Why Running a Web Design Agency Is Harder Than It Looks

0:00I'm really embarrassed of my website because I don't want people to see my website. But everybody in our industry are checking up us checking up on us right on uh the internet and stuff like that. We actually managed to three times um or triple their leads on the website after that after that project. So how can I leverage my website as a channel for growth? one channel that can really help them get to their business goal for revenue, more sales, more bookings, right? Overall, just like making them um a business owner who understand how to navigate the different marketing channels and delivering the right experience for their target audience on

0:43the web. So, I would ask like why do you need a website? And if you do need a website, what is it actually for? Many times when I talked to different clients in the past, I would ask them this one question. It's like, so what is the purpose of your website? And oftent time they would say like, you know what, we never really thought that we would need

1:03a reason to have a website. A lot of like other agency owners or agency employees when they get any kind of lead, they try to convince people that they need exactly what they're offering. And what you're saying is more like I I don't have to convince you that you need what I need. Like I need to know like what do you want? What's the objective that you have with your website is most businesses don't really rely on their website to generate more business to generate more leads or even like sales in general. Some even happy not have any website or just like a very simple website that say hey we exist and

1:40that's pretty much it. I'm not in a business to convince people that they should have a website, right? Because not all businesses might need a website. So oftent time I would really try to understand like what is their business, right? Different business um or businesses I should say needs different type of website. For example, a B2B website versus a direct to consumer website, the overall business is already different and the way you're leveraging your website will also be slightly different. If you really look at how your customer acquisition really um you know structure D to C is really just like okay you really want to get

2:17purchase as soon as they land on your website right and converting that leads into a customer. But for B2B it's like you're not going to expect somebody to come into your website and purchase on day one. That's just not how B2B cycle typically work. right now. If you're a SAS and you're like a well-known SAS um company, maybe maybe that would be your very quick um sales cycle. But oftent time I prefer to really understand like what is the business and what is the goal for the next year and five years because then we are building a solution for the long term. Right? Many times when people come to us um they often

2:58share that, oh we just put something together on Wix and now we kind of regret it or we put something like a very um how do we say this like a very quick solution using Upwork and now we need something more. So your business will evolve and I think we all understand that and it's okay if you need to start something very small even today with AI things like that go for it but remembering that at the end of the day as your business scale and grow the systems that you're using the tech stack that you're using and your website also need to help accommodate that

3:34growth right so if you need to start thinking about like how would I use my website in the next year or in the next 5 years in terms of like getting uh more leads, more booking or maybe even more sales. Like how does that going to impact the you know cycle for our own customers as they coming through us

3:54using the website? It's just like a house. When you buy a house, maybe you're single, maybe you are in your teen years and all you need is a a bedroom, a microwave, and a place to shower, right? And then as you find a partner and then you grow and then your house will need some changes and then if you have kids it's going to need something bigger. Right. So as you were explaining about this it came back this kind of analogy of the website being the house that actually evolves as you evolve as well as a business or as a person. I feel like a lot of time people

4:36misinterpret that website design is a separate thing from branding and marketing. It's not it's just you know a separate channel that you just need to pay close attention to because it is your home on the internet right and it will house your brand um your marketing your process everything is going to be in there it's going to live there if you'd like it to be and then I think many businesses who really utilize their website to the max really understand what information can really go and live on your website so that it's not only serving your target audience but also being picked up by SEO or now even with

5:20AO go all the EOS out there um to really understand like how are you standing out amongst all the different competitors right but you know back to your questions like how does the branding really relate with the websites that we have or even like how do we make sure that it ties in I think often time people not seeing the full picture how their brand really attached to everything in the business right often time you would hear like oh I just need the business strategy branding will come later by branding they will say like the logo the colors all the pretty stuff like no I am a big believer that the

6:02business strategy and the brand strategy that really go hand in hand right because you're really talking about your business as a living being because it is. He said that you should be able to tell your story and that's what I think the definition of branding is in a way that people can tell your story when you're

