Web development FAQs

A CMS (content management system) is the software your team uses to publish, edit and organise website content without touching code. The right one depends on your business: Shopify for online stores, Webflow for service businesses and marketing teams that want design control and easy editing, and WordPress if your team already knows it or relies on a particular plugin. WordPress runs about 40% of all websites, but Patchstack found 91% of new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025 were in plugins, so it needs regular maintenance. The best CMS is the one your team will actually use every week.

A headless CMS stores your content separately from the website and sends it to the site through an API, instead of building the pages itself. Sanity, Contentful and Storyblok are common examples, usually paired with a framework like Astro or Next.js. Most small and medium business websites don’t need one, because it adds a subscription and developer time, and a traditional CMS like Webflow or WordPress is quicker to set up and run. Headless earns its place when the same content feeds several sites or apps, or when you want a custom-coded website your team can still edit.

Astro is a free, open-source web framework for building content-driven websites such as marketing sites, blogs and online stores. Its pages render to plain HTML and only load JavaScript for the parts that need it, so they stay fast, and a connected CMS lets staff edit content. If your team wants to build new page layouts itself with drag and drop, Webflow is the better fit. This website and the Studio Montel website are built with Astro.

Yes, Webflow is a strong choice for service businesses, B2B companies and marketing teams that want a custom design they can edit without a developer. Hosting, SSL certificates and security updates are included, there are no plugins to patch, and Webflow reports 99.99% uptime. It suits large online stores and plugin-heavy sites less well, and plan costs rise as the site grows. Our Vonnimedia and Core Visuals websites are built on Webflow.

Choose Shopify if you sell products online, Webflow for a design-led marketing site your team can edit easily, WordPress if your team already knows it or needs a specific plugin, and custom code when speed, low platform fees or custom features matter most. No platform is best for everyone; the choice depends on what you sell, who will edit the site and how it needs to grow. Running costs differ too: WordPress needs ongoing plugin and security updates, while Webflow and Shopify include hosting and updates in a monthly plan. Tell us how your team works and we’ll recommend one and explain why.

We specialise in custom-coded websites, built with frameworks such as Astro and Next.js and CMSs like Sanity, and we also build on Webflow, Shopify and WordPress. We’re platform-agnostic, so we recommend what suits your website: Shopify for ecommerce, Webflow when your team wants easy editing and design freedom, custom builds for speed and low platform fees, and WordPress if your team already knows it. Webhaus is a web development agency based in Miranda, Sydney. See our work for examples on each platform.

A website is fast when it sends the browser as little as possible from a server close to your visitors: lean code, compressed and correctly sized images, few third-party scripts, caching and a CDN. Google measures speed with Core Web Vitals, and a page passes when its main content loads within 2.5 seconds, it responds to a tap or click within 200 milliseconds, and its layout shift score is 0.1 or less. The platform sets the starting point, but tracking tags, chat widgets and embeds added after launch can slow any site down. You can test your own site for free in Google PageSpeed Insights.

A staging site is a private copy of your website where changes are built and tested before they go live. Visitors and search engines don’t see it, so nothing on your live site changes until the work is approved. Custom-coded sites hosted on Vercel get a separate preview link for every change, and Shopify uses a duplicate theme for the same job. During a Webhaus project you review everything on a staging link and comment on it directly, and nothing goes live without your sign-off.

A responsive website uses one set of pages whose layout, images and text adjust to fit any screen, from a phone to a large monitor. It matters for search as well as visitors, because Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking. Good responsive design goes beyond shrinking things: buttons are big enough to tap, text is readable without zooming, and forms are easy to fill in on a phone. Check your own site by opening it on your phone and going through your main enquiry path.

Yes. We use AI to supercharge our team, so we can plan, build and test websites faster. Every page is still reviewed by a person and checked for schema and usability before it goes live.

At Webhaus, website projects start from $10,000, and a business website with 10 to 30 pages, a CMS, forms and analytics is usually $25,000 to $60,000 (ex GST). The price depends on the number of pages, features and integrations. As a guide: ecommerce stores are $30,000 to $75,000, landing pages are $3,500 to $7,500 for the first page and $1,500 to $3,000 for each variant, and web apps start from $9,500. Rebuilds that move platforms add $1,800 to $4,500 for SEO migration, and every project is a fixed price for an agreed scope.

Most of our website projects take around 6 to 8 weeks from first call to launch, a landing page goes live in 1 to 2 weeks, and online stores and web apps take longer. The build is rarely what holds a project up; content and approvals are. If you have a hard deadline, tell us on the first call. We’ll scope the project to fit, agree what must work on launch day, and commit to a date we can actually hit.

A fixed-scope, fixed-price website has an agreed list of pages, features and deliverables, and one price for all of it, set before work starts. Ours include strategy, copywriting, design, development, testing, launch, and training and documentation for your team, confirmed in a scope document at kickoff. Anything outside that scope, such as an extra integration, is quoted separately before work on it starts, so there are no variation surprises. Whoever you hire, ask for the inclusions, the exclusions and what they need from you in writing.

We can build custom features and connect the tools you already use. We’ve built quote calculators, product finder quizzes, member portals, booking workflows and live data feeds, and we connect website forms to tools like HubSpot and Klaviyo so enquiries land in your CRM. Other tools connect through an embedded form (Mailchimp), a native app (Xero usually links to your shop or payment system, not the website), a direct API, or a connector like Zapier. Deeper custom CRM integrations, such as Salesforce, are scoped as their own piece of work.

Yes, your website can take bookings and payments through a booking tool connected to a payment provider such as Stripe or Square, either built into your pages or opened from a “Book now” button. You can take full payment, a deposit or payment on the day, and some tools let you charge a fee for late cancellations and no-shows. As of October 2026, Stripe charges 1.65% + A$0.30 for domestic cards with no monthly fee, and Square charges 2.2% for online payments. Where an existing booking tool does the job, we’ll recommend it rather than building a custom one.

Yes, a website can serve several countries and languages, with each language on its own URL (for example /en/ and /fr/) and hreflang tags that tell Google which version to show. Webflow does this with its localisation feature, Shopify with Markets (free on all plans, though local currencies need Shopify Payments or Adyen), and Astro with built-in i18n routing. Google advises against automatically redirecting visitors to a language based on their location, so let people choose. Plan who will write and update the translations, because that’s the ongoing cost.

You do. When we build your website, your domain, hosting, accounts, content and code are in your name. Custom-coded sites come with a full codebase handover, so you or another developer can manage the site. If you ever leave, we hand over access, export your data and remove our own access.

Yes. Before we build, we agree which content your team will manage, such as blog posts, team members, projects and documents, and set the site up so those are easy to edit without risk to the design. You get a login, video training on every feature and a live walkthrough. New pages, design changes and restructuring come back to us, which keeps the site consistent and stops it breaking.

Yes. On custom-coded sites we work in a shared Git repository, and changes go through pull requests and preview links, so both sides can review before anything goes live. On Webflow, you can invite us into your own workspace, so the site never leaves your account. Agree at the start who looks after which parts and who publishes, and we’ll document what we build so your developer can maintain it.

Your team can make content changes in the CMS, and anything bigger comes to us. Our Growth and Advanced care plans, from $950 a month, include a monthly change allowance, a named point of contact and defined response times, so changes get done without a new quote each time. If you only need occasional changes, we’ll estimate each one and you approve it before we start. See our care plans.

We build on Webflow, Shopify, WordPress and custom code, keep custom code in GitHub, and host custom sites on Vercel, where every change gets its own preview link. You review the work on a staging link and leave feedback directly on the page, and you get a short update from us every week. At launch you get training and documentation for your team.