Acume
Accounts payable automation · ANZ
A twenty-five page B2B software site with a dual theme system, an ROI calculator, seven solution pages and a dedicated page written for AI assistants. Peppol-accredited, Xero and MYOB native.
View site — AcumeWebsite design · Hawke's Bay
Custom WordPress websites built in Hastings for businesses across Napier, Havelock North and the wider Bay. Built on something you own, by someone who sticks around to look after it.
The usual experience
You pay for website design. What arrives sits on a platform you don't control, built with a page builder you can't edit, on shared hosting alongside a few hundred other sites. It looks fine on launch day.
Two years later the platform has raised its prices, the plugin that ran your booking form has been abandoned, and the person who built it has stopped answering email. You can't move the site because it was never really yours to move.
None of that shows up in the quote for a five-page site.
Selected work
The same person does both. Website design for a Havelock North tattoo studio and website design for an accounts payable platform are different jobs, but they're held to the same standard.
Accounts payable automation · ANZ
A twenty-five page B2B software site with a dual theme system, an ROI calculator, seven solution pages and a dedicated page written for AI assistants. Peppol-accredited, Xero and MYOB native.
View site — AcumeCustomer communications · New Zealand
Migrated off Webflow onto a custom theme. Light and dark image variants, modern image formats with fallbacks, built for a client list that includes the Heart Foundation, Coastguard NZ and Subaru.
View site — mimoTattoo studio · Havelock North
A private studio that needed bookings handled without a phone call. Online booking, deposits, portfolio and reviews, built to suit a one-person business rather than an agency retainer.
View site — Burbeila InkedTattoo artist · Napier
Nineteen years of work that needed showing properly. Portfolio, prints, online booking and a site that carries the weight of black and grey realism and Polynesian tatau without getting in the way of it.
View site — Dwain Aiono ArtAdmin Army, a back-office operations business I co-own with my wife Irene, runs on a custom WordPress theme I built. Twenty-five pages, three countries, thirty-plus staff. If you want to see what I'd do with a site I have to live with every day, that's the one.
How this is different
Custom WordPress on infrastructure you own. No monthly platform fee that goes up whenever the platform feels like it, no export that arrives as a broken mess. If you ever want to take the site elsewhere, you can.
Client sites run on managed cloud infrastructure with staging environments and automated backups. Not a shared box with three hundred strangers on it. If a site needs its own dedicated server, it gets one.
Twenty years working with people in organisations, and a Masters in Psychology. The words come out of a conversation about what you actually do, not a brand questionnaire you fill in at nine at night. There's research behind why your website doesn't sound like you.
The person who built it is the person who maintains it. Updates, backups, security, changes when your business changes. Not a support ticket that goes to whoever is free.
What it costs
Guide prices, not fixed packages. You should be able to work out roughly what this costs before you email anyone.
From $3,500
NZD · 2–3 weeks
A custom five to six page WordPress site with copy written in your voice, contact and email capture, SEO fundamentals, mobile responsive and security hardened.
From $6,000
NZD · 3–5 weeks
Everything in Foundation, plus distinctive design and interactive elements, a blog system with posts written for search, content and SEO strategy, email setup, and the first month of maintenance.
From $12,000
NZD · 5–8 weeks
Everything in Signature, plus advanced interactive features, a full run of SEO posts, Google Ads setup, an AI assistant trained on your content, and three months of maintenance.
Ongoing hosting and maintenance runs from $150 a month. That covers managed cloud hosting, WordPress and plugin updates, daily backups, uptime monitoring, small content changes and a monthly health report.
Every number here is a guide. If the build is right and the number isn't, say so and we'll talk about it. The full pipeline is set out here.
Questions
No. I'm based in Hastings and I like working with people I can meet, but plenty of my clients sit elsewhere in New Zealand and across the Tasman. If you're local we can sit down. If you're not, we do it over a call and it works fine.
Because you own it. A WordPress site sits on hosting you control, and if you ever want to move it or hand it to someone else, you can. Platform sites are rented. That's fine for some businesses, and I've built on Wix where it was genuinely the right call for a one-person operation. For anything that needs to grow or be handed over, WordPress is the safer bet.
Yes. Text, images, blog posts, prices, all editable without touching code. Most people find they'd rather send me a message than do it themselves, which is what the maintenance plan is for, but the option is always there.
Then we work out whether it needs rebuilding or just fixing. Sometimes a site is structurally sound and the problem is the words. Sometimes it's the other way round. I'll tell you which one you've got, including when the answer is that you don't need a new site at all. The Brand Mirror is a free five-minute way to see which it is.
You can generate something that looks like a website in an afternoon. I use AI in my own builds every day. What it doesn't do is set up hosting properly, keep WordPress and its plugins from breaking each other, fix the site when it goes down on a Sunday, or work out what your business should be saying in the first place. The building was never the hard part.
Two to eight weeks depending on scope. The variable is usually how quickly decisions get made and content comes back, not the build itself.