Episode 14: Websites Brisbane

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[00:00:00]  Saul: Hi, everyone, and welcome to the Web Design Brisbane Podcast. This is episode number 14. And today's episode is entitled Websites Brisbane. My name is Saul Edmonds. And as usual, I'm joined by the lovely Gillian Smith. 

[00:00:12]  Gillian: Good morning, Saul. Hello everybody, how are you today?

[00:00:14]  Saul:  I'm great. How are you?

[00:00:16]  Gillian:  I'm good. 

[00:00:17]  Saul: We are the co-founders and creative directors of Roundhouse to creative agency, a local business with a passion for helping our clients grow. Over to you, Gill. 

[00:00:25]  Gillian: Okay, well, in today's episode, we will be looking at the general topic of websites for companies, small businesses, and entrepreneurs in Brisbane, Australia, will provide an overview of the full-service capabilities involved in building a website from the ground up. We'll talk about web branding, to then go into web design, web development, web hosting, web marketing, and a whole lot more so if you live in Brisbane, or run a small business anywhere in the world, this information, hopefully will help you get started on the right track to a great website delivers measurable, measurable results for your business. So let's get started. 

[00:01:03]  Saul: Yeah, let's get started. 

[00:01:05]  Gillian: Okay, well, we're going to discuss the elements involved across the website design and development space. So let's get started with web branding.

[00:01:14]  Saul: Yeah, we're branding.  How do you cut through all the noise and reach the right people at the right time? And what even is web branding? Well,  I would say, outside web branding is branding. But on the web,  to put it simply. So I was saying, but I mean, they

[00:01:36] Gillian: Should get your web journey begins with your brand.

[00:01:40]  Saul: Yeah, that's right. So all your any material that you create, including a website, or any print material, or otherwise, that you create for your business, comes from your branding. So you're talking about  your website, but then if you're talking broadly about web branding, you're probably speaking if you hear that term, you could also replace that with digital branding instead of one respect. But you are talking about the way that your website looks and feels, and then everything that comes across in terms of the type of content that you produce for your website, and also for any other digital solutions you have, which might be them. For some people, it might be apps that they have for their business, or an app that is a business idea. So branding, and also for social media, as well. 

[00:02:40] Gillian: So in a nutshell, your brand is the foundation of how you communicate. So it's going to set your colours, your style, all those things that will send a message to everybody out there about what you're about what your story is, how you can help them instantly. It's a visual communication straight off.

[00:02:56] Saul: Yeah, so visual. And then also content wise, how you build communicate the..., I guess the more philosophical aspects of your business at a deeper level, like they're all the elements of your brand, that make you who you are, but also in the right way to communicate those things to your target audience.  

[00:03:24]  Gillian: Because at the end of the day, your brand will help you cut through the noise and reach the right people at the right time. That's the goal. Okay, want a website designer? So do you consider that the actual website design is really a natural extension of the brand?

[00:03:37]  Saul: Yeah, well, I mean, your, your website, in general with its content, and then the website design really needs to be like, it's a part, everything is interwoven. So your website design really comes down to if we talk about what that is, again, your website design is really the message in which your house content, and the colours and all the visual elements that you use to be able to help you to be able to actually send that message in the right way, to those people that are looking at your website.

[00:04:18]  Gillian: Okay, well gone to website development. Now, the decisions that you make around website development, do they really tie into your overall marketing and business strategy? 

[00:04:28]  Saul: Well, I mean, your website development, if you're once again, for people listening, who don't know what that means, if you're talking about development, many websites, may not really, in some sense, require development in that a lot of how it's actually built already implies. So it's mainly an exercise in design, when you come to development, you're speaking about things that need to be either coded from scratch, or they need to be modified in some way, we have to have somebody who's has those skills at hand to be able to do that. And if you're talking about, say, no idea where something has to be designed, but then built from the ground up, and that ties into your, really the core elements of your business strategy, which I mean, one example might be that you have to, you have to design and develop a customized ecommerce platform that does something very different to what's already out there in a particular way. And as such, it needs to be built from the ground up. Now that in itself, the way you do that is going to be an important part of your marketing and tie into it may have some special feature that's really a key selling point, even as well. 

[00:06:00]  Gillian: Okay, well, let's talk about websites support, is that an important element that they'll be maintenance? There might be updates, what can you say about that, Saul? 

[00:06:08]  Saul: Yeah, websites support is always important. There are many sites now, and probably for all time, will have changed (ends), or gone down or people gone somewhere else because of a lack of support, not for not for any other reason, sometimes just because…

[00:06:33]  Gillian:  Still comes back to people.

