Hand-coded WordPress websites for Wigan businesses, built by a real Wigan agency at WN3 5AT. Custom PHP templates, clean CSS, no Elementor, no Divi, no marketplace themes. Faster, cleaner, and properly built to rank — the way WordPress was meant to be built before the page-builder ecosystem ruined it. You own the code, the content, and the hosting from day one.
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy — and especially page-builder WordPress sites — all have the same two flaws: you don’t own them properly, and they’re slower than they should be. Hand-coded WordPress fixes both.
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy — you’re renting a website. Stop paying, lose the site. WordPress is open-source: your code, your content, your hosting choice, your to migrate any time. We hand over admin credentials, FTP access, database access. The site is yours from day one.
Elementor, Divi, WPBakery — they all add 200–500KB of CSS/JS overhead before your site has shown a single image. We don’t use them. Every Mako WordPress site is hand-coded PHP and clean CSS — same tools used by 10x.com, Smashing Magazine, and most Fortune-500 WordPress sites. Faster, cleaner, ranks better.
If you need flexibility, ownership, and a site that grows with you — bespoke WordPress is the right tool. Here’s where it shines.
Plumbers, electricians, builders, roofers. Multi-page WordPress with service-area pages, Wigan-specific schema, and a blog for local SEO content. Editable by you, fast on mobile, ranks for “[trade] Wigan” from launch.
Accountants, solicitors, consultants, brokers. WordPress flexes for content-heavy sites — service pages, FAQs, team pages, news sections, gated lead magnets. Built to convert serious enquiries, not just generate clicks.
Independent shops, hospitality, e-commerce. WooCommerce on a custom theme — not a bloated marketplace template. Subscribe & Save, Click & Collect, brand-led product taxonomy, full LocalBusiness schema. See The Dog Outlet below.
Fixed prices, agreed before work starts. No estimates that grow halfway through. Scope to fit, upgrade later if you scale.
Bespoke five-page WordPress build. Best fit for most Wigan SMEs.
Bespoke unlimited-page WordPress. Multi-cluster SEO architecture, custom features, integrations.
Custom WooCommerce theme. E-commerce on WordPress — you own the platform, no per-transaction fees.
Most WordPress sites in the wild fail at three or four of these. Page-builder builds fail at all six. Mako builds all six in from day one — on every site we ship, big or small.
WordPress is a fantastic CMS — and an absolute disaster in the wrong hands. The difference between a fast, ranking, future-proof WordPress site and a slow, broken one is how it’s built underneath. Here are the six signals worth checking.
Custom PHP templates, no Elementor, no Divi, no Bricks. Page builders add 200–500KB of CSS/JS overhead and produce code that’s impossible to maintain. Our themes are pure PHP and clean CSS — the way WordPress core was designed to work.
Optimised images, lazy loading, minimal third-party scripts, no render-blocking resources. We target LCP < 2.5s, CLS < 0.1, INP < 200ms. Page-builder sites typically score in the 30–50 range — ours target 90+ on PageSpeed Insights.
Not just “Yoast added a website schema and called it done.” Full JSON-LD @graph with WebPage, Organization, ProfessionalService, BreadcrumbList, FAQPage, HowTo, Place, Review, AggregateRating — whichever apply. The single biggest signal cheap WordPress sites skip.
Minimal plugins (8–12 vs 40+ on a builder site). Each plugin is a security and maintenance liability. Less surface area, fewer breakages, easier updates. We hand over a hosting setup with daily backups, SSL, security monitoring, and managed updates.
WP admin login, FTP access, database access, full theme files. Hosted with you wherever you want — Hostinger, SiteGround, Cloudways, Kinsta. The site is portable. If you ever sack us, you walk away with the lot. Try doing that with Wix or Squarespace.
Hand-coded doesn’t mean inflexible. We use the WordPress block editor (Gutenberg) for content you’ll edit — pages, posts, media. You log in, edit, save. 30–60 minutes free training plus written walkthrough so you’re never paying us £50 to fix a typo.
We use this exact architecture to rank our own site front-page for “web design Wigan”. Want ongoing SEO work? Local SEO retainers from £99/month. Or if your existing site is the bottleneck, a clean WordPress rebuild often gets you further faster than incremental fixes.
Both hand-coded. Both on custom PHP themes. Both replacing earlier page-builder messes. One a B2B compliance consultancy, one a WooCommerce raw-dog-food retailer — same architecture, two completely different shapes.
Bespoke WordPress build — 80+ hand-coded PHP templates, six service clusters, 49 sub-service anchor pages, 10-location regional SEO network. Zero page builders. Zero Elementor. Pure custom theme architecture you can actually scale — the kind of WordPress build most agencies tell you isn’t possible.
Custom WooCommerce theme — "feedumraw" — replacing the bloated Petio + Elementor stack the previous developer left behind. Brand taxonomy filter, Subscribe & Save, Click & Collect, zero-downtime swap. WordPress done properly: faster, cleaner, and the client owns the lot.
Honest answers to the questions every Wigan business asks before committing to WordPress. No fluff, no jargon.
WordPress gives you complete ownership and control. With Wix, Squarespace, or GoDaddy you’re renting your website — if they change pricing, remove features, or shut down, you’re stuck. WordPress is open-source: your code, your content, your hosting choice, yours to move any time. It powers over 43% of the web for a reason. Plus, technical SEO — schema markup, page speed, URL structure — is far stronger on a properly-built WordPress site than on any subscription platform.
No — and that’s deliberate. Page builders add 200–500KB of CSS/JS overhead and tank your Core Web Vitals. They also lock you into their ecosystem (try moving an Elementor site without breaking it). Every Mako WordPress site is hand-coded with custom PHP templates and clean CSS — the same approach used by major agencies and high-performance WordPress sites. Faster load times, cleaner code, better SEO, fully portable.
Yes. WordPress has the best content editor of any CMS — far more straightforward than people expect. We set your site up so you can update pages, add blog posts, swap images, change opening hours, and manage content without calling us. We provide a 30-minute handover walkthrough plus written documentation. For anything bigger we’re a phone call away on 01942 644870 — no ticket queues, direct line to the developer.
Bespoke. Every site we create for Wigan businesses is designed and coded specifically for your brand, your services, and your customers — not adapted from a marketplace template. That means cleaner code, better performance, no theme bloat, no licensing fees, and a site that actually looks like yours. We use raw PHP and custom CSS — the way WordPress was meant to be built before page builders ruined the ecosystem.
Yes, and we prefer WooCommerce over Shopify for most Wigan businesses. You own the platform, no per-transaction fees, full control over the customer journey, and proper SEO control. We build custom WooCommerce themes — see The Dog Outlet case study below: full e-commerce rebuild, brand taxonomy filter, Subscribe & Save, Click & Collect, all hand-coded. WooCommerce builds typically start from £949.
A straightforward five-page bespoke WordPress site is one to two weeks from brief to launch. Custom multi-page builds with bespoke functionality take two to four weeks. WooCommerce e-commerce builds are typically three to six weeks depending on product count and integrations. We’re Wigan-based at WN3 5AT — back-and-forth is fast, and we agree timelines upfront with no surprises.
Same network, different angle. Pick whichever route matches what you’re actually looking for.
Talk to a real local agency. Bespoke WordPress builds from £449.99 fixed. No page builders, no Elementor, no template lock-in. Walk-in meetings welcome at our Wigan office WN3 5AT — easy access from M6 (J25/J26), M61, A580 East Lancs Road.