WordPress agency
We’re WordPress web designers & developers.
As a WordPress agency, we plan, design, develop and support hard-working websites that win our clients new business. All our sites are bespoke builds and do exactly what you need. Our projects range from smaller brochure-style sites to large corporate websites.
Get a quote for your website project. See our work
Fully bespoke WordPress sites.
We design and develop fully bespoke WordPress sites. This means you get exactly what you need regarding the theme and the functionality.
We’re also pretty unique when it comes to design and development WordPress agencies as we leave everything open and accessible to our clients. Once the site is live, you can edit everything without needing to call us.
All the sites we create are also built on our bare-bones WordPress theme. It’s a super-lightweight theme refined over ten years to be the perfect foundation for your website.
This also means that it’s scalable – as your site grows, we can add new content sections, blocks and functionality as required – you won’t end up with something that needs to be replaced two years later.
Classic or Gutenburg?
Although official support for the classic editor ended in December 2021, millions of sites are still built this way, so we can build sites using the classic WordPress editor if preferred.
We recommend the Gutenberg editor for brand-new sites as it brings a wide range of options to WordPress that the classic editor does not support.
Would you like Woo with that?
We also work with WooCommerce to create bespoke e-commerce websites if you are looking to sell online.
WooCommerce is a large and complex plugin, but we’re built a wide range of sites, carefully customising Woo without compromising the plugin or its ability to be updated.
Better content management.
If you’ve ever battled with formatting and adding content to your website, our approach to design and build will enable you to manage your content easily.
We build fully bespoke post and page templates based on the content you need to publish on your site.
This gives you a selection of ‘modules’ to construct your pages, making adding, reordering and maintaining your content easy.
Whatever the content, the modules can be used anywhere on your site – across pages and posts, freeing you up to lay out your content and manage more of your site.
These bespoke Gutenberg blocks create a ‘toolkit’ of blocks specifically designed and built for your site.
Creating new pages is easy, and the site only loads the JS and CSS for the used blocks; this keeps it lightweight and quick.
Serious about SEO.
Search engine optimisation runs through the entire planning, design and build process.
From the initial wireframes and site structure to the design and eventual build, we bring important SEO considerations into every stage.
It’s no longer enough to just publish content on your site in the hope it ranks in the search. Structure and internal linking play a huge part in helping Google to understand your content and what you should be ranking for.
We’ll get your SEO right for launch and then help you to maintain existing ranking and win new keywords that will bring more visitors and more new business enquiries.
We can help you put together a search engine strategy that works within the investment you want to make in it. Whether this is an ongoing campaign or ad-hoc support, we’ll make sure you get the best out of your new site.
Clever creative.
Designing websites takes in far more than just the look and feel. It’s vitally important to get the information architecture of your site correct before we start colouring anything in.
Wireframes, prototypes and content planning all influence the design of your site and are equally, if not more important, than what it looks like.
We don’t start on design concepts until we’ve fully explored and planned-out the structure of your pages. Your content and how you want the visitor to use your pages then informs the design of the site.
Everything on the page, what it looks like and how it acts is then there for a reason – this removes decisions made solely on personal preference and avoids superfluous design elements – your website is for your visitors.
Bespoke build.
Here at Toast, we build bespoke WordPress sites for larger projects.
You’ll get your own website on your own theme – created just for you from Toast’s own boilerplate theme – a lightweight starter theme that we’ve refined over the last decade.
The benefit of this approach is that it’s ultra-lightweight and amazingly fast and we only add in what we need for your site. This helps to keep the final site quick to load and improves your SEO potential.
On top of this, once the project is complete, the theme is yours – we don’t retain ownership of our code or purposefully add complex development that tries to tie us into your site moving forward.
WordPress is open source, and we work to the same ethos. Everything we do remains open and accessible to you.
Framework build.
A fully bespoke approach is not always right for every website so we also develop sites for smaller projects on the Divi theme and page builder.
This makes the design of the site more accessible to our clients so they can edit every single element on the page, change fonts, colours, spacing and so in.