6:28not in the room. And that's branding for me. It's like this is it. When we do work on any web project, brand is the first thing that we're trying to understand as well after learning the business objective. Like what is your brand? Like what are you all about? We can't be creating a website design that only relies on your favorite color for example, right? Or only rely on like, oh, I like these competitors and these website. Go create something similar like those. Like we can't really do that. I remember the first couple of years when I started my business, I was trying to be everything

7:08for everybody, every businesses, right? All I wanted was like I remember thinking it's like I just want to help like all the businesses out there. And my mentor told me like Ari, if you're targeting everybody, you are targeting nobody. And I was like, you're right. And this is a it's a really hard limiting belief that what they don't understand it from my own experiences like I I I I thought like that too right and there's part of me that still wants to kind of know I want to serve more because I have more business right I'm leaving money on the table but the thing is that if you're a

7:46specialist in something everyone is clear that they go to you there will come other businesses that are not your specialty but they are going to come to you because you solved for that part but then they have something else and then suddenly I think it's called the hello bias right because you're really good at one thing they believe you're good at anything right and and the example that I use is when people like you have like a a soccer

8:22player, right? You you're an American. So, a soccer player, if you were English, it was a football player. So, a soccer player, really good. And then they come, they ask them about soccer. And then suddenly they're like, you know what? What about the politics? Like, you know, what's happening in the politics in here? It's like what? And then like who the hell would in their natural mind ask a soccer player about politics? But it's because they are specialists in one area and then suddenly people come for their advice in other areas which is the hidden part of these niching down from my own perspective and from my own

9:00experience. We're living in the digital world. Um, honestly, not so much digital, it's more like agentic AI world, right? I think it's just like getting super um advanced. Um, I would say in terms of like all the different AI tools that we're using. It's just a matter of like what, a year, year and a half. And I think it's so fascinating to see how quickly content get um content influence many different types of search engine. Now we already know all things about SEO and I think many of us have dbleble dabbled a lot in those whether it's for our clients for ourselves and things like that to get

9:42picked up by search engines but now we're also trying to make sure that we can also get recommended to users and our customers using AI um you know products. So I think for many of those out there who may be not familiar with the term think of it this way. I'm going to just like speak it plainly, right? AO or go, whatever AO is out there right now with AI. Essentially, if you are searching or using any AI tools and you're asking for recommendation, let's say like, hey, I want to actually go take my wife to a special restaurant in Chicago and it will recommend maybe like

10:20a top three, right? Or maybe would ask you first like, okay, what kind of restaurant are you looking for? Something upscale, maybe something casual, so on and so forth. And the more information that you're giving or feeding into AI, the harder it works in the back end to try to find this recommendation online based on all the local content available for um those particular keywords and search terms. So if you are a business for example like honestly any business really right now if you have poured a lot of content keywords and essentially SEO in the past decade chances are you probably get picked up pretty quickly by any of these

11:02um you know AI tools out there but for those who maybe don't really spend enough investment I should say whether it's like you know um time and effort s or cost investment for search in general, you might not get picked up. So now you have to kind of like catch up to all of these race around like can we generate more content that are relevant to our business so that when the time is right, you know, all of these different um search um essentially well searching um our business can then get picked up and being recommended. So I think there this is a very interesting era I feel

11:42like it for all of us to create yet again more content and try to you know get recommended but it's no longer like trying to be the first on Google or the first page on Google right it's more about like are we being recommended for the relevant things that we provide based on our you know business yeah but one thing that I wanted to to go back is like when you're talking about oh I I come from a graphic designer background. Is that what you said? Right. Tell me a bit more like how you actually started your company and then like tell me a bit the story. I

12:19want to know all about it actually. Oh man, this is such a um it's so interesting because it will take me to you know my memory lane, right? I was born and raised in Bali and as you know Bali is very tourismheavy. um island and everything that you see left and right, the career that you see as you grow up there is everything in tourism. So, for a long time, I actually didn't know what I wanted to be or become like a career-wise until I dabbled into a world of like, you know, um, skateboard and then there's like pop culture, all that kind of stuff, and I

13:00learned about design and was like so fascinating. And to be honest, as I was growing up, whenever I watch TV and I saw a commercial, I always wonder, how do they know which product to really promote, right? And also like how do they do the messaging? Like how do they make all of these looks so appealing for consumers like ours to really want to buy it and go out there and you know purchase it? And I finally realized all of these advertising world and graphic design is just super intriguing. Um so I went in to a uh you know a art school in Bal Indonesia. But here's another

