Frequently Asked Questions

Akif Wani is a freelance full-stack web developer and AI automation specialist who builds websites, e-commerce stores, and custom web applications. He works primarily in WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and Next.js, and has delivered more than 500 websites over 5+ years. He is based in Jammu & Kashmir, India, and works fully remotely with clients worldwide.

A landing page starts at $200 per page, a multi-page business website starts at $800, and a WooCommerce or Shopify store starts at $1,000 for up to 15 products. Optional add-ons are $350 for advanced SEO setup and $250 for speed optimisation. Every project is quoted at a fixed price in writing before work begins, so there are no hourly surprises.

A landing page typically takes under a week. A multi-page business website takes two to four weeks from scoping through launch, and an e-commerce store takes four to six weeks depending on catalogue size. Custom web applications are scoped individually. The timeline includes design review and a revision round, not just build time.

Yes. Akif Wani works fully remotely with clients in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, alongside other markets. Communication runs over email, WhatsApp, and scheduled calls, with meeting times arranged around the client's timezone rather than his own. Payment is handled through Upwork, Fiverr, or direct invoicing depending on preference.

Akif Wani builds on WordPress, WooCommerce, Shopify, and Next.js. WordPress and WooCommerce suit content-driven sites and stores that need ownership and flexibility. Shopify suits merchants who want a hosted platform. Next.js with React, TypeScript, and Supabase suits custom applications and sites where performance is a competitive requirement. Platform choice is made during scoping based on what the project actually needs.

Yes. Every project includes a post-launch support window to resolve anything that surfaces in real use. Beyond that, ongoing maintenance covering WordPress core, theme, and plugin updates, backups, security monitoring, and content changes is available as a separate arrangement. Clients who prefer to handle maintenance in-house receive handover training covering how.

Yes. Akif Wani takes on redesigns, rescues of half-finished builds, speed optimisation of slow sites, and repairs to broken WooCommerce and WordPress installations. Work on an existing site starts with an audit so the quote reflects what is actually wrong rather than a guess. Migrations from Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Webflow to WordPress are also handled routinely.

Start with a message describing what you need through the contact form, email at info@akifwani.com, or WhatsApp. That is followed by a short call or written exchange to scope the project, after which you receive a fixed written quote covering price, timeline, and deliverables. Work begins once the quote is agreed. Scoping typically takes 24–48 hours.

You work directly with the developer building your site, so the person scoping the project is the person writing the code. There is no account manager relaying requirements and no junior developer assigned after the pitch. The trade-off is honest: a solo developer has finite capacity and cannot staff a large multi-workstream project the way an agency can.

Yes. Revisions within the agreed scope are included rather than billed as extras, and the process is structured to catch changes early — layouts are reviewed and revised at the design stage, before build, where changes cost minutes instead of days. Work that falls outside the agreed scope is quoted separately before it is started, never invoiced as a surprise.

With Akif Wani, a landing page starts at $200 per page, a multi-page business website at $800, and an e-commerce store at $1,000 for up to 15 products. Across the wider freelance market, business sites typically run $500 to $5,000 and agency builds start around $5,000 and rise sharply. Platform, page count, and custom functionality are what actually move the number.

Fixed price. Every project is quoted in writing before work begins, covering price, timeline, and deliverables, so the figure agreed at the start is the figure invoiced at the end. Work falling outside the agreed scope is quoted separately before it starts. Hourly billing shifts the risk of a slow build onto the client, which is the wrong way round.

Page count, custom functionality, and e-commerce complexity are the three biggest drivers. Beyond those, custom design rather than a template, content and copywriting production, B2B pricing logic, third-party integrations, and migrations from another platform each add cost. Supplying your own written content and imagery is the single most effective way to reduce a quote.

Yes. Projects begin with an upfront deposit and the balance is due at completion before launch, with larger projects split across milestones. Payment runs through Upwork, Fiverr, or direct invoicing depending on your preference. Upwork and Fiverr add their own platform fees but provide contract protection some clients prefer for a first engagement.

No. Hosting and domain registration are paid directly to your provider so you own both outright and are never locked to a developer for access. Recommendations are given during scoping based on what your site actually needs. Shopify subscription fees and AI platform usage costs are likewise billed by those providers directly and sit outside any build quote.

The quote covers design, build, content population, responsive testing, launch, and a revision round within the agreed scope, plus handover training so your team can update the site. Advanced SEO setup at $350 and speed optimisation at $250 are optional add-ons. Hosting, domains, stock imagery, and third-party subscriptions are not included and are paid to those providers directly.