This approach is only recommended for smaller, basic websites as additional bespoke development can be harder (but not impossible) to implement further down the line.
When we have a chat about your requirements, we’ll advise on the best route for your project.
Project Management.
Website projects can be complex so it’s important to know that you are in safe hands.
We manage all our website projects using Basecamp, a cloud-based management app that allows all communication and files to be shared across the whole team.
Progress is managed on a project calendar and to-dos are assigned to the team (that’s both us and you) to make sure every aspect of the project is completed properly and the quality of the new website is assured.
We also use a range of tools to make sending us comments and feedback on your site really easy!
In-house experience.
We make a point of only taking on projects that we can complete 100% in-house with our own team. This means no freelancers, outsourcing or off-shore developers.
You’ll deal directly with one of the creative team working on your project – we don’t have silo-based developers at Toast – our digital team are creatively led, so no isolated developers that you can’t talk to directly.
Our team are experienced in all stages of the project – from planning to go-live so you get one point of contact that can answer all your questions.
You’ll find that this has the benefit of making the project run smoothly, with fewer delays and it improves project communications.
Get a quote for your new website
Premium hosting.
There’s no point putting time, money and effort into a new website and hosting it on a cheap-and-nasty server.
Most of us spend £40+ per month on a phone contract, we think that trying to host a website for £5 a month is madness.
We only recommend premium hosting for WordPress sites, and we like to look after ones we’ve built.
Ongoing support.
Getting your site live is 25% of what you need to be doing online.
We can help you with ongoing Search Engine Optimisation, technical optimisation, Content generation, PPC, backlinks and everything else you need to get found and convert.
Our website projects don’t end with go-live.
Social Media sorted.
Having a planned, scheduled and effective social media strategy can help to increase your brand’s awareness and reach.
Social mentions can also influence your position in the search results, so it’s important to maintain some form of presence on social media.
Whether we help you to identify the channel that would best work for you or spread content across all channels, we can help you market your websites, products or service across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin (et al).
Search Engine Marketing.
Once your site is live, the real work starts. If you have a new site, you are going to have to work hard to get it ranking quickly for anything other than very niche keywords.
We provide ongoing SEM and SEO work via a service we call Searchworthy. This is a monthly retainer service that is flexible to suit your needs and investment.
We can produce content for your site, optimise the content you provide and improve the rankings of this content (and your site overall) in the search engines.
We’re committed to helping you improve your site over time, not just building you a new WordPress site and then leaving you to it!
Maintenance.
We provide retained support services for both the sites we create and clients with existing websites.
Our WordPress support plans, SiteCare, are flexible and affordable. Starting from £40 per month (ex VAT).
Whether you just need monthly WordPress updates or are looking for us to manage your entire site, we can take care of the whole process for you.
Consultancy.
We work with many clients on a consultancy basis to help improve existing and recently launched sites.
From keyword research to site structure, we have the experience to make your site better and improve its performance.
If you have an existing website, it’s not always necessary to start again, we can help you build on what you have already got.
Technical SEO.
There’s little point in having a WordPress site that looks great but does nothing.
If your site is not technically optimised you can struggle to rank in the search engines, so it has to work properly as well as looking good.
We use a range of premium plugins and third-party apps to ensure your site is fast and error-free.
Website Audits.
Once your site is optimised, you’ve got to keep it that way, so we use tools like SEM Rush to run monthly site audits to report on your site’s health.
Changing content, uploading images and installing plugins can all effect the performance of your site, a monthly audit gives you a full report into any errors or issues.
Get a full, in-depth proposal.
If you have an existing website that you want to move to WordPress, or an existing WordPress site that you want to rework, we can provide a full proposal that includes:
- An audit on your current site
- Keyword research on current rankings
- A full site spider and URL inspection
- A detailed proposal outlines all the stages and process
- Fully itemised costs
Budgets & expectations.
WordPress is incredibly flexible, so we can accommodate most budgets in one way or another.
Toast is not a small agency, but we are able to work with smaller clients with tighter budgets.
We also work with enterprise-level clients on larger corporate websites.
Whatever your current position or budget, just get in touch and we can discuss the options available.
