Resources

Practical Guides for Small Business

Straight answers on websites, search, AI search, social media, branding and design, written by our team in Ballina from the work we do for businesses across the Northern Rivers and Australia.

Web Design

Designing for phones first: what changes for local businesses

Your customers are mostly looking at your site on a phone, often one-handed. Designing for that changes your header, buttons and forms, and a five-minute test on your own phone shows what to fix first.

Read the guide 6 min read
Web Design

How to write a web design brief your designer will thank you for

A web design brief template you can copy, with example answers from a made-up Northern Rivers arborist to show the level of detail that actually helps.

Read the guide 6 min read
Web Design

The first screen of your homepage: what has to be there

Four things every visitor should see before they scroll, and before-and-after headline rewrites for an electrician, a psychologist, an accountant and a pub.

Read the guide 5 min read
Web Design

What a small business website should actually do

Looks are the least of it. Your website has five jobs to do, and a quick self-audit on your phone shows which ones yours is failing.

Read the guide 6 min read
SEO

SEO for small business: where to start

Most small business SEO advice is a list of 50 things in no particular order. This is the order we'd actually do them in, and what you can safely ignore.

Read the guide 6 min read
Web Design

Website hosting explained in plain English

Hosting is the part of your website you never think about until it breaks. Shared versus managed hosting, what good backups look like, why email often belongs elsewhere, and eight questions to ask before you choose a host.

Read the guide 6 min read
Web Design

Renting vs owning your website: the five-year maths

The monthly website deal looks cheap until you total five years of fees and read the exit clause. We work through the numbers so you can see which option really costs more.

Read the guide 6 min read
Web Design

How much does a website cost in Australia? An honest breakdown

Where the money actually goes in a website project, the realistic price bands in Australia, and how to compare quotes that look nothing alike.

Read the guide 7 min read

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Our team in Ballina builds websites, runs SEO and social media, and handles branding and photography for businesses across the Northern Rivers and Australia.