Christchurch Web Development

A local team you can actually meet

BlueFusion is a small web development team based in Lyttelton, twenty minutes from the Christchurch CBD. We have been building websites for Canterbury businesses since 2004 and went full time in 2012. The people you meet at the first discussion are the people who scope, design and build your site. Nothing is outsourced.

If you are in Christchurch, Lyttelton Harbour or the wider Canterbury region we will come to you. Seeing how your business runs and how your customers deal with you tells us far more than a brief ever does. Clients elsewhere in New Zealand and overseas work with us online, across time zones, and have done for years.

The right platform, not our favourite one

Every agency has a platform they push. We work across several, so we can match the platform to your business rather than bending your business to fit the platform.

• Drupal for organisations with complex content, multiple user types, directories, memberships or integrations with other business systems.
• Shopify for retailers who want a proven online store with a large app ecosystem and a simple admin.
• Wix for small businesses that want a polished site quickly and want to manage it themselves.
• Static and headless builds for sites that need to be very fast, very secure and cheap to host.
• EmDash, an open source CMS built on Astro, for content-led sites that want WordPress-style editing, drafts and scheduling with the speed and security of a modern static build.
• Netlify Visual Editor (formerly Netlify Create and Stackbit) for teams that want to edit a static or headless site in place, with a live preview, without touching code.

Not sure which one you need? That is exactly what the first meeting is for.

How a project runs

1. Discovery. We meet, on site if you are in Christchurch, to understand your business, your customers and what the website has to achieve.
2. Scope and estimate. We agree the pages, features and platform and give you an estimate. We work on an hourly basis with no fixed-term contracts, so you only pay for the work done.
3. Design. Layouts and user journeys focused on what your visitors are trying to do, designed to look like your business from the first page to the last.
4. Build. Responsive, fast and accessible, with analytics, search engine foundations and any integrations in place from day one.
5. Launch and training. We move the site live, check everything in Google Search Console and train you on the admin so day-to-day updates are yours.
6. Support. Hosting, security updates and a developer on call for the changes that need one.

Easy to run yourself

You should not need to call a developer to change a phone number or add a news item. We build the admin around the people who will use it, keep it as simple as the site allows, and train you before launch. Volunteer organisations and businesses with staff turnover particularly appreciate this. Static and headless sites don't have to be an exception to this: with EmDash as the CMS, or Netlify Visual Editor layered over a static build, you can edit pages in place and see the result before you publish.

Websites that connect to the rest of your business

Many of our Christchurch clients need more than pages. We build sites that take bookings, run wholesale and retail pricing side by side, manage memberships and directories, print operational paperwork, and talk to accounting, CRM and stock systems. If a process is costing you time, there is a good chance the website can absorb it.

What it costs

We bill hourly and give you an estimate once the project is scoped, so there are no packages to squeeze into and no lock-in contracts. As a guide, a small Drupal site starts around $2,500, and large sites with custom integrations or online stores run to $50,000. Wix and Shopify builds generally sit at the lower end. Hosting and support are billed separately so you only pay for what you use.

What Christchurch clients say

Our portfolio includes Christchurch and Canterbury businesses such as a kids' hairdressing salon with online booking, an airfield engineering firm, a community energy society in Lyttelton and a range of retailers, manufacturers and professional services firms, alongside clients in Australia, the UK and the US.

• Halfway through a struggling website refresh, we reached out to Andy at BlueFusion for help. He quickly understood our needs, worked within our budget, and provided a clear path to completion.

  With excellent communication and a solution-focused mindset, Andy’s friendly and straightforward approach made working with him and BlueFusion a great experience.

  -- Debbie Roxby, Marketing Manager, ViaStrada

  ViaStrada: see the project

• We absolutely love working with BlueFusion across both our website development and support on Shopify and also our Google advertising.

  Andy and Dana are brilliant at what they do! They have helped us grow our business to the success that is today with literally thousands of orders being received.

  Highly, highly recommend these guys!

  - Kate Lemon, 

  True Fleece: see the project

• Blue Fusion made it very simple and straightforward; removing all the jargon, and the result is a great web site, which we can update easily.

  -- Anne Parkinson
  Lyttelton Harbour Information Centre

  Lyttelton Information Centre: see the project

• Seamless! Understood what I wanted/needed, even when I didn't, and was able to interpret the 'look' I was going for.

  -- Tracey Beard, Owner, Career Matters

  Career Matters: see the project

How do you get started?

If you are looking for a new website, a rebuild of your current one, or help with a site that is not pulling its weight, talk to us today. The first meeting is free and there is no obligation.