Do I even need a website?

Well, not necessarily. But there are many reasons why it might be a good idea, depending on the type of business you have and the industry you’re in.

Your website is the little corner of the internet that you own, and you can make sure that it’s designed and developed in a way that fully represents who you are. All the content on your website belongs to you – not to Instagram, or Twitter, or Upwork. It’s yours.

What types of website can you do for me?

The short answer is…

Pretty much any website. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, we’ve detailed some of the most common types of websites below. We can build any of these websites for you as a semi-custom or fully-custom design.

The type of website you need largely depends on what type of business you have, and what you want to accomplish with it.

You can also see some examples of some websites we have created in our portfolio here.

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Common Types of Websites

Business or Brochure

This is for service-based businesses, whether you are targeting other businesses (like us) or individual customers (e.g. dog-walking or mobile hair-dressing).

Its primary purpose is to tell your clients

What services you offer, and for whom
What challenges you can solve for them
How you’re different from other service providers, and why they should choose you
How to contact you so they can work with you

In providing the above information, you can communicate your purpose, vision, and values through the design, language, imagery, and overall experience of using your website.

It’s a key asset through which many of your customers will experience you, time and again.

The difference between a business and a brochure website is in the size of the website, which often correlates to the size and complexity of the organisation.

E-Commerce

sThis is for businesses that sell products (physical or digital) directly to customers.

The Goliath of all e-commerce websites is Amazon, which has a lot of integrated features that make it a platform for both customers and sellers. Etsy is a smaller version of this.

As a small-medium business, you may be considering using these platforms yourself, and there are many benefits in doing so.

However, having your own e-commerce website allows you to control your pricing, how you present your products, and how you drive traffic to your good. Most importantly, it’s a space where you can intentionally communicate your brand to your customers, and set yourself apart from everyone else in your market.

If you’re not sure about whether or not you need or want to go down this route, book a call with us and we’ll be happy to help you navigate in the right direction.

Portfolio or Personal

If you are establishing a personal brand, for example as an artist, writer or even a consultant then a portfolio or personal website might be for you.

A portfolio’s primary function is to showcase your work. In some cases, you want to strip back and allow your pieces to speak for themselves, limiting your ‘brand message’ to peripheral pages of the siteb(e.g ‘About Me’). Depending on where you are in your journey, a simple portfolio on Behance, or even a slide deck might be enough.

However, if you are offering a nuanced service or product such as coaching or consulting, you want to bring your personal brand front and centre such that people can connect with the spirit of what you’re doing.

If you’re unsure, feel free to book a call and we’ll be happy to guide you in the right direction.

Blog or Media

If you are a writer (or a collective of writers) and your primary product is written content, a blog-style website may be the best format for you.

There are excellent blog platforms out there that even integrate a mailing list system such as Substack or Ghost. These platforms are excellent, because much is ‘done for you’, and you can reach your audience directly in their inbox.

However, you will be limited in terms of styling and showing off the visual elements of your brand. Also, beware of the terms and conditions of each platform because they sometimes retain the intellectual rights to your content.

If you’re unsure, feel free to book a call.

One-Time Events

Large one-time events such as conferences and festivals benefit from having a dedicated website. It’s a central hub where potential attendees can check out what’s on offer and purchase tickets, and punters can reference things like programmes and timetables during the event itself.

Depending on the size of the event, a landing page may be enough. This allows you to communicate one clear thing that you want your audience to do – to register for the event. However, any further complexity dilutes the effectiveness of a landing page, calling for a larger website with different homes (pages) for different things.

How would we go about creating my website?

As with all of our deliverables, we like to work collaboratively with you. At each stage of the process, we will check in with you and share our progress, to make sure that we stay aligned and true to your brand purpose, vision, and values. We have detailed below the typical experience of working with us on a website. Of course, each project has it’s unique nuances – we will always work with you to navigate your particular challenges.

If want to see some examples of websites we have created, click the button below to our portfolio.

See Portfolio

1. Scope and Requirements

We would have an initial call with you to find out exactly what you want to accomplish with your website. Perhaps you need a place on the internet where people can read all your services and contact you (much like this website!), or you might need something very specific to promote a particular event or product.