Define what the site needs to do, then evaluate candidates on relevant recent work, communication quality, and whether they quote fixed prices with a written scope. Ask to see live sites they built, not screenshots. To hire Akif Wani, send project details through the contact form, email info@akifwani.com, or message on WhatsApp — scoping takes 24–48 hours and produces a fixed written quote.

Hire a freelancer when your project is a single workstream and you want to work directly with whoever writes the code — it costs less and communication is shorter. Hire an agency when you need parallel workstreams, guaranteed cover during absence, or a large multi-phase programme. For most small business sites and stores, a freelancer is the better value; for enterprise programmes, an agency is the safer structure.

Look for live sites you can visit rather than mockups, a fixed written quote with a defined scope, clear communication before any money changes hands, and an explicit answer on who owns the code and hosting afterwards. Ask whether they build custom themes or configure purchased ones — both are legitimate, but the price should reflect which you are getting.

Across the market, freelance WordPress projects typically run $500 to $5,000 depending on scope, with agencies starting around $5,000. Akif Wani's pricing starts at $200 per landing page and $800 for a multi-page business website, quoted fixed in writing. Be cautious of quotes far below market rate — they usually indicate a template configuration being sold as a custom build.

Yes. You own the site, the code, the content, and the hosting account outright on completion, with no licensing restriction and no dependency on Akif Wani for future changes. Hosting and domains are registered in your name and paid directly to those providers. Handover includes training so your team can make routine updates without a developer.

Communication runs over email, WhatsApp, and scheduled calls, with meeting times arranged around your timezone. You get a staging URL during the build so you can follow progress continuously rather than waiting for a reveal at the end. Akif Wani works directly with clients, so questions go to the person writing the code rather than through an account manager.

A custom WordPress website from Akif Wani starts at $800 for a standard multi-page business site, and single landing pages start at $200 per page. Advanced SEO setup adds $350 and speed optimisation adds $250. Final pricing depends on page count, custom functionality, and whether you supply content and imagery. Every project is quoted at a fixed price in writing before work starts.

Use WordPress when your team needs to publish and edit content without a developer — which covers most business sites, blogs, and brochure sites. Choose a custom-coded site such as Next.js when you need application logic, a highly custom interface, or performance beyond what a CMS delivers. If your site is mostly content pages that change regularly, WordPress is almost always the cheaper and faster answer.

Yes. Akif Wani builds custom WordPress themes from scratch rather than modifying purchased templates. A custom theme means no unused page-builder bloat, template files matching the content types you actually publish, and reusable section blocks your team can rearrange. Custom themes typically load faster than template-based sites because they ship only the code your site uses.

All three, chosen by what the project needs. Gutenberg blocks suit clients who want native WordPress editing with no third-party dependency. Elementor suits teams already trained on it or who want maximum layout freedom. Custom-coded templates suit sites where speed is the priority. The decision is made during scoping based on who maintains the site afterwards.

Speed work targets the three Core Web Vitals directly. Images are served in modern formats at correct breakpoint sizes, non-critical CSS and JavaScript are deferred, page and object caching are configured, render-blocking scripts are removed, and unused plugins are stripped. Custom themes help substantially because they ship only the code the site actually uses, rather than a template's full feature set.

Yes. Akif Wani handles full migrations from Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy Website Builder, Webflow, Joomla, and older WordPress installs. Content, images, and page structure are carried across, and old URLs are mapped to 301 redirects so existing search rankings and inbound links survive the move. Migrations are quoted based on page count and content complexity.

Builds ship with security hardening in place: limited login attempts, disabled file editing in the admin, correct file permissions, and a reduced plugin footprint since every plugin is an attack surface. Ongoing core, theme, and plugin updates are available as a maintenance arrangement, or you can handle them in-house — the handover covers how.

Yes. Every build ships with correct heading hierarchy, semantic HTML, per-page titles and meta descriptions, an XML sitemap, structured data, and a clean URL structure. This is the technical foundation that lets content rank — it does not replace content and link building, but without it, good content underperforms.

A WooCommerce store from Akif Wani starts at $1,000 for up to 15 products, with each additional block of 15 products adding $150. Advanced SEO setup adds $350 and speed optimisation adds $250. B2B wholesale pricing systems and subscription products are quoted separately. Every project is quoted at a fixed price in writing before work starts.

WooCommerce is better when you want to own your store outright, avoid per-transaction platform fees, and need customisation Shopify's theme system restricts — particularly B2B wholesale pricing and complex product logic. Shopify is better when you want a hosted platform with no server responsibility and a simple catalogue. WooCommerce costs less over time at volume; Shopify costs less in operational effort.

