Speed
Near-zero JavaScript by default. The page is finished before a heavier site has even started assembling itself.
Astro Web Design NZ
Fast by default, not fast by rescue.
Most sites are slow, then someone is paid to speed them up. We build on Astro, so yours arrives fast the day it launches: a custom site that loads before your competitor’s spinner has stopped. It is the same stack every brand we own runs on.
100%of the brands we own are built in Astro, no WordPress
5live Astro sites we designed, built and run ourselves
Test itrun this page through Lighthouse. It is an Astro build too
Spruce and Datum are both live right now, both built on Astro. Most agencies pitch a framework they have read about. We are pitching the one we bet our own businesses on.
What Astro actually is, without the jargon.
Astro builds your pages ahead of time and ships them as finished HTML, adding only the small amount of JavaScript a page genuinely needs. A traditional site does the opposite: it assembles every page on request and sends the browser a heavy bundle of code, most of which the visitor never uses.
For you, that difference shows up as four business outcomes, not four technical features: pages that load fast, HTML that Google can read and rank cleanly, a site with no database or plugins to attack or patch, and a hosting bill that is a rounding error instead of a monthly worry. If you want the deep version, we wrote why your site is slow, and the fix.
Four reasons it is worth doing properly.
SEO
Clean, server-rendered HTML Google crawls instantly, strong Core Web Vitals, and structure built in from the first commit.
Security
No database, no PHP, no plugin sprawl. There is simply far less surface for anything to attack or break.
Lower running cost
Static hosting on Vercel or Cloudflare instead of a WordPress maintenance bill. Fast to run, cheap to keep.
The honest comparison, tradeoff and all.
WordPress runs a huge share of the web and can be made fast. But left alone it gets heavier every year: plugins, page builders and a theme built to do everything, all shipped to every visitor. Astro starts from nothing and adds only what a page needs, which is why the speed, security and cost gap is real.
The one honest tradeoff is content editing. WordPress hands you a familiar admin out of the box; with Astro we set the editing layer up deliberately, usually a Sanity login so you can edit your own content safely without the weight. If you are already on WordPress, that is a WordPress to Astro migration, with every redirect mapped so your rankings survive the move.
From brief to a fast site, in five moves.
Speed is not something we sprinkle on at the end. It is engineered in at every step, which is why the finished site is fast on day one instead of a rescue job six months later.
- 01 Scope and structure We map what the site needs to do and the searches it needs to win, then design the structure to match: one page per intent, clean headings and metadata planned before a pixel is styled.
- 02 Design the pages Distinctive, conversion-led design built around the decision your visitor is trying to make. Beautiful is the floor, not the goal.
- 03 Build in Astro Hand-built on Astro, shipping only the JavaScript a page genuinely uses, with the right content-editing layer wired in for how often you publish.
- 04 Optimise and prove Self-hosted fonts, images served as WebP and AVIF at the right size, a hard budget on every script, and a Lighthouse pass on the real build. This is the discipline behind our website performance work.
- 05 Launch and hand over A clean deploy on modern hosting, redirects in place if we are replacing an old site, and a build you own outright. No retainer required just to keep the lights on.
Astro is the front. Here is the rest of it.
An Astro site is fast because of the whole stack behind it, not one framework. This is the machinery we run, in full, on our website speed optimisation service.
- 01 Astro Lean, fast front ends without unnecessary JavaScript.
- 02 Vercel Fast global delivery and production deployment.
- 03 Cloudflare DNS, caching, redirects and a speed and security layer.
- 04 Image optimisation WebP and AVIF, correct sizing, lazy loading and responsive images.
- 05 JavaScript control Only shipping the code the page actually needs.
- 06 Animation optimisation Motion that feels premium without killing mobile performance.
- 07 Core Web Vitals LCP, CLS, INP and real mobile usability.
- 08 Lighthouse testing Performance, accessibility, best practices and SEO checks on every build.
- 09 Mobile-first build discipline Designing rich pages that still load quickly on phones.
- 10 Analytics without bloat Tracking that does not drag the site down.
Not a portfolio of logos. Businesses we own and run.
Every site below is built on Astro, live right now, and operated by us. Click through and run any of them through Lighthouse yourself.
Home services
Spruce
Website, booking & field systemsThe brand we grew from zero to over a million dollars a year on $0 ad spend. Website, online booking and the field systems that run the operation, all built in-house.
Visit the live site
Building inspections
Datum
Website & lead engineA pre-purchase inspection brand and a fast website built to turn Auckland search traffic into booked inspections.
Visit the live site
Publishing
The Spade
Editorial, built for searchA review publication built from scratch, structured to rank and to be cited by AI search from the first article.
Visit the live site
Recruitment
Cleaning Jobs
Recruitment & applicant funnelA recruitment site and applicant funnel that keeps a growing team staffed, without paying for job boards.
Visit the live site
Agency
Robin
Brand, website & SEO systemA challenger agency brand and site, with the programmatic SEO system behind it. Built end to end, live and ranking.
Visit the live siteWhere Astro sits in the bigger picture.
The things people ask first.
What is Astro and why does it make my website faster?
Astro is a modern web framework that builds your pages to plain HTML ahead of time and ships almost no JavaScript to the browser. A traditional site assembles each page on every visit and sends a pile of scripts before it can respond; an Astro site hands over a finished, lightweight page. Less to assemble and less to download means it loads fast, even on a phone on mobile data, and you can test it yourself in Lighthouse.
Is an Astro website good for SEO?
Yes, and for the right reasons. Google sees clean, server-rendered HTML it can crawl instantly, the pages score well on Core Web Vitals because they are genuinely fast, and there is no plugin bloat slowing things down. Speed is a ranking input and a conversion input, so a well-built Astro site helps you rank and convert from the same traffic.
Can I edit my own content on an Astro site without a developer?
Yes. You do not need to touch code to change text. Our default is a Sanity login: a clean editor, kept separate from the code, where you safely change your own content. Simple sites that rarely change can stay on a lighter Git-based setup instead. Either way you get the speed of static with the convenience of a real content editor.
Is Astro cheaper to run than a WordPress website?
Usually, yes. A static-first Astro site hosts on modern platforms like Vercel or Cloudflare for free or a few dollars a month, and there is no database, no theme and no plugins to patch. A WordPress site tends to carry hosting muscle to cope with its weight plus an ongoing maintenance and update bill. The running cost is lower and there is far less that can break.
I already have a WordPress site. Can you move it to Astro?
Yes. We run it as a dedicated WordPress to Astro migration: we keep your content, map every old URL to a 301 redirect so your rankings come with you, then rebuild the front end in Astro. Done properly, you keep your search presence and simply lose the weight.
Can Astro handle ecommerce, forms and dynamic features?
Yes. Static-first does not mean static-only. Astro pairs with Shopify or a headless commerce back end for stores, and handles forms, bookings, search and other dynamic features through integrations and serverless functions. You get the speed of a static site with the function of a dynamic one.
Let’s build you a site that is quick out of the gate.
Tell us what you are building and who you are up against. We will show you what an Astro build would do for you, and where to start. Or send us your current site for a free speed teardown first.