Episode 35: Website Design Company Brisbane

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[00:00:00]  Saul: Hi everybody, and welcome to the Web Design Brisbane Podcast. This is episode number 35. And today's episode is entitled Website Design Company Brisbane. My name is Saul Edmonds, and as usual, I'm joined by the lovely Gillian Smith. 

[00:00:12]  Gillian: Good morning, Saul! How are you today? 

[00:00:14]  Saul: I'm great. Thank you so much for asking. 

[00:00:16]  Gillian: You're welcome.

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

[00:00:25]  Gillian: Okay, thanks, Saul.  Well, today we're talking about website design companies. And we're going to learn more about the range of website services that a good website design competent company will offer to you. Now, our goal is to help small business owners, start-ups and entrepreneurs in the city of Brisbane, Australia, take their opportunities to the next level with brilliant website design. If you're from another location of city, welcome. Thanks for joining us today. And we hope that we can help you to grow your business in the online space.

[00:00:56]  Saul: Okay, so what today's topics, Gil?

[00:00:58]  Gillian: Well, today, we're I'm going to give a little more insight and information around the website design process and website design companies themselves, especially, especially the range of services that they offer. And hopefully, this will help you take advantage of all that that company can do and maybe save you some time in the process. So website designers bring a variety of skills to the table. So let's find out more about how they can help you.

[00:01:24]  Saul: Yeah, okay, let's get started.

[00:01:26]  Gillian: Okay, well, first of all, I guess the first thing is your website company will be able to help you with a custom website design.

[00:01:31]  Saul: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So like a lot of different services that are offered by anyone, anywhere, things come in various different sizes, and packages and shapes. Yeah, some people will offer only a purely template solution, you have to do almost everything else yourself. Other people will offer somewhere in between but a of a template, a little bit of design, but not a great deal. And then other people also offer a much more full-service kind of solution. But have a starting point. But really, [inaudible] I'm mostly most of most everything that you're doing throughout the whole process. Get around like a brand, and goals. We fit into that. That picture. Yeah, much more.

[00:01:32]  Gillian: So ideally, your web design company should be able to give you some branding advice.

[00:02:29]  Saul: Well, I mean, not ideally, but most of the time, the reality is that a lot of website designers don't do branding or design so that's often not the case.

[00:02:48]  Gillian: And what about content management solutions?

[00:02:52]  Saul: Okay, so content sort of management, if you're looking for a good solution, there's a range of different ones out there, including WordPress, Squarespace and any number of content management systems that are used to build websites, different places, usually, by preference, use certain ones over others. Everyone thinks that this is the best, as everyone has their own opinions, the reality is, all of them generally do the job and the client mostly doesn't really care. They just want a good result. But when they do care is they come to when they have to edit it. And that's important as that it's going to be easy, but good support and education from the agency that's helping them.

[00:03:46]  Gillian: Okay, well, will your website design company be able to help you out with SEO?

[00:03:52]  Saul: Yes, but not always. I mean, some places specifically do SEO services for people. That's all they do. website designers, many of them will be able to help you out with that, too, by unless they've got a good level of knowledge in that area of how to do that, or the sort of approach of having a targeted, strategic approach, by being able to identify, first of all, what goals are actually implies or need to be set, then the rest of the process becomes a lot harder, because you're just randomly choosing things that you need to rank for sort of thinking about it in a strategic way.

[00:04:43]  Gillian: And because there's on page SEO, and off page SEO.

[00:04:47]  Saul: Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[00:04:50]  Gillian: So on page SEO is how you optimize your website itself, and off page SEO, those outreach activities that you do outside of your work?

[00:05:00]  Saul: Yeah, that's right. And there's a range of different from link building to other sources outside of your website that are pointing over to your site.

[00:05:10]  Gillian: so will your website design company assist you out when it comes to mobile website development?

