As well as being a talented designer, Matthew is a master craftsman in all the work involved in developing a website – the coding and content management that terrify most of us! This hidden side of your website is where the real magic happens. Matthew develops websites that perfectly support his unique designs … websites that are superbly functional, intuitive to navigate, and engaging and interactive for users.
And of course, Matthew’s website development process incorporates multiple levels of security as well as sophisticated SEO to ensure your website is highly successful in reaching your clients.
Whether you need a new website built from scratch, or you want to refresh or improve your existing website, Matthew can create a website for you that:
- is fast-loading: to make a strong first impression, promote confidence in your organisation, and keep visitors engaged
- is mobile ready: mobile devices now account for over half of web traffic worldwide, so it’s essential that your website design is mobile-friendly
- is tracking-enabled for analytics: to monitor website traffic and conversions against your organisation’s goals
- is SEO savvy: incorporating search engine optimisation strategies at every level of the development process, to ensure your site ranks highly in search results – and that means more traffic and more clients
- has a user-friendly content management system (CMS)
- is optimised for conversion: implementing tools that guide your visitors to take action
- integrates social media platforms
- incorporates high-level security and privacy protocols
Matthew specialises in the Joomla content management system, which he finds to be the most advanced open source CMS available.
‘Joomla has continued to adapt and improve since its release 15 years ago to become one of the most flexible and user-friendly content management systems available, while Wordpress has not grown in the same way and is still built upon its original “blog” platform. Wordpress websites primarily use modified off-the-shelf templates and all look very similar. Joomla allows me to develop my own custom templates to create truly unique website designs for my clients.’
With Joomla Matthew can install commercial Joomla extensions/add-ons that allow the websites he develops to function at a higher level: page editing interface, document management, image galleries, advanced contact forms, security plugins, search engine friendly urls and search engine optimisation, to name a few.
By creating his own templates, Matthew is able to control the code used, removing any security risks of third-party code and files. Although it is possible for anyone to build a website, if it is not done professionally there are significant risks, not only of the website not functioning correctly but also of it being easily hacked.
Matthew has a number of clients who shifted their business to him because in the past their Wordpress websites hosted on other platforms were hacked, or were not appearing in search engine results, or they were locked into updates by the original website developer at a cost of $250/hour! Matthew has converted these sites to new Joomla websites hosted on his secure server.
Joomla’s user-friendly dashboard interface allows Matthew’s clients to easily update their own websites, even if they don’t have a high level of computer skills.
Or Matthew can do the updates at his far more reasonable rate of $110/hour. Matthew also offers training and tech support in troubleshooting. Here are some examples of the time taken for content management, charged at $110/hour (including GST):
- Text change only: approx. 5-10 minutes
- Image change only: approx. 10-15 minutes
- Text and images changes: approx. 25-45 minutes, depending on the number of changes and images required.
So, what it comes down to is simple: the website Transformation by Design develops for you will look stunning, will work beautifully, and will do a lot more, for a lot less.