13:42interesting thing. I don't know how to draw. So for someone who don't know how to draw and only have like a passion and it's like I want to be a designer. That is what I want. And my first two years I have to tell you it I was so miserable because I don't know how to draw and they force you how to do everything manually, right? Mixing up the colors like typography, illustration, all of

14:04those. You cannot touch computer at all. And it was so miserable and I was I would cry every night trying to make you know all these different homework. And I didn't realize that for a long time until mentor told me like you don't need to be a great artist to become a great designer. You already have the vision. It's not for everybody. Even entrepreneurship is not for everybody, right? Like building a business with your spouse isn't for everybody. And I think you have to know yourself as well in terms of how do you set that life boundaries for yourself. Um because I think it will be such a disaster if you don't know how

14:46you would work with you know your spouse or even like family members and things like that and things just go south. That's just unfortunate, right? And regardless though, if you are building a business with someone that you have known for a while, be it like best friend, family, spouse, and things like that. It's a business and I think

15:10documents have to be in place, right? things have to be um breaking away from your current relationship and seeing it in a new lens because then you don't see it as um personal treatment like to some degree because it it was so hard in the first couple of years when Peter and I started the business because we were newly wed, right? And I think I was really just like honing in my skills in my 20s, right? Really trying to like, okay, I need to learn graphic design. I need to learn like website, digital design, UIUX. And then, um, from there, I learned more on the brand strategy side

15:52of things and become a strategist. Um, overlaying that with, you know, experience around like marketing as well. And what really resonated with me in my 20s was my husband has always been a big believer like you have to understand the business side of thing. You can't just like design just for the sake of aesthetics, right? Um so he

16:13really just like pound it in my head. It's like what is the business goal? Are you really solving a business problem here or are just making things pretty? So that was like my big my big I would say like heights or battle sometimes with him was like no but it has to be this like amazingly creative and beautiful and all that kind of stuff. He was like giving me such a hard time like but yes I understand that but what really like is this solving a business problem and I think it took me a couple years to finally understand like yes I understand where you're going with this

16:47business is very important to um take into a whole account in all of these different approach right for branding and marketing and everything starts with the vision and when we help different clients through understanding what their vision and bringing that to life for their business. That is my superpower, right? Really seeing like I see your business and I can really envision and bring it to life for you so that you don't have to leave it just in your

17:16head. When you choose to be a business owner, you choose life in the hardest mode. Like he made an analogy with video game, right? It's just like that's it. It's like it's not for the faint of heart, right? And for us in the agency, it's more about utilizing AI as our sidekick. To be honest with you, many of the different team members that we have um are using it in multiple different ways. The majority of the way they're using it is to really boost up their productivity, make sure that they're able to either produce something um quickly or maybe quicker, right? um in terms of like speed of the deliverables

18:01and I think you bring a really good point in terms of like at the end of the day it is still up to us right the expert to really decide whether or not those output um is the right output for the business I'm like okay it's like you're a good professional so let's say that do you use a computer yet yeah I do like does it help you yeah like so I'm not going to pay your price because you're using a computer so you should do everything on paper and no it's going to take me to so there you go man I I'm using AI it means that

18:34I can produce a lot because I use AI if I have to do everything manually I'm going to charge you two times what I'm char what I'm what I'm actually offering you right now I can do it as are you willing to pay no it has to be cheaper it's like if you want cheaper there is this great website called Fiverr you can find people that will do for

18:55really cheap Right. Once that doesn't work, you call me again. Mhm. Right. Like, and that's when I say like sometimes we need to to sound really bad that that's the part of being an entrepreneur that you have to fight for it and not be a people pleaser and be able like if I'm going to work with you, we have to be on the same terms,

19:17right? Mhm. But anyways, these are part of the being an entrepreneur, taking hard decisions that sometimes the fate of the heart wouldn't take it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate anytime. Thank you so much for having me. I It was great and I'm pretty sure we're going to have another conversation. Sounds good. All right. Thank you.

19:39Thank you.