Yes. Wholesale pricing is implemented with role-based rules so trade accounts see trade rates and retail customers see retail, from a single catalogue and a single stock pool. This includes gated trade-only product lines and a wholesale account application and approval flow. Fire & Ash Hair runs exactly this setup, serving salon wholesale and direct retail from one store.

WooCommerce handles catalogues of tens of thousands of products when the architecture and hosting are right. Performance problems at scale almost always come from poor product-attribute structure, unindexed database queries, or shared hosting rather than from WooCommerce itself. Catalogue architecture is decided during scoping precisely because it determines how the store behaves as it grows.

Yes. Overselling is usually caused by product variants set up as independent products so stock decrements against the wrong pool — fixable by remodelling the variant structure. Slowness on commerce sites is typically unoptimised product imagery, plugin conflicts, and uncached queries. Both start with an audit of the existing store before any work is quoted.

Stripe, PayPal, and the major regional gateways are all supported, along with any provider offering a WooCommerce extension or a documented API. Gateway integration, shipping zones, and tax rules are configured and tested with real test transactions as part of the build, so the store processes orders correctly from day one rather than being debugged live.

Yes, completely. WooCommerce is open-source software running on hosting you control, so you own the code, the database, the customer list, and the order history outright. There is no per-transaction platform fee and no risk of a platform changing terms on you. The trade-off is that hosting, updates, and backups are your responsibility.

Yes. Products, variants, customers, and order history are migrated, and old URLs are mapped to 301 redirects so search rankings survive. The main planning work is matching Shopify app functionality to WooCommerce equivalents, since apps rarely map one-to-one. Migrations are quoted after reviewing the existing store's catalogue size and app dependencies.

A custom Shopify storefront from Akif Wani starts at $1,000 for up to 15 products, with additional products from $150 per 15. Targeted theme customisation starts at $200 per page. Shopify's own subscription and per-transaction fees are paid separately to Shopify and are not part of the build quote. Every project is quoted at a fixed price in writing.

Use Shopify if you want a hosted platform with no server, security, or update responsibility and your catalogue is reasonably straightforward. Use WooCommerce if you need B2B wholesale pricing, full checkout control, complex product logic, or want to avoid per-transaction fees. Shopify costs less operational effort; WooCommerce costs less at volume and gives you outright ownership.

Yes. Custom Shopify themes are built in Liquid with configurable sections and blocks, so your team can rearrange layouts from the theme editor after handover. A custom theme delivers the design you specified rather than the nearest premium template, and typically loads faster because it ships only the features your store uses.

Yes. If you run a premium theme that mostly works, targeted customisation is usually the better value — custom sections, modified product templates, or bespoke cart behaviour added without abandoning the theme's update path. This is quoted per page or per section rather than as a full rebuild.

On Shopify, slowness is usually app scripts rather than the theme. Every installed app injects JavaScript into your storefront, and a store carrying a dozen apps loads a dozen extra scripts on every page. The fix is auditing which apps genuinely earn their place, removing the rest, and then optimising theme assets and image delivery.

Yes. Products, variants, customers, and order history are migrated, with old URLs mapped to 301 redirects so search rankings and inbound links survive the move. The main planning work is matching existing plugin or extension functionality to Shopify apps, since they rarely map one-to-one. Migrations are quoted after reviewing your current catalogue and dependencies.

Limited wholesale functionality is possible through Shopify's B2B features on higher plans or through apps, but it is more constrained than WooCommerce's role-based pricing. If wholesale is central to your business, WooCommerce is usually the better platform and you will get that recommendation directly rather than being sold a Shopify build that fights the platform.

Use Next.js when your project has genuine application logic — user accounts, dashboards, permissions, complex interactivity — or when performance is a competitive requirement. Use WordPress when the site is mostly content your team publishes and edits regularly. Choosing Next.js for a straightforward brochure site means paying developer rates for changes a CMS would let your marketing team make themselves.

Next.js marketing pages start at $200 per page and a multi-page Next.js site starts at $800. Custom applications with authentication, databases, or dashboards are quoted per project after technical scoping, because requirements vary too widely for a starting figure to be useful. Every project is quoted at a fixed price in writing before work begins.

Yes, provided content is server-rendered or statically generated rather than fetched client-side. Next.js renders pages on the server by default in the App Router, so content appears in the initial HTML where search engines and AI crawlers can read it. A React single-page application that renders only after JavaScript executes is substantially harder for crawlers to index reliably.

