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Custom builds / No theme, no page builder

Custom-coded, because the brief deserved it

No theme. No plugin stack. No ceiling on what the site can do.

Send us the briefSee it running

What it is

Built for the brief, not around a template.

Most sites are assembled: a theme, a page builder, a stack of plugins, and a design that bends to fit what those three will allow. It is a reasonable way to work and it is most of what gets built — including by us, when it is the right answer.

A Signature Build starts from the other end. The interaction, the product, the story the page has to tell decide what gets written, and the code is written for that. There is no builder in the middle to say no.

  • The ceiling goes

    If a thing can be done in a browser, it can be in your site. Nothing on this page needed a plugin to exist, and nothing on it was waiting for one to support it.

  • The weight goes with it

    A page ships the code for what it does. Not for the forty things the theme also supports, the slider you never used, or the four libraries three plugins each brought their own copy of.

  • It stays yours

    Your repository, your hosting, no licence and no per-seat fee. Nothing in it stops working because a subscription lapsed or a plugin author moved on.

What custom unlocks

Six things a page builder cannot do, or cannot do at sixty frames a second.

  • 01

    Scroll-driven storytelling

    The page reveals itself as somebody moves through it. Sections hold while their content plays out, chapters hand off to each other, and a long explanation becomes something people finish instead of a wall they leave.

  • 02

    Real-time graphics

    Work done on the graphics card rather than downloaded: backgrounds that are computed instead of filmed, imagery that reacts to the cursor, a product somebody can turn over. It is the layer that makes a site look like it cost something.

  • 03

    Motion with weight

    Things that carry momentum — a drag that keeps going, a panel that overshoots and settles, a button that leans toward the cursor. It is most of the difference between a site that animates and one that feels like a product.

  • 04

    Typography that performs

    Headlines that arrive line by line, figures that count or resolve, type that fills as it is read. Type carries more of a brand than any other element on the page, and it is usually the element given the least thought.

  • 05

    Moving between pages

    No white flash. An image carries from a grid into the page it opens, content changes underneath, and the address bar keeps up. The site stops feeling like a stack of documents.

  • 06

    All of it, on a cheap Android

    The reason a builder runs out of room is not imagination, it is budget — every effect costs kilobytes and main-thread time whether you use it or not. Written for the job, the effects are cheap, and the numbers a few sections down are the ones from this page.

Live, not screenshots

Poke at these. Every one is running in this page.

Not a video of an interaction, not a GIF of one. The code is on this page and it is running on your device right now — which is also the point about performance, because it is doing all of this and still loaded in whatever the section below says it did.

  • HoverPull me

    Magnetic pull

    Buttons that lean toward the cursor before you reach them. A small thing that makes a primary action feel deliberate rather than placed.

  • HoverDECRYPTING

    Text scramble

    Characters resolve out of noise. Useful where a number or a claim should land rather than simply appear — a headline figure, a rotating value proposition, a loading state that does not look like one.

  • Hover
    Tilt me

    3D tilt and light

    A card that turns toward the pointer with a highlight that tracks across it. Depth without a 3D engine, and the reason a grid of cards can feel like objects rather than rectangles.

  • On scroll

    Line drawing

    A chart or a route that draws itself as it comes into view. What a static image of a number cannot do is show the shape of how it got there.

  • Drag me

    Spring physics

    Throw it and let go. The return is calculated from how hard you threw it, per frame — not a canned curve playing the same way every time. This is what makes an interface feel physical.

  • Drag to spin
    A serum bottle, turned by dragging

    360 product view

    Turn the product over the way you would in a shop. It is the best answer there is to I cannot tell what it actually looks like, which is the objection behind a great many returns.

  • Click add

    0 items in the bag

    Merino throwINR 4,850

    Add to cart, without the reload

    The item goes to the bag, the count moves, the button confirms — all without leaving the page. Reloading on every add costs you people at the exact moment they had decided to buy.

  • Pick a colour

    Amethyst

    Instant variant switching

    Colour, size and finish change on the spot, with the new option washing across the product. No reload, no flash of white, and nobody loses their place half way down a long page.

  • Tap a filter

    9 of 9 items shown

    Filter and reflow

    The catalogue rearranges itself instead of blanking and redrawing. People can see where a thing went, so they keep filtering instead of giving up on the category page.

  • Click a tile

    Grid to product page

    The card does not vanish and reload — it grows into the page, carrying its image with it. This is most of the difference between a site that feels like an app and one that feels like paperwork.

  • Move cursorRunning on the CPU

    Generative background

    A field that is computed rather than drawn, so it is never the same twice and weighs nothing to send. The usual alternative is a large looping video that has to be downloaded before anyone sees it.

