WordPress development

WordPress development for brands done with templated sameness.

Senior WordPress development with editorial design and technical SEO baked in. Custom themes, ACF content models, page builders, headless stacks — built so your in-house team can ship into the same site for the next three years.

Themes

Custom · ACF · blocks

Stacks

Classic · Block · Headless

Editor

Built for non-devs

SEO

Architecture from day 1

What is WordPress development?

WordPress development is the practice of designing, building, and maintaining custom WordPress sites — from hand-coded themes and ACF content models to headless stacks and editor-grade controls. Done well, it produces sites the in-house team can grow into for years; done poorly, it ships premium-theme work that needs replacing in eighteen months.

Why this exists

Most WordPress sites are templates with a logo. Ours are systems your team can grow into.

WordPress is a brilliant platform when it is treated as one. Most builds in the wild are themes with plugins stacked on top, fragile in production and frustrating in the editor. Haxtiv WordPress builds are systems — type, grid, motion, ACF content models, custom blocks, performance budgets, and technical SEO all designed together. We ship sites that hold their shape for years.

What we hear most

Where we usually find brands when they call us.

The reasons clients reach out about a WordPress project. If two or more sound familiar, the next site is probably overdue.

01

Editor experience is hostile

Marketing avoids the CMS. Pages get edited in tickets. Content quietly stops shipping. The site degrades because nobody enjoys working in it.

02

Performance has quietly degraded

LCP past three seconds, CLS in the red, plugins loading sitewide that are only used on one template. Lighthouse drifted from green to amber and nobody made the call.

03

The site can't carry the brand

The brand has evolved, the website hasn't. Photography, type, motion, and tone all read like a different company than the one in the deck.

04

SEO equity is leaking

Rankings dropped after a previous redesign. Internal linking thinned out. Schema is partial. The site no longer earns the traffic it used to.

05

Plugin debt has compounded

Forty active plugins, half of them undocumented, none of them auditable. Every update is a risk. Every change is a ticket.

06

Multilingual or multisite is overdue

International growth needs translated content with proper hreflang. The current site can't carry it without an extension that breaks the editor.

What we deliver

What you get from a Haxtiv WordPress build.

A complete website your team can run, plus the system underneath it. Everything documented, named, and handed over without 'consultation' tax.

Design system

  • Type, color, grid, motion, photography direction
  • Component library shared across templates
  • Empty states, error states, loading states
  • Editorial photography and illustration direction
  • Brand-consistent UI across the unloved corners

Code & CMS

  • Custom theme — hand-coded, no premium boilerplate
  • ACF Pro content model with named fields and labels
  • Custom blocks for editor flexibility without chaos
  • Optional page-builder integration when it fits the team
  • Documented theme conventions and a maintainable repo

SEO & performance

  • Architecture and internal linking by intent
  • Schema (Organization, Article, FAQ, Service, BreadcrumbList)
  • Image policy: AVIF/WebP, srcset, fetchpriority
  • Real-user Core Web Vitals targets, not Lighthouse vanity
  • Hosting, CDN, and caching set up to keep the work

Editor experience

  • Editor-grade controls, not raw text fields
  • Custom dashboard widgets for the in-house team
  • Documentation built into the admin where it's used
  • Loom-led handover videos for the team
  • 30 days of post-launch support included

Launch & beyond

  • Pre-launch crawl, redirect map, SEO continuity plan
  • Real-user CWV monitoring for 30 days
  • Care plan options (security, updates, monthly reports)
  • Optional CRO and SEO retainers
  • A studio you can keep on speed dial — no ghosting

Process

How this service runs end to end

The same six-step shape we use across every Haxtiv project — adapted to the specifics of this scope.

  1. 01

    Discover

    Audit, intent, and the part nobody is saying out loud

    We open with a working session — not a deck. We pull analytics, crawl the existing site, audit the brand, and interview the people closest to revenue. We surface the friction inside the team, not just the friction on the screen.

  2. 02

    Define

    Sitemap, story, and the metrics that actually matter

    We define the audience journeys, the commercial pages we are willing to defend, the SEO architecture, and the measurable outcomes. You get a shape of the project that survives feedback because it was built on evidence.

  3. 03

    Design

    Editorial system, art-directed, never templated

    Type, grid, motion, and tone built as a system. We design the hero, the long pages, the unloved corners, and the empty states. Every screen looks like it belongs to the same studio. Nothing is parked for later.

  4. 04

    Build

    Production code your team can keep

    WordPress, Shopify, or page builder — we build clean, accessible, performant, and documented. Component-led, naming you'll recognize next year, and a changelog your in-house team can read.

  5. 05

    Launch

    Migration without losing rankings or sleep

    Pre-launch crawl, redirect map, schema and metadata cutover, performance baseline, and a launch playbook. We run the deploy with you, not at you.

  6. 06

    Grow

    Care plan, CRO sprints, and quiet improvements

    We stay involved. Monthly performance reports, security and core updates, and CRO sprints that compound. The site gets better the longer you keep us.

What this looks like in production

Numbers we earn, not numbers we round up.

0+

Sites shipped

across 27 countries

0k

Studio hours

delivered since 2019

0.0x

Avg conversion lift

post-redesign clients

0%

Client retention

into year two

In their words

Senior teams who chose us.

Haxtiv replatformed our marketing site without losing a single ranking. We saw organic leads up 38% inside the first quarter and the editorial team finally has a layout system they don't fight.

Mara Iglesias

VP Marketing · Lumenwave Health

Headless WordPress redesign

Our previous Shopify build was a Frankenstein of apps. The Haxtiv team simplified the stack, rebuilt the PDP and CRO patterns, and our store is faster and more profitable than it has ever been.

Daniel Korver

Founder · Northbound Goods

Shopify Plus rebuild

Frequently asked

Answers worth asking for.

Don't see the question you're holding? Send it to [email protected] and we'll answer the same day.

Both, chosen with intent. Custom themes when the brand demands a strong visual point of view, when performance matters, or when the editorial system needs to be controlled. Page builders when a marketing team needs to ship landing pages weekly without engineering capacity. Often a hybrid: custom theme for the core templates with Elementor or Bricks for marketing pages.

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Where to go next

Start here

Tell us about the next WordPress project that has to count.

A 30-minute call with a partner. We'll sketch the right shape, share a fair quote, and tell you the parts other agencies skip.

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