Service / 03
Custom WordPress sites built by a senior team. Code-first is our default and the path we recommend for most engagements, with a properly configured page builder (Elementor, Bricks, Breakdance, Divi) when your team needs ongoing editorial freedom. Performance, SEO, and ownership baked in.
What it unlocks
Built for businesses that want a senior team thinking carefully about the right WordPress stack for their goals: bespoke when performance and longevity matter most, page builder when editorial freedom matters more, and an honest conversation about which one fits.
Capabilities
Engagement rhythm
Free scoping call and fixed-price quote
Discovery and design
Build, integrations, and SEO foundations
Launch and handover
What we do
For most engagements, we recommend a bespoke WordPress theme written from scratch in clean PHP, scoped to your content model. Template hierarchy designed deliberately, no plugin glue between core functionality and the front end, a codebase that still reads cleanly six years on. This is the path we steer most clients toward because it gives the best performance and longevity. When a page builder is a better fit for how your team will actually work, we will say so in the scoping call and build it properly.
Lighthouse 95+ on mobile is the floor we ship at, not a post-launch optimisation project. Optimised images via the WordPress media pipeline, deferred third-party scripts, sensible caching strategy, server response times tuned. Page-builder sites can ship slower if they are dropped in without care, which is the most common reason we get called in to rebuild them. When we use a page builder ourselves, we strip it back, disable the bloat, and tune it to hit the same performance bar.
Editorial control is a real requirement, and there are two ways to deliver it. Default route: custom Gutenberg blocks and ACF or Meta Box field groups, built around the content your team actually publishes, with clean scoped controls and no canvas to learn. Alternative route: a properly configured page builder (Elementor, Bricks, Breakdance, Divi) when your team needs free-form compositional control over future pages. The right choice depends on how much your editorial team plans to ship after launch, how much layout variation they need, and who is doing the editing. We will help you decide rather than push you toward one answer.
Schema markup (Service, Article, Organization, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Product where relevant), sitemaps, hreflang where you sell cross-border, semantic HTML, structured heading hierarchy, WCAG-conscious build patterns. The technical SEO foundations Google rewards over the long term, baked in. Accessibility is treated as a build target, not retrofitted under audit pressure. This applies whether we are shipping a bespoke theme or a page-builder build.
HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Stripe, payment gateways, third-party APIs, headless endpoints where they fit. Wired in with proper error handling, observability, and rollback paths, with a direct integration preferred over Zapier-style glue when it is more reliable. Webhooks tested. Authentication flows documented.
Source code, design files, every credential, every deploy script, all yours from launch. Documentation written for the next developer, not for our retention. No licences in our name. No agency-as-gatekeeper. You can take the build to another team or run it in-house if you want; the handover is clean.
How an engagement runs
30-minute call to understand the goal, the audience, the rough page set, the technical constraints, who will be editing the site after launch, and what success looks like. That last point shapes whether we recommend a bespoke build or a page-builder build. Within 48 hours: fixed-price quote with line-itemed scope and timeline. No estimate ranges; no scope-creep mid-build.
Content audit. IA design: sitemap, navigation, page templates, content model. Wireframes for the page types that matter. Visual design in Figma. Brand guidelines extended into a real digital design system. Sign-off on design before any code.
Bespoke theme in clean PHP, or a properly tuned page-builder build if that is the route we agreed in scoping. Custom Gutenberg blocks where Gutenberg is the editor. ACF or Meta Box field groups. Integrations wired (HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, payment gateways, whatever you need). Schema deployed per page type. Sitemap generated. CWV tuned. Staging walkthroughs at 50 and 100 percent.
Launch including 301 redirects from the old URL structure (if applicable). Search Console re-verification. Full code and credential handover. Editorial team trained on the custom blocks or the page-builder workflow, depending on the build. First 30 days bug-fix included. Optional maintenance retainer available from day 31.
The lay of the land
Most WordPress sites we inherit are built on Elementor, Divi, WPBakery, or a ThemeForest marketplace theme, and a fair number of them are struggling. Lighthouse in the 50s because nested div soup and inline styles have piled up. Tied to a page-builder licence that has lapsed or shifted hands. Original agency gone. Editing anything more complex than a paragraph requires understanding the page builder's quirks. That experience is what shaped our default recommendation toward code-first, and it is the right call for plenty of clients.
A bespoke WordPress build usually costs more upfront and tends to last longer. Lighthouse stays above 90 because every component was written for performance. SEO foundations were baked in, so organic compounding from month six is real. The editorial team gets controls designed for your brand and your workflow. Six years on, the site still performs. That is the path we steer most clients toward.
Where a page builder genuinely earns its place: your team plans to ship a meaningful volume of new pages after launch, layouts will vary a lot from page to page, and the people doing the editing want compositional freedom rather than scoped block controls. In that scenario a properly set up page builder is the right tool for the job, and the trick is the setup. We strip back the defaults, disable the bloat, configure caching and asset loading carefully, and ship something that hits performance targets close to a bespoke build. Bespoke takes longer to ship and needs a senior team; a templated build is faster. We will be straight with you in scoping about which trade-off fits the business you are building, rather than insisting on one answer.
FAQ
Depends on the size of the content model, integration complexity, and any WooCommerce or editorial features. 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.
It comes down to how your team will use the site after launch. If you are mostly running a fixed set of pages and want the cleanest performance and SEO foundation, bespoke is usually the right call and what we will recommend. If your team is going to ship a steady stream of new pages with varying layouts and wants compositional freedom while doing it, a properly configured page builder is often the better fit. We will walk through both options in the scoping call and recommend the one that fits how you actually work, not the one that fits us.
Yes. On a bespoke build, that is the point of custom Gutenberg blocks: your team gets clean, scoped controls (copy, images, CTAs, section toggles, structured content) built around your editorial workflow. On a page-builder build, the editor uses the builder's native canvas with the templates and global styles we set up. Either way, we train your team during handover so they can ship without needing us.
Elementor, Bricks, Breakdance, and Divi are the ones we build on most often. Bricks and Breakdance tend to perform best out of the box and are our usual recommendations when a page builder is the right route; Elementor and Divi we will use when the team is already familiar with them or when an existing site needs to stay on the same builder. Whichever one we use, we configure it properly, prune the unused modules, tune asset loading, and hit the same performance and accessibility targets we hold our bespoke builds to.
We recommend managed WordPress hosting (Kinsta, Cloudways, WP Engine) and configure it in your name. Shared hosting will undo most of the theme-level optimisation work we ship, so we will be direct in the scoping call about the right hosting tier for your traffic and complexity. If you want us to manage hosting ongoing, that can be part of an optional maintenance retainer.
Optional maintenance retainer covers weekly plugin and core updates, daily off-site backups, security and uptime monitoring, performance audits, and included content support time. See our WordPress Maintenance Services page for full detail. Or pay project-by-project as you need things done. Either is fine.
Yes. Content is migrated cleanly. 301 redirects mapped across the full URL structure to protect organic traffic. SEO continuity is treated as a deliverable of the migration. Page-builder migrations are common, and the work is in disentangling content from shortcodes so it lives cleanly in whichever stack we are moving you to: a bespoke theme, or a fresh page-builder setup configured properly.
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.
Optimisation for answer surfaces: Google AI Overviews, Featured Snippets, People Also Ask, and voice assistants. Schema-first, data-led, tied to organic revenue.
Optimisation for generative AI surfaces: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and agentic checkout. Content structured for LLM ingestion, product feeds tuned for shopping agents, LLM mention tracking on a retainer.
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.