  • Move cursorTorn in strips, on the CPU

    Liquid image hover

    The image is torn where the cursor passes, with the colour channels pulled apart at the edge of the disturbance. Most-asked-for on lookbooks, portfolio grids and anywhere a photograph is the main event.

The unglamorous part

Measured on your device, not ours.

Everyone selling this publishes a comparison against a slow site nobody can look at. These are not our numbers and there is no other site in them — the grey bar is the allowance, and the one underneath is what your browser actually recorded while it loaded this page, effects and all. The Core Web Vitals rows are measured against Google’s published thresholds, not ours. Open the network tab and check them, or run PageSpeed on this URL.

What we need from you

References and a view. Not a designer.

  • Three sites you like

    And a sentence on each saying why. The why is what we actually need — “this feels expensive” and “I can find things on it” pull a build in opposite directions.

  • What the site has to do

    Sell, book, explain, qualify, reassure. A site that is trying to do five things well is usually the reason it does none of them.

  • Who it is for

    The person you are trying to convince, and what they are worried about before they buy. That single answer changes more of the build than any design preference.

  • Whatever content exists

    Even rough. Design built around real words survives contact with them; design built around placeholder text gets rebuilt when the words arrive.

How it runs

Four stages, and you see it the whole way.

  1. 01 · Brief

    You send references and the problem

    Sites you admire, what this one has to achieve, and who it has to convince. Nothing needs designing on your side — that is our half of the job.

  2. 02 · Direction

    Design before a line of code

    You see where it is going while it is still cheap to change, and the quote comes with it: one number and one date, in writing, before anything gets built. That number covers the scope in the quote. Anything added after it is agreed is quoted separately, and it moves the date — we would rather say that now than discover it together in week five.

  3. 03 · Build

    A staging link you can watch

    Live from early on and updated as it goes. You and anyone else who has a say comment on the real thing in a browser. Nothing is unveiled at the end.

  4. 04 · Handover

    Your repository, your accounts

    Code, hosting and deployment handed across, with a written note in the repository covering how it runs and where it deploys. No walkthrough session and no user manual — if you want either, they are quotable work. Nothing stays behind a login only we hold.

If you are an agency

We can build it under your name.

Plenty of agencies sell work their build team cannot make, and the honest options are to turn it down or to find someone. We take that work white-label: your client deals with you, the build comes back to you, and we are not in the room unless you want us there.

Everything else on this page applies unchanged — the same code standard, the same handover, the same ownership. Tell us what the brief is and we will tell you whether we are the right people for it.

Answered before you ask

The questions this always gets.

  • Is this just a more expensive website?

    It is a different thing to buy. A template gives you a known result for a known price, and for a great many sites that is the right call — we build those too and will say so. A Signature Build is for when the thing you need does not exist yet: an interaction nobody has shipped, a product that has to be understood before it can be sold, a page that has to survive being looked at by someone who builds sites for a living.

  • Will it be slow, with all of this on it?

    The opposite, usually, and the section above is the argument — those numbers were measured on your device as you loaded this page. Weight comes from plugins and themes carrying code for features you do not use. Custom-coded means the page ships what it needs and nothing else. Every effect here is gated so it stops when it scrolls out of view, and the whole thing is built to hold up on a mid-range Android rather than on the machine it was designed on.

  • Do I need to have a designer?

    No. What helps far more is references — three sites you like, and one sentence each on why. The why is the useful part: "this feels expensive" and "I can find things on it" send a build in completely different directions. If you do have a designer, we work to their files.

  • Can I edit it myself afterwards?

    Yes, for the content that changes. A CMS gives you the pages and fields you actually edit — services, posts, prices, images — and that is yours to run. Anything structural, a new section or a new page type, comes back to us or to your own developer. We will tell you up front which of your content belongs in which bucket, because a CMS that tries to cover everything is how a site slowly turns back into a page builder.

  • What happens if I want to change something in two years?

    It is your code, in your repository, on your hosting, and it is written to be read. No licence, no per-seat fee, nothing that stops working if you stop working with us. That is the part of custom-coded that matters most and gets talked about least.

  • What does it cost?

    It is quoted per build, because the honest range on this kind of work is too wide to be useful as a number. What moves it is on this page: how many bespoke pieces, how much of it is bespoke versus standard, whether the content exists, and what it has to connect to. Send the brief and you get a real figure rather than a bracket.

Next step

Send us the brief that nobody wants to quote.

The ones that start with “I do not know if this is possible” are the ones worth reading. If it is not possible you will get that answer, and it will be a specific one.

Talk about a Signature Build