[00:06:35]  Saul: Yeah, it still comes back to people, ultimately, everything digital is fine, until there's nobody there to talk to. They can,  you can say you can have the best side in the world. But then if it breaks, or even if it's a little problem, and you've got nobody to talk to, it's like saying, Hey, can I need some help? And there's nobody on the other end, or they are but they reply to you, like 48 hours later, when it's coming to light is never good. It comes back to yet again, a human connection. 

[00:07:09]  Gillian: Okay, well, website hosting, what should website hosting deliver in the web service, in your opinion? 

[00:07:15]  Saul: In the web service. Well, at its core, hosting should just be should do. It should meet the expectations of, first of all, what has been said, if you go to any hosting, and they say, we can do ABC D, if they don't do that, there's a problem, so on a very simple level, most people really to be honest. And unless there's more at stake, either with the size of the website, or otherwise, most people don't think twice about their website hosting, they just go, they know that they have to have it. But they only know there's a problem when there's a problem. So that's where then the hosting itself is it's highlighted, either through the support, or through the hosting itself. That's no good. And sometimes people don't know that until it's too late. But ultimately, great support, help and doing what they say I should actually do. And on that point, too,  if you're unsure. Once again, there's, like we all know, one of the best ways is to look at reviews, most places, there's a lot of places online, if you search for any number of different types of searches, surrounding,  what is good hosting or hosting in, in your country, and so forth, you'll probably find reviews, or people talking about how good or how awful certain hosting is. So, you can't go wrong with that.

[00:08:56]  Gillian: Okay, well, let's go on to digital strategy.  How do you actually integrate digital strategy, and that includes social media, SEO, content, marketing, and even email marketing, into your website?

[00:09:09]  Saul: Into your website? Well, I guess any good digital strategy will be working out what kind of role your website has with in the strategy for many strategies, that's going to be. So for example, if you've got an e commerce site, that in one respect is at the heart of any strategy in the sense that that's where people come to buy. So other parts would be working out how to get people there to buy. But then once they're there, on your website, your website itself should really have as a part of any good digital strategy, the kind of experience that you would expect people to have. And that becomes more important. Once again, the more moving parts there are in your digital sort of landscape, if you will, for your business.

[00:10:10]  Gillian: Okay, well, so let's just touch on digital marketing. How can your website support your digital marketing campaign?

[00:10:18]  Saul:  How can a website supported? 

[00:10:20]  Gillian: Yeah,  you can take a little moment. 

[00:10:23]  Saul: Yeah, I mean, your website  is at the heart of anything like that, like we were just talking about. But if you're going to be like one very simple part, just a simple example, if you're talking about your digital marketing campaign, really being how you're going to get people to your website, if that is the goal, if you buy it on your website, a little bit different if you're buying via social media. But at the same time, if you've got a website, there's elements on your website in terms of chat and levels of engagement, that you could also have as well your campaign might be about, , if it's about people buying things from your website, then the experience that they're going to have, once they come there is an important part to include in that campaign. An example might be there, when people come to buy a particular product, you want them to not only buy, but you want them to buy, certain other things at the same time so that can be supported by a chat service that you have on your website, and depending on how deep you want to go with all that you can have levels of being able to track and see what people where people are going on your website, in real time, in order so that anyone who's there to try to encourage them to buy what to do particular things by chat can do that. So that's just one example.

[00:12:08]  Gillian: Okay, well, finally, are there any advantages to working with a company who provides all of these services under the one roof that simplify the process?

[00:12:17]  Saul: Yes, certainly. I mean, it comes down to people's time many people are busy, but even if ..

[00:12:25]  Gillian: Small business owners are the busiest of all. 

[00:12:28]  Saul: Certainly, yeah. There's everyone's pretty time so  if you want to go somewhere and you want to work out, especially if you don't have a lot of experience and you want to work out what you want to do. How are you going to do it, you got no experience. Certainly having somewhere that is able to answer a range of those questions for you under one roof is a big advantage for most people in the dive got, ideally then a unified a product, what they're doing, they can discuss things in a holistic sort of way and an offer a really good broad spread of opinions under one roof and that

[00:13:10]  Gillian: Holistic solution ties right back to where we started with branding.

[00:13:14]  Saul: Yeah, it certainly does (inaudible) 

[00:13:15]  Gillian:  the umbrella  

[00:13:16] Saul: Yeah, brand, if you were to say anything brand is  at the heart of everything. 

[00:13:22]  Gillian: Brand is king. 

[00:13:24]  Saul: Brand is king. Content is king and brand is the out king, perhaps who knows. Anyway, that's it for today, guys. Thanks again for listening so much. Before we go, please don't forget to rate review and subscribe to this podcast. We'd love to hear your feedback. Also, if you'd like to read the transcript of this episode, please visit our website at roundhouse.cc forward slash web-design. We are a journey to help local Brisbane businesses grow the opportunities online and exceed their goals. Thanks for listening and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye, everyone.