Yes. Content is managed in the WordPress admin your editors already know and pulled into a Next.js front end through the REST API or GraphQL, then statically generated. Editors keep their familiar workflow, visitors get a static front end, and the WordPress installation is no longer publicly exposed. This suits content-heavy sites with a hard performance requirement.

Supabase is the usual choice, giving PostgreSQL with built-in authentication and row-level security, which covers most application requirements without assembling separate services. Plain PostgreSQL or another provider is used where a project calls for it. The database schema is designed during scoping, before build, because changing the data model later is where projects lose time.

Vercel by default — it is built by the Next.js team and handles server rendering, static generation, image optimisation, and preview deployments without configuration work. Projects can be deployed elsewhere if you have an existing platform requirement. You own the repository, so you are never locked to a hosting choice.

Yes. You own the repository and the code outright on completion, with no licensing restriction and no dependency on Akif Wani for future changes. Handover includes a documented codebase and a deployment walkthrough so another developer can pick the project up without a discovery phase.

AI automation works well on repetitive processes with consistent inputs: routing and tagging inbound email, extracting fields from invoices and forms, qualifying leads against set criteria, summarising documents, generating routine reports, and answering common customer questions from your documentation. It works poorly on processes with high exception rates or where an error carries serious consequences.

AI automation is quoted per project after a process audit, because the same request can be a two-day build or a three-week one depending on how many exceptions the process carries. Ongoing usage costs for the Claude API and platforms like n8n or Make.com are billed by those providers directly and sit outside the build quote.

No. Automations are built to connect the tools you already run rather than replace them. n8n and Make.com integrate with hundreds of common business applications, and anything with a documented API can be connected directly. Replacing working software is usually the most expensive and disruptive way to solve an automation problem.

A chatbot is customer-facing and conversational — it answers questions in real time and hands off to a human when it should. A workflow automation runs in the background without conversation, triggered by an event such as a form submission, then processes and routes it. Many businesses need the workflow automation far more than the chatbot.

That risk is why chatbots here are grounded in your actual documentation and product information rather than answering from general knowledge, and are given an explicit handoff path when a question exceeds what they should answer. A chatbot allowed to answer anything will eventually answer something wrong — constraining scope is the fix.

The Claude API is the usual choice for text processing, document extraction, and chatbot work, integrated through n8n, Make.com, or directly in Node.js and TypeScript. Model choice is made per project against what the task actually needs, since the most capable model is not always the right cost or latency fit for a high-volume workflow.

Every automation ships with logging and alerting, so a silent failure surfaces immediately rather than being discovered weeks later when work has quietly stopped happening. Before going live, the automation is run against real historical cases including the awkward ones, so its failure modes are known rather than discovered in production.

Target Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint under 200 milliseconds, and Cumulative Layout Shift under 0.1, measured on mobile. These are Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds and the ones that affect search ranking. Measure on mobile with a throttled connection rather than on desktop broadband, which flatters almost every site.

In most cases it is unoptimised images, too many plugins loading assets on every page, a bloated multi-purpose theme, and missing caching — usually all four together. Cheap shared hosting compounds it. The fix order matters: image delivery and caching typically produce the biggest gains for the least work, so those come first.

Speed optimisation is $250 as an add-on to a new build. For an existing site not built here, it is quoted after an audit, because two sites with identical symptoms can have entirely different causes. The audit gives you a written diagnosis with causes ranked by impact before you commit to any fixes.

Partially. Caching helps significantly with repeat server response time, but it does nothing about oversized images, render-blocking JavaScript, or layout shift — which are usually the larger problems. A caching plugin is one component of the fix, not the fix. Sites that install one and see little change are almost always image-bound or script-bound.

Yes. Core Web Vitals are a confirmed Google ranking signal, though a smaller one than relevance and content quality. The larger commercial effect is usually behavioural: slow pages lose visitors before they see anything, which hurts conversions directly and feeds back into ranking through engagement. Speed rarely wins a ranking alone, but it loses customers reliably.

Yes, though the constraints differ. On Shopify the hosting is fixed, so optimisation focuses on theme assets, image delivery, and app scripts. Apps are usually the dominant cause — each one injects JavaScript on every page load, and a store running a dozen apps carries a dozen extra scripts. Auditing which apps earn their place is often the highest-impact change available.

Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much content jumps around while a page loads — the reason you tap the wrong button because something loaded above it. It is caused by images and embeds without explicit dimensions, late-loading fonts, and injected banners. It matters because it is both a ranking signal and one of the most directly infuriating experiences a site can deliver.