Web design
AntCrow designs custom websites from a blank page. No templates, no theme licences, no drag-and-drop builders. Every layout, typeface, colour, and interaction is chosen for your business specifically, then engineered to load fast and work properly on every screen your customers actually use.
What is custom web design?
Custom web design means the site is designed from scratch for one business rather than adapted from a pre-built template. The layout, typography, colour system, imagery, and interactions are all decided by a designer working from that company's positioning and audience. The practical difference is that a custom site can look and behave like nothing else in its market, while a template site shares its structure with thousands of others.
Design is the argument your business makes before anyone speaks
When a customer compares three companies, they are rarely comparing capability, because they cannot assess it yet. They are comparing signals. A site that looks considered suggests a business that is considered. A site that looks like a template suggests a business that took the cheapest option available, which is a fair inference and a costly one. Design is the first argument you make, and it is made before a single word is read.
How we design
We start with positioning, not pixels: who you are for, what you want them to feel, and what has to happen on the page. Then we design in high fidelity early, because a wireframe cannot tell you whether something feels expensive. You see real layouts with real type and real motion within the first fortnight, and you keep seeing them as they evolve. Nothing is presented as final that has not been pressure-tested on a phone.
Mobile is not a version, it is the primary case
Most of your visitors arrive on a phone, often on mobile data, often distracted. We design the small screen as a first-class layout rather than squeezing a desktop grid into it. That means legible type at arm's length, tap targets you can hit while walking, and page weight kept low enough that the site appears before patience runs out.
Accessible by default, because it is also just better
We build to WCAG 2.2 AA as a working standard: real colour contrast, keyboard navigation that works, focus states you can see, alt text that says something, and motion that respects a visitor's reduced-motion setting. This matters legally for some organisations and ethically for all of them, and it happens to produce clearer, faster sites for everyone.
- Discovery and positioning
- UX architecture and wireframes
- High-fidelity UI design
- Design system and components
- Interactive prototypes
- Responsive layouts for every breakpoint
- Accessibility review to WCAG 2.2 AA
- Design handover and documentation
- You are competing on quality and your current site undersells you
- You want a site that could not be mistaken for a competitor's
- You value getting it right over getting it cheap
- You have real content, or you want help creating it
Web Design: questions, answered
Across the New Zealand market in 2026, custom-designed websites typically run from about $3,000 for a small custom build to $25,000 or more for large or complex projects, while template-based sites start around $1,000. Those are published market ranges rather than AntCrow's prices. We scope and quote every project individually and will tell you honestly what a given budget can achieve.
Thinking about web design?
Tell us what you are trying to achieve. We will tell you honestly whether this is the right thing to spend money on.
Start a project