We would also want to understand how you want to maintain your website, and what functionalities you require at the back end. Since there are so many different ways that a website can be used, this is a really important step.

Note that we won’t be able to offer you this service unless you have a clear brand strategy an identity system. You don’t have to have created those with us, but they need to be relatively established before we can pick up on this deliverable.

2. Proposal

Once we have a thorough understanding of the scope and requirements, we will create a detail proposal with quotes and timeframes. We should be able to give you a ball park figure in the initial call. However, depending on the complexity of the site and any necessary integrations, we may have to go away and do some more research before giving you a meaningful proposal.

We usually turn around a proposal document within a week or so of the initial call.

3. Wireframe Mock Up

A wireframe mock up shows you the basic layout, structure and architecture of the website. For complex website with multiple template pages, this is a useful step in making sure that we are completely aligned with how we want the customer journey and experience to be.

For relatively simple websites or semi-custom website, we may skip this step and go straight ahead into a full mock up.

4. Full Mock Up

A full mock up will show the website exactly how it would look when it’s developed live. This is the time to tweak and refine, because we can make revisions rapidly and see the results instantly. Once we begin developing the site itself, large changes become more complicated and can delay the launch date significantly.

If you are providing us with the copy and imagery to use on the website, we would need those at this stage of the process as well. It allows us to input those details so you can see exactly what it looks like, and make changes before we go into development. Sometimes, seeing your photos on the website can prompt you to find different images, or adjust the colouring to align with the messaging. It’s also helpful to see where your text might be too long or too short.

5. Development

Once the mock up is approved, our design and development team work closely together to make sure that the resulting website functions smoothly and looks great.

Changes can still be made at the development stage. Changing the text, and a few adjustments on formatting are quick and easy. However, large structural changes can delay the launch date, and can sometimes come under a new scope of work. It’s worth noting here that your website is alive, and will evolve over time. So, the ability to make changes is built it to the website. It’s worth considering if large changes need to happen now, or can be pushed to a ‘version 2.0’ at a later date depending on the immediate goals of your business.

6. Launch

Launch day! Once development is complete, we set the website live. Depending on the immediate goals of this project, we can work with you on the timeline and how you announce the new website across your communication channels – emails, social media etc.

Book a Call

What about “Landing Pages”?

Excellent question!

There is a very clear distinction between a website and a landing page. The key difference is that landing pages have a singular intention – to encourage people to take one clear action. This could be purchasing a product, signing up for a webinar or make a donation. You don’t want site visitors to click around. Rather, you want them to stay focused on the content and commit to your call to action.

On the other hand, websites are designed for people to explore and get to know the various facets of your brand and business.

Depending on your business goals, the products/services you’re offering and where you are in your business growth… you may have more need for one over the other, or you may need both.

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Common Use Cases for Landing Pages

Product Launch

You won’t necessarily have an entire landing page for any and all products. For example, if you are selling single bottles of facial cleanser, it makes more sense for this to be in an e-commerce website alongside other products in your range. There, you can encourage people to put multiple items in their cart for one order.

However if you’re selling a unique product that either:

Has a high price point (e.g. an artisan leather bag for)
Is complex in nature, and requires explanation (e.g. a training course, or a coaching service)
New and unique in the marketplace (e.g. an all-in-one exercise machine that fits in your wardrobe)

Then it would make sense to dedicated page for you to fully communicate the benefits of the product to your potential customers, without them getting distracted by other things on offer. All the while, they are guided to a single call to action – making a purchase.

Event Registration

Event-based products such as webinars, conferences, festivals, networking meet-ups and workshops benefit from a well designed landing page. It allows you the dedicated space to:

Describe what the potential attendees will get out of the event
Provide practical information about the event (dates, cost, etc.)
Share testimonials pertaining directly to that event
Encourage a single call to action: register for the event.

This is true if the event is free or paid.

If your business primarily sells events, you would also have a website with a calendar of events, or a main page showing all of your events. But each unique event should have its own landing page that drives people to register.

Subscription Sign-Up

If you’re offering a subscription package, potential members would naturally want to know exactly what they’re getting in exchange for their money, or even just for their email address.

