Start Digital’s mission is to put ourselves out of business. By empowering clients to maintain their own digital profiles – website, social media, SEO – we want them to take control of their business and it’s future opportunities.
Of course, that may be a little over dramatic and we’d rather not go out of business but when we say we want our clients to take control of their business we really mean it. We intend to both talk the talk and, heaven forbid, walk the walk.
Why agencies are protective?
There are a range of reasons why traditional web design agencies prefer a smoke and mirrors approach.
- By giving you, the client, access to your own site you’re capable of changing and moving content, which in turn affects the design. No one likes to see their work altered and, at worst, destroyed. Locking down access protects the original design
- Building a website on an agency built CMS (content management system) locks you into using that web design agency for the life of the website. No one else supports the system
- Locking you into a support contract keeps you with that agency for a period of time. It’s a marriage, except it’s harder to get out of.
Why we’re not protective.
Our team have been involved in the tech scene for over 20 years. We’ve been a part of the boom, the bust and the boom again. During this roller coaster our clients have either had too much money or not enough money.
This over simplifies things a little but essentially it equates to some businesses hire out all their IT tasks for a fee. Other businesses try to do it themselves to save some money.
Those businesses that have the money to pay for IT related services are often time poor and need to rely on specialists to deliver work to specification, on time and on budget. We’re happy to show them the ropes and tricks of the trade but often they have other things on their mind.
For small businesses and startups money and time is tight and sending work out to a design team feels like a luxury that no one can afford. One of the team will play around with Wix and might put together some brochures in Microsoft Word. Another will find some free fonts and create a logo. This can yield some reasonable results but 9.9 times out of 10 it won’t look professional.
Teaching Our Clients
We believe that by empowering our clients we’re building a working relationship built on trust.
When we complete a website it’s yours. No hidden small print tying you to Start Digital for the next 3 years. No lengthy SEO contract. No pushy sales guy trying to upsell. It’s your site and we’ll support you if you want it.
Want to know how to add to your site, we’ll show you how.
If you want to know how to create well designed social posts we can show you how.
Need the Photoshop files that we used to help design your site? They’re all yours.
Get your site to rank higher on Google? Just say the word.
Of course, we can provide all of these services as well but by educating our clients we’re demonstrating we want them to succeed on their own terms. This ethical business model for small business should be the norm: empowering small businesses to understand and look after their digital profiles in the right way can only benefit both their business and ours.
Customised training
Start Digital customise our training to meet with your own business needs. Again, nothing pushy. We give as much or as little as you want and need. We provide access to a range of resources that will help you on your journey to managing your business online. For example we can provide training on any of these design tools:
- Option 1. Adobe Creative Cloud is suite of design tools including Photoshop and Illustrator that help businesses with a little time and a reasonable budget create beautiful online content
- Option 2. Canva is a free online tool that provides quick design templates tailored for websites, business cards, social media and brochures
We provide similar solutions in the area of Web Design, Search Engine Optimisation, social platforms and online marketing and advertising.
It’s our hope that the web industry recognises the need to empower other businesses. It’s a fast moving, ever changing world and by truly demonstrating openness and transparency we can help build a community that values honesty and delivers meaningful results for all parties. It might be a little Disneyfied but it’s worth working for.