What about aesthetics? Your sites look great. Is this a priority for you also?

We believe that a critical aspect of good aesthetics is functionality. Out-of-the-box sites often look okay, but that is the limitation of that value proposition. They’re usually not functional for a niche user. We cater to a niche market with an existing content basis and specific customer journey. This requires thorough planning and customisation, which we can do with Pixel Together. We can create an array of templates that we can easily deploy in a scalable way.
 
Since our beginning a few years ago, we have created a second iteration of our base templates in response to an emergent trend of our clients wanting to rebrand. This often involves a change of colours and fonts, but the content stays the same. So, we were able to use the new features of variability mixed with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) functionality to create sites that we can now build in half the time instead of going page by page. We could change small bits of code, use specific variability functionalities within the platform and change a website within a couple of hours. That process used to be 10-20 hours' worth of work. Thanks to that internal functionality and productivity aspect, we’re able to do more with less for our customers.
 
Aside from functionality and customisability, is there anything else you value highly in a hosting platform?

The service that we get from the Pixel Together team is one of intimacy. Not only product excellence, but it is also customer intimacy. And that is a significant value proposition for us because I know I have an expert in my corner who can advise me on simple solutions to complex problems. And who is honest and upfront about capabilities and limitations. That makes a difference because the Pixel Together team might not promise the world, but I know if a promise is made, it will be realised. So, as a business leader, I can then make decisions for my clients and my team that I know will be accurate.
 
Another aspect is how responsive the Pixel team are. They consistently reply quickly, can discuss problems, and demonstrate a great sense of understanding. Often in the process of talking through the issue, the Pixel team will find solutions within the platform that we hadn’t recognised. And they never get frustrated!

To see more of the exciting work our customers are creating on our platform, here are five of our favourite #madeinpixel sites.

Tell me a little about your suite of sites.

Our network of sites is nationwide across Australia. We represent small and medium-sized businesses in the healthcare industry in metropolitan, regional and remote areas and across a broad range of demographics and psychographics. So, we need to cater for a wide range of audiences in terms of aesthetics and user experience. We were looking for a solution to scalably produce sites that are content-based and present a unique sense of identity.

In our industry, trust is essential. We wanted to use our sites to help overcome the emerging trust gap, particularly due to the enormous amount of information dispersed during the Covid-19 pandemic. So, each website needs to represent people within communities, actual people, not just models or stock images.

What made you decide to use Pixel Together to achieve this?

When we began to look for platforms to build our sites, all we could find was WordPress, which felt a little bland and difficult to manage from an agency point of view.

At the time, I was on holiday in Hawaii and happened to be getting into a lift as a couple were getting out. So I slipped in a g’day – to which they responded with the same in a good old Aussie accent. A short conversation later, we discovered that we both live in Brisbane, share mutual friends, and work with similar business models. She put me in touch with Simon at Pixel Together, and it’s been a wonderful relationship ever since.
 
Since then, we’ve published 300 websites in three and a half years – even with the obstacle of the pandemic!
 
What we’ve been able to do is simplify for our clients something inherently complex and generally out of their reach. We’ve given them the ability to create a site that they can set up that is customisable, fully content-packed, and with functionality and tools they didn’t know they needed. Underpinning all of that are sites that combine the right aesthetics and are aligned with our group’s broader strategy to help support and grow their business.
 
Our overarching strategy is to teach our clients about creating value, communicating value and delivering value and overlaid on that is an agnostic industry solution.
It involves using existing technologies within the industry that the website makes accessible.

Could you give us an example of how you fused existing technologies with your Pixel Together sites?

Over the last two years, our industry has played a significant role in disseminating information and facilitating health processes during the Covid-19 pandemic. In Australia, information and procedures were changing rapidly and varied from state to state.
 
There were many applications that users needed to access at various times throughout the pandemic. The problem we had to solve was connecting our users with these applications in a way that made sense to them, answered their questions, and maintained their trust in our clients.
 
Because we were able to create content packages quickly, we could easily implement these packages within sites across the country so that staff and communities were well informed and able to access unique booking systems quickly and easily. Pixel Together allowed us to use external mapping tools to infuse content into our extensive networks of sites, matching their existing websites. So, our clients had subdomain websites they could manage quite easily.
 
It was also important to us to maintain our users' trust, as, within healthcare, trust is critical. We didn’t want users pinging all over the web trying to piece together information in a disjoined journey. Trust is often lost that way. So we used features like lock boxes to ensure the user experience was seamless.
 
One operational mechanism we utilised internally was to link our ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and embed our forms in Pixel Together. This meant that we could easily change and manage project management flows. We could quickly enter change requests, which would flow immediately into a back end. That made a big difference because we could monitor all of the requirements coming through that were often changing quickly and in great detail. This system made it all manageable. For example, government programs and initiatives announced throughout the pandemic could easily be communicated at a local level because we could take that content, quickly create a scalable package, and deploy it across the network.
 
And now, we have to undo our work because, in Australia, it is much closer to business as usual; the pandemic initiatives have stopped and ceased. So we have to clean up all of these sites, which we have been able to do, at scale, quite easily because of the functionality of the Pixel Together sites. Primarily because it's low code and an easy interface, and because of the service we get from Simon and his team.
 
The scalability and flexibility of Pixel Together meant that we could continue to create content packages without compromising the user experience and manage the flux and change of the pandemic information rapidly and efficiently. We found that over the pandemic, we went from approximately two million hits per year to four million hits per year. We are very proud of the fact that we were able to facilitate communication within communities in an easy, trusting way and position our clients as expert voices in their communities.