A dedicated landing page allows you to give them all the information they’re looking, while being guided to that ‘sign-up’ button.

Lead Generation

If your sales model is primarily built on business to business relationships, then a key marketing activity for you would be growing your network, and the database of people you can talk to who you know are interested in your service.

One example of an effective way of growing this database is by offering high-value content (e.g. an e-book full of industry knowledge) for free in exchange for people’s email address. You can do this through pop-ups in your main website or via ads on social media without a landing page. It will grow your mailing list, increasing reach and exposure to your offering.

However, a dedicated landing page would allow you to better qualify the people who are coming in to this database. You’ll be able to:

Fully describe the benefits of your service offering
Include a short qualifying questionnaire to determine if this person is ready to have that call with you

Whilst your call to action remains clear and singular (e.g. ‘book a call’), you’ll also be able to filter candidates more effectively saving yourself time and resources.

So far, so good! I have a few more questions…

We’re all ears! 👂🏽…

We have put together some FAQs below, but if we haven’t answered your questions feel free to shoot us an email.

What's the investment?

It depends. We know, 🙄… but it really does depend on many factors such as the size of your business, the price point of the product you offer, the project revenue increase as a result of our work with you, the project’s timeline…

We have 3 different pricing structures:

Fixed Fee Projects – Perfect for deliverables that you’ll only need once like your brand strategy or identity system.
Loyalty Club – Our retainer model in which you can pay a monthly subscription of ‘credits’, that can be rolled over to the next month (up to 6 months). This allows you to spread the cost of long-term projects such as content creation, and website maintenance without having to over-pay for quiet months.
VIP Days – These are designed to give you our 100% focused attention over short period of time. This is perfect for projects that have a very tight turn around such as a product or event launch.

The best thing to do is book a call, and we’ll be happy to create a bespoke quote for you.

What's the timeframe from the start to finish of a website?

This really depends on the size and complexity of the website.

However, we should be able to give you an approximate estimate by the end of our initial call. We will also provide a structure timeframe including any milestones in your proposal before you agree to the quote and scope of work.

What's a semi-custom vs. a fully custom website?

A semi-custom website is where we take an pre-existing template that fits the requirements of your website, and adapt it to incorporate your brand identity. This template may be from one of our previous projects, or from the various ‘off-the-shelf’ products available on reputable marketplaces such as Elegant Themes or Creative Market. This usually works well for brochure or business websites that don’t require many backend integrations.

This is a great option to look at if you have a clear sense of the site architecture you need. It also reduces costs and the time it takes to build it.

A fully custom website is designed completely to specifications. During your initial call, we will recommend which of these options would be best for you depending on your requirements, budget and timeframe.

What platform do you use to build websites?

We work primarily on WordPress with Divi integration. We’ve found that this combination has given us almost absolute flexibility in terms of design and functionality. If you need to be able to update your website yourself, the Divi integration allows for a user-friendly interface when updating basic content.

WordPress also has great security features, and an ever-growing catalogue of quality plug-ins which really helps with problem solving.

We can work on other platforms such as Sqi

I don't have a brand strategy or identity system, but I need some kind of website now.

It’s very rare that we would take on a website project without a clear brand strategy or identity system. However, this can depend on the reason you need a website (or a landing) immediately.

The best thing to do is to send us an email. If we’re not able to help you ourselves, we can connect you with one of our contacts who may be a better fit for you.

Can you provide web hosting once the site is launched?

Yes. We would simply pass on the cost of the domain registration and hosting on an annual basis.

However, we do recommend that you take care of your own hosting package and grant us collaboration access. This way, everything belongs to you and there’s no ‘third-party admin’ obstacles to go through when it comes to billing, changing your site’s domain, or changing your service provider.

What about SEO?

Excellent that you’re thinking about SEO. Yes, we offer SEO and Copywriting. Click on the link to find out more.

Would you also write the content and provide images for the website?

Yes, this is a service that we offer separately from the website package. For more information about copywriting, click here.

Are you ready to get started?

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Yeah! Exactly what I’m looking for.

Whoop! 🎉

Hit the button below to book a call, and leave us a note to tell us that you’re looking for a website.