Personify assists small
business owners with
all aspects of website design
and associated services.

To bring your website online, we will use the following basic components:

1. A Domain Name
   • Your domain, or website address or URL, is essentially the address that a user will enter in order to reach your website. It is also a reference point for browsers to reach your website.
   • Utilising some other address inputs, your domain name can also serve as your respective email address with all inbound emails associated to your domain name being funnelled into your inbox.
2. DNS Settings
   • DNS settings are a list of addresses and other settings that inform various internet services where to locate, send or receive your online information to/from.
   • Some of these settings will relate to your email address/addresses while others will be used to allow internet browsers (eg Google Chrome), to locate your website files for loading/rendering.
   • DNS settings are also used to verify domain name ownership for other online services such as transactional email and website data analysis.
   • Your DNS settings might be located in the same account as where your domain name is registered. Or that may be located elsewhere with services such as Cloudflare. This is Personify’s preferred option as Cloudflare offers a number of valuable services for website traffic filtering and security.
3. A Website Host/Server
   • A Website Host of Server is essentially a hard drive, or series/network of hard drives around the world that store your website files. When a user types in your website address or URL into a website browser such as Google Chrome, the browser quickly checks the DNS settings that are referenced against your domain name. These subsequently point the browser to the hard drive where your website files are located, the files are download and then loaded in order to build and render your website in the browser window. All of these actions take from a fraction of second to 1 to 3 seconds depending on how many larger files such as images need to be downloaded to complete the rendering of your website.
4. Website Files
   • As discussed above, the website browser will load all of the files that are associated with rendering your website each time a user visits your page.
   • These files can include software packages such as WordPress, Image Files, HTML Files (The basic language and code structure of your website), CSS Files (these dictate how your website is styled) and PHP Files (which outline the functions and actions of certain elements of your website.
5. SSL Certificate
   • From 1st July 2023, all new projects include an SSL Certificate free with our hosting plans to ensure that data to and from your website is encrypted.

What does this mean? Well we have delivered exceptional value and high performance hosting that offers a better service for your customers via faster load times, which also contributes to a higher ranking website.

These servers are located in Sydney which is a critical consideration for us. Servers should ideally be located as close to the end user as possible to reduce lags times in the loading of your website. Whilst there are cheaper hosting options located in South East Asia or the USA, we feel that these options would not provide the same level of performance or service for our Australian clients.

The overall speed and reliability of these servers are of benefit to our Western Australian and Eastern States clients.

It is critical for your website investment to be maintained to ensure the security and longevity of your site, and safety of your visitors.

The design of a website on a platform such as WordPress requires the interaction of various pieces of software which include the base WordPress software package, other add-on services and functions (plugins) and your website theme files.

These software elements are always evolving in the form of performance improvements, new functions, compatibility rectifications and security updates. Our maintenance packages ensure that these updates are undertaken and any security issues are addressed in a timely manner.

On occasion, software updates can result in conflicts between different elements of the software mix which can lead to certain functions, or the appearance of your website, not working as intended. This rectification work is also covered by these maintenance plans regardless of how extensive the rectification work.

We have had clients move the hosting of their website to the services of other colleagues which were unfortunately not maintained appropriately. The result was a website with a complete loss of function that was simply unusable. We welcomed the client back to Personify, and worked to restore and rebuild their site from an old backup file and had their business website up and running within a week.

Our maintenance plans also include backups with two separate providers that allow us to restore your website in a matter of moments should the worst occur.

There are a number of things that assist with the smooth and efficient completion of a website project:

1. A complete wishlist for your website;
   • This will include an outline of the pages that you wish to present on the website.
   • It might be specific functions such as a portfolio or gallery that you would like to include.
2. All of the required content and technical verbiage specific your market and area of expertise;
   • We can assist with rounding and expanding on some information, however we need the basis of what you are hoping to communicate and achieve with your website.
3. A style guide and list of assets used for current branding and promotion;
   • It is important for your branding and current promotion to work hand-in-hand with your website design.
   • Your website will form the anchor of your promotional efforts, so it is critical that all of these elements compliment each other.
   • Analyse other competitors or websites within or outside of your industry and try and ascertain what makes them appealing, or alternatively what doesn’t work.
   • Are the images strong or relevant enough?
   • Do they provide context, tell a story or are the there to assist with specific visual balance?
   • Does their logo stand up to and balance with the website?
   • Does the logo need re-visiting in order to compliment the new direction of the business?
   • How do the colours used make you feel about the business?
   • Is there a good balance of visual appealing content for scanning vs informative content to provide depth of detail where required?
4. A library of owned or licensed imagery that can be used for the project;
   • From our experience, strong and suitable images are the cornerstone for a visually appealing and impactful website.
   • Personify can assist in sourcing the required images for your project.

Our pricing starts at $1195 plus GST for a detailed, single page site that can be expanded upon once your business needs change.

This price does have additional inclusions, such as free hosting for the first 12 months, so please contact us for a detailed and informed quote.

On average we would spend 50-70% of our time on the design elements (polishing) of your website project. Is this worth it? We certainly think so and won’t be changing our approach. We choose to make those additional one percent improvements, because we know that our clients would appreciate us doing so and we will ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the final outcome.

Our clients’ websites are often the first impression that a new customer will make of their business. For some of our clients, the payback on their website is securing one additional new client. It may be the tipping point of securing a new home build or fitout, two additional consulting clients, or construction of a $10,000 driveway.

The underlying value and professionalism that your website can passively communicate can establish a level of trust for you to found your business relationships on moving forward.

Whilst on paper our service is transactional, history will show that most of our original clients are still our existing clients, and the small percentage that aren’t our clients have either sold their businesses, or retired to other ventures. The true value of what we do is realised over these long term business relationships.

In our portfolio of clients are designs that we created 10 years ago, that we are still proud to highlight today.

 

So in setting the budget for your project we request that you consider the service benefit to payback term of a website project that will be of service for the next 3, 5 or possibly 10 years?

 

For most small businesses this will be in the order of $900, $540 or $270 per annum in current value for the relevant period of service (plus annual running costs).

 

With this in mind, what value would a website project return if it secured just 1, 5 or 10+ additional clients per annum?