both come from the same gap. Nobody knows what a job is worth until someone stands on the lawn and looks at it. So the whole product rests on one idea: measure the lawn first, from the aerial, and let mowers quote from the ute. The homeowner gets a price guide in seconds and nobody has to ring anyone.
The founder tells it in his own words on the Mowie page for mowers.
What we built
Three steps, and a card that isn't touched until the last one
The home page, the how-it-works page and every suburb page all walk the same three steps. Keeping it that simple took most of the design work.
List your lawn
Type an address and the block comes up on the aerial. Mowie measures the grass and puts a guide price on it from what lawns nearby have gone for. Two minutes, no account, no card.
Mowers quote privately
Every verified mower who covers the suburb gets the listing on their phone, with the measured area, edge metres, grass height and gate notes. None of them can see what the others bid.
Approve the photo, pay
The mower sends a photo of the finished lawn. The card is charged when the homeowner taps approve, or 48 hours later if they don't respond. Not before.
- The long version is on how Mowie works, and the rules that back it up are in the Mowie guarantee.
From the ground up
Everything that had to exist before the first lawn got mowed
A marketplace has two customers, and both of them have to trust a site they've never heard of. That's a lot of pages. This is the list.
Brand and identity
A kangaroo on a mower for the mark, a deep green and a lime action colour, Bricolage Grotesque for headlines and Nunito Sans for body copy. The fonts are self-hosted, so nothing waits on a third party before the page can draw.
The listing flow
Address lookup, the aerial outline, two questions about the grass and the gate, and a live guide price. It also copes with the units and new estates that aren't on the map yet, by asking for a rough size instead of giving up.
The mower side
ABN check against the government register, identity verification through Stripe, a job feed with a suggested bid, quoting in about 15 seconds, and payouts to the mower's bank in around two business days. Earnings and a tax-time summary live in their dashboard.
The suburb engine
298 Melbourne suburbs across nine regions, each with its own page: a line of local history, guide prices for small, average and big blocks, the council's nature-strip rules, the mowers active there, and tips specific to that suburb's lawns.
23 lawn guides
From what lawn mowing costs in Melbourne to how to start a mowing business, written to answer the questions people actually type into Google. Each one links back to the listing flow.
Trust pages
A six-rule guarantee. A founding partner programme that gives the first mowers 0% commission for three months. A kids' first job page for 15 to 17 year olds mowing through a parent's account, with the safety rules written plainly.
Pricing and payments
Free for homeowners. Mowers pay 10% + GST only on jobs that get paid. Money goes from the homeowner's card to the mower through Stripe, with the commission taken out on the way, so Mowie never holds anyone's cash.
Search and plumbing
A page title per suburb, breadcrumbs, FAQ blocks and a sitemap per region so Google can crawl every suburb page. Hosting chosen for speed, so a 300-page site still opens quickly on a phone.
By the numbers
What's live today
Counted from the site itself in October 2026. Suburbs go live as mowers sign up, so the map keeps filling in.
- Melbourne suburbs mapped
- 298
- regions, each with its own sitemap
- 9
- lawn guides written
- 23
- steps from address to mowed lawn
- 3
- plus GST, the only fee, and only on paid jobs
- 10%
- until a photo auto-approves
- 48 hrs
One page, up close
The Thomastown page
Thomastown is where Upgrade My Website is based, so it's the page we check first. It opens with a line about the market gardens the suburb grew out of, puts a guide price of $100 to $145 on a typical 180 m² block, and lists the six verified mowers who cover the postcode, with their work photos and badges.
Below that sits the City of Whittlesea's nature-strip rule, dated the day it was checked, and three tips a mower would want to hear about a Thomastown lawn, like the concreted back yards and the old kikuyu that thatches up. Every one of the 298 suburb pages is built the same way, with its own facts.
See lawn mowing in Thomastown on Mowie or browse every Melbourne suburb Mowie covers.
What this means for your website
Most of our clients don't need a marketplace. They need five pages that load fast and make the phone ring. The reason Mowie matters to you is the standard. The same hands that built the suburb engine and the payment flow build the Start Up and the Full Build. The care that went into a single Thomastown mowing page goes into your services page.
And if you're a mower in Melbourne reading this, the quickest way to see the site is to join Mowie and quote a lawn from your phone.
Explore Mowie
Go and use it
The best way to judge a site is in a real browser. These are the pages worth a look.
- Price your lawn from the airThe home page. Type an address and get a guide price in seconds.
- How Mowie worksList it, pick a quote, approve the photo.
- Lawn mowing across Melbourne, suburb by suburbNine regions and 298 suburbs mapped, each marked live or recruiting.
- Lawn mowing in ThomastownOne suburb page in full. Our own suburb, as it happens.
- What lawn mowing costs in MelbourneThe price guide by lawn size, and how the figures are built.
- Mowie pricing: free for homeowners, 10% + GST for mowersWith a worked example of a $110 mow.
- Mow lawns? Quote from your phoneThe mower side, and the founder's note in his own words.
- The Mowie guaranteeSix rules, including photo before payment.
- The founding partner programme0% commission for the first mowers, then 10% + GST locked until the end of 2027.
- Kids' first jobTeenagers mowing through a parent's account, with the rules spelled out.
Want a site built with this much care?
Start with the free review of the site you've got. Or tell us about a new business and we'll come back with a one-page plan, a price and a timeline in writing.