Service / 20
Bespoke websites for Cape Town brands. We are local, meet in person where it helps, and build sites that hold up six years after launch. No templates. No page builders by default. Free scoping call (in our office, at yours, or over video) and a fixed-price quote within 48 hours.
What it unlocks
Built for Cape Town brands where the website carries real commercial weight: V&A and CBD retailers, boutique hospitality and tour operators, Western Cape wineries and food producers, professional services in Sea Point and Stellenbosch, and considered-purchase brands where the buyer compares three or four options before they enquire.
Capabilities
Engagement rhythm
Free scoping call and fixed-price quote
Discovery, content, and design
Build and SEO foundations
Launch and post-launch review
What we do
We are based in Cape Town. Discovery meetings happen in person where it adds value: at your premises if you are a hospitality venue, a winery, or a retail space we need to see properly. Photo walk-throughs, product shoots, on-site interviews with your team to gather the content the site actually needs. The result is a website built around your real business, not a template adjusted from a screen across the country.
Lightweight code, optimised images, sensible defaults. Lighthouse 95+ across performance, accessibility, best practice, and SEO is the target on every build, not a stretch. Cape Town buyers compare options on mobile, often on patchy signal between meetings. Page-builder sites typically ship at 40 to 60. Bespoke sites at 95+. The gap matters because Google penalises slow sites in rankings and slow sites lose conversions before the buyer reads the headline.
Schema, sitemaps, headings, internal linking, Core Web Vitals: baked in at build time. Local SEO setup where it makes sense: Google Business Profile alignment, LocalBusiness schema, neighbourhood-level service pages where the search behaviour supports them. The site is rankable from day one rather than retrofitted six months later when the next SEO agency tells you the foundations were never there.
Forms, CTAs, trust signals, and content blocks placed where they earn their keep. For hospitality and tour operators, that often means strong booking calls-to-action and integrated availability. For retail, it means clear stock and store information. For professional services, it means proof and credentials surfaced before the enquiry form. Reviewed against real Search Console and analytics data after launch, not parked once the site goes live.
Custom Meta Box fields (WordPress) or content collections (Astro) give your team the controls that matter: copy, images, CTAs, section toggles. Page builders are available when they genuinely fit a project, but the default is custom blocks with no plugin bloat. Your team edits content, not layout templates. We hand over with documentation written for the people who will actually use it.
Future-proof code. No plugin lock-in. Clean handover documentation. Optional ongoing support if you want it. Source code in your Git repo, hosting in your name, no licences in our agency's name. We do not hold the keys; the licence is yours; the database is yours. You can leave any time, take the site with you, and any competent developer can pick it up.
How an engagement runs
30-minute call, in person where you are based in or near Cape Town, or over video if that suits you better. We learn the goal, the audience, the rough page-set, and any technical constraints (CMS preference, integrations, content migration). Within 48 hours: fixed-price quote with line-itemed scope and timeline. No estimate ranges; no scope-creep mid-build.
Content inventory and on-site visits where the project benefits (hospitality venues, wineries, retail spaces). Photo walk-throughs arranged where new imagery is needed. IA design: sitemap, navigation, page templates. Wireframes for key page types. Visual design in Figma. Sign-off on design before any code is written. Brand guidelines extended into a real digital design system.
Front-end built in Astro, Next.js, or static HTML depending on what fits. Headless WordPress for the CMS if editorial needs it; static MDX or markdown if it does not. Schema deployed per page type. Sitemap generated. Forms wired to your CRM or inbox. Local payment gateways integrated where ecommerce is in scope. Analytics and conversion tracking installed. Staging walk-throughs at the midpoint and pre-launch, in person where useful.
Launch including 301 redirects from the old URL structure (if applicable), Search Console re-verification, sitemap submission. First 30 days are bug-fix-included. A 30-day review session, usually in person, to walk through analytics, Search Console, and any early conversion data. Optional ongoing retainer for content, new page builds, or CRO work after that.
The lay of the land
Cape Town is one of the most agency-dense cities in the country. Walk through Woodstock, the CBD, or Sea Point and you will find a web design studio on every other block. Most do competent template work: a discounted WordPress theme, Elementor or Divi on top, seven plugins, a launch within six weeks. That model has its place for the corner-shop business that needs a brochure online quickly. It is the wrong model for the Cape Town brands that take their website seriously: hospitality groups, established retailers, wineries with serious export ambitions, professional service firms competing on credibility.
Our position in that market is straightforward. We build bespoke, not templated. We write custom code by default, and use page builders only when a project genuinely calls for one. We bake SEO and performance into the build rather than retrofitting them after. We meet in person when it helps because we are local, which means design reviews happen across a desk in Woodstock or at your premises in Stellenbosch, not over a fortnightly Zoom from another time zone. The clients who fit work with us because the website is a real commercial asset for the business, not a line item to tick off.
