The Canberra web designers who aren’t afraid to be friends with their competitors
Website developers Jenny Power (right) and Sarah Oates (left)
Jenny Power from Webtree and Sarah Oates from Endure Web Studios have each been in the industry for over a decade and know what makes a good website. Both have Canberra-grown businesses.
Question: What about Canberra helped your businesses grow?
‘Canberra’s like a big country town,’ said Oates.
The Canberra environment makes it easy to network and build a sturdy foundation. People trust each other and the business’ that friends recommend. ‘People talk to people. she said. If you do quality work and you treat your clients well, people will endorse your business, and you’ll continue to expand. But as soon as you treat people badly, it will work in the reverse for you.’
“People talk to people. If you do good quality work and you treat your clients well, people will endorse your business and you’ll continue to expand.”
Question: Has there been a project that’s been particularly rewarding?
‘The most current project I completed was the Sports Medicine Australia website,’ said Oates. ‘It was a really great experience. I was working with a team who really knew what they wanted and were on the ball and ready to go. I felt really proud of the end result.’
‘It’s always nice to work on sites that are positively helping the community,’ said Power. ‘I recently built the Soldier On Australia website. They do amazing things in the community. Building their website makes you feel like you’re part of what they’re doing.’
“It’s always nice to work on sites that are positively helping the community.”
Not afraid to lose clients
Honesty gets results. If they know someone else would be better suited for the client’s request, they let their client know. They have a small group of industry colleagues who know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and they know that the sharing will come back around. Not only does this help the client end up with the best result, but the client will likely still recommend them to others because they’ve proved to be trustworthy.
They give their clients empowerment. Both Jenny and Sarah give each of their clients personalised training showing them how to update and change their website if they please.
‘We’ve seen too many small businesses get trapped by an agency,’ said Power. ‘They have no way of editing their website by themselves, and it’d cost them more money to have the site rebuilt.’
Building a business takes time
They didn’t have booming businesses straight away. It took both around five years before they could say they had a ‘full-on business’. In the early days, they started with people in their network, but as they each expanded their portfolios, outsiders started to reach out, and their businesses grew into what they are today.