[00:05:16]  Saul: Yes, often they will. But once again, some agencies will only have a limited set of services, but mobile website design and development is becoming a bigger part of things that are important to consider, mainly driven by the fact that people are looking at websites on their smartphones. So therefore, whilst most sites are worse, called responsive sites, so they're mobile friendly, the content will change too soon, whatever screen somebody looks at it on, they aren't necessarily a mobile site, which, broadly speaking, acts more books and acts more like an app word that you get from the app stores. 

[00:06:07]  Gillian: Now, will they be able to help you with online advertising?

[00:06:11]  Saul: Yes, or no. Once again, a lot of these questions. People often will if they're offering a more holistic solution for a business, but depending on what that means, whether it's Facebook ad campaigns, or Google AdWords, or AdWords or any number of the many solutions out there, they might not do that at all. 

[00:06:40]  Gillian: And what about consulting services?

[00:06:43]  Saul:  and consulting for websites or for? Well, for anything that's going to be. Yeah, I mean, by default, is generally service services of that nature, during the website sort of process, but separately many may not because they may not necessarily be a great deal of, of value in somebody wanting to consult just about a website, unless it's of a certain nature, and they may just want to do it and find somebody and do that, that may be more applicable to if you're thinking about brand and a much bigger picture.

[00:07:28]  Gillian: And will your website company, or should your website company be able to help you out with long term website maintenance and support?

[00:07:35]  Saul: I imagine most people do in that, because that's an important part we consider anyway, to be for the future. Looking after your website, the reality is a lot of websites don't necessarily require a great deal of maintenance as such, but they do require some level of support, and certain updates that need to be met, that they can do for you to offer ongoing support, or just ad hoc support, as required if that's more appropriate.

[00:08:16]  Gillian: And what about managed web hosting?

[00:08:21]  Saul: When you've got something like Squarespace, for example, and Wix, and any number of Oh, yeah, also called self-hosted, or, as you said, is, if it's managed, it will generally mean, although not always, but it'll generally mean that the website solution on Squarespace, the content management system, is a part of the hosting so you don't install any software on a server. And then you start your whole process is part of the one thing, which has its own advantages and generally, those sorts of services, they manage everything for you. Like the name says, and give you peace of mind, you don't have to handle the technical side, which is a very appealing thing for a lot of people.

[00:09:15]  Gillian: Have you got some good advice, some good tips here for what to look for when considering which web design company to work with?

[00:09:27]  Saul: Okay, well, I think there's a few aspects to that, like, one of the first things would be to check their portfolio is to look at the sort of work people have done, obviously, in the past. Check testament..

[00:09:42]  Gillian:  The portfolio tells the story tells the story. Yes, well, it can tell a range of different stories, but ultimately, some people unbeknownst to the web designers, they're looking for us style, or they're looking for something that they just generally like, but having a look at that before at least getting a flavour of how they approach things, checking testimonials to see and hear was tell a story. Yes, well, it's all about it seems like there's a common thread here, that there's it's about storytelling, and checking testimonials, tells it's great to hear what other people have to say otherwise is unless you don't really like people, but most people do and ultimately to talk to them and get to know about the range of services that they offer and how that can help you. I mean, you may have already read that on their website, but it's good hearing it from somebody because that's going to tell your...

[00:10:51]  Gillian: Still working from person to person?

[00:10:52]  Saul: Yeah, person to person, human contact is good, even in this highly digital age.

[00:11:00]  Gillian:  It turns out, it's all that matters.

[00:11:02]  Saul: Well, yeah, it kind of is like that, that's the irony is even with everything, we've grade services and all these fantastic online solutions, people still just want a human connection and that's where they can get a flavour of that even before they have that actual human connection, they can get a bit of a taste of that from a well thought through sort of portfolio and site as well, and with that fantastic ending. That's it for today, guys, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. 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/web-design. Where on a journey to help local Brisbane businesses grow their opportunities online and exceed their goals. Thanks for listening and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.

[00:12:07]  Gillian: Bye, everyone.