The third option, increasingly viable for Cape Town brands with serious content ambitions, is static-site generation with a headless CMS: Astro or Next.js for the front end, WordPress or Sanity for the editorial layer, Cloudflare Pages or Vercel for hosting. Sub-second page loads, near-zero hosting cost, and a codebase that survives the agency churn most sites cannot. We are happy to build any of the three; the recommendation follows the goal, not the stack we prefer.
FAQ
No. Most of our work is with brands across South Africa and internationally. The Cape Town focus on this page is because we are based here and many clients value the option of in-person meetings. If you are anywhere else in the country (or further), we run the same process over video and async, and the work output is identical.
Yes. For Cape Town based clients we usually do the discovery call in person, on-site visits where the project benefits (hospitality, wineries, retail), midpoint and pre-launch walk-throughs, and a 30-day post-launch review session. For clients elsewhere in South Africa we travel where the project budget supports it and run everything else over video. Either path lands the same outcome.
A typical scope is a 12 to 30 page brochure or service site with a clean CMS for ongoing editorial, Lighthouse 95+ as a hard target, SEO foundations and schema deployed at build time, and analytics and conversion tracking wired up before launch. Hospitality and retail projects often add photography coordination and integrated booking or stock displays. Ecommerce projects move to our dedicated ecommerce process and typically run longer. Timeline is 8 to 10 weeks for a standard scope.
Depends on the size of the page set, CMS choice, design ambition, and any custom integrations. The scoping call ends with a fixed-price quote within 48 hours, line-itemed by scope and timeline. No estimate ranges, no scope-creep mid-build.
Depends on editorial needs and team. WordPress (with custom Gutenberg blocks, or page builders only when they genuinely fit) for content-heavy sites with non-technical editors. Astro for marketing sites where editorial happens monthly rather than daily, with sub-second load times as a hard requirement. Next.js for sites with interactive front-end requirements. We will recommend based on your team and your goals, not on what we prefer to write.
Yes. Payfast, Yoco, and PayGate are the three we integrate most often for Cape Town clients, alongside Stripe where international card payments are needed. Courier integrations (The Courier Guy, Bob Go, Pargo, Aramex) are wired where relevant. For full ecommerce builds we move to our dedicated ecommerce process; this page covers brochure, service, and lead-gen sites with light commerce where applicable.
Yes, and this is the part most agencies skip. 301 redirects mapped from the old URL structure to the new, comprehensive. Internal linking preserved. Schema and metadata migrated. Search Console resubmitted with the new sitemap. We treat SEO continuity as a deliverable of the redesign, not an afterthought. Particularly important for Cape Town brands that already rank for competitive local terms; losing that on a redesign is an expensive, slow mistake to recover from.
Everything we do
Pick any other engagement that fits your business, or take the whole stack from one senior team.
Custom Shopify themes, performance-tuned from launch, conversion-led PDPs, SEO and Merchant Centre wired clean.
Custom WooCommerce themes that perform like Shopify, with the editorial flexibility and ownership of WordPress.
Custom WordPress sites built code-first as the default, with the option of a properly configured page builder when your team needs ongoing editorial freedom.
We update, back up, monitor, and patch your WordPress site every week so a stale plugin never takes your business offline.
Technical SEO, content, local, schema, and Search Console health, run as a retainer and measured against revenue.
Most Shopify SEO is left to an app that emits duplicate or invalid schema. We do the work in Liquid, where it belongs.
WooCommerce SEO done at theme and plugin level, not delegated to the Yoast WooCommerce add-on.
WordPress SEO done at theme, plugin, and hosting level, not delegated to a Yoast or Rank Math settings page.
We build Google Ads accounts around conversions: tight structure, clean tracking, landing pages that match the query.
Paid search, paid social, SEO, content, and analytics run by the same senior people, with reporting tied to pipeline.
Most PPC agencies run Google only. We run Google plus Microsoft Ads in parallel, with cross-channel tracking and audience strategy.
Shopping and Performance Max are the start, not the strategy. We run the full funnel for ecommerce accounts, with margin context, not just ROAS.
Shopify-specific Google Ads work: native Merchant Centre integration, customer-list sync, Shopify Audiences, and PDP-level CRO.
Service businesses optimise to form fills. We optimise to sales-qualified leads and closed-won revenue, wired into your CRM.
We run Facebook and Instagram Ads with senior account managers, server-side tracking, and continuous creative testing so spend earns its keep.
No templates. No page builders. Bespoke websites with Lighthouse 95+, SEO foundations baked in, and CMS controls that make sense.
Custom-built ecommerce, sized to your catalogue and ops. Shopify, WooCommerce, or custom-built; the platform follows the business model.
Cape Town-focused SEO: local pack and Google Business Profile, technical foundations, content, and GSC discipline, run as a retainer and measured against revenue.
Cape Town web design agency. Bespoke builds, Lighthouse 95+, SEO foundations baked in, CMS controls your team can actually use. In-person discovery meetings across the city.
Bespoke website builds engineered around your stack, your integrations, and how the site has to perform under real load. Custom code, headless where it fits, observability and security treated as deliverables.
Continuous CRO: diagnose where the funnel leaks, run hypothesis-led tests, measure against revenue, not vanity engagement metrics.