About Anthony Keal

I started as a designer. That turned out to be an advantage.

I'm Anthony Keal, an independent digital consultant in Melbourne, working with businesses across Australia. I trained in design, learned delivery inside agencies, then ran digital client side for a large residential home builder, so I see a website the way your customers do, read the code like a developer and question an estimate like someone who has written plenty.

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You'll work with me, AnthonyNot an account manager or a junior. I reply to every enquiry myself.

At a glance

Bachelor of Design Swinburne University of Technology, Dean's list
More than ten years Agency side and client side
Head of Digital A large residential home builder, 2024 to 2026
ClickUp Admin and Expert Certified, and a Verified Power User
The Digital Project Manager Member since 2022
Based in Melbourne Working with clients across Australia and New Zealand

How I got here

Most of my career was agency side, delivering for clients across property, legal, FMCG, education and professional services. Then I crossed to the client side. Knowing the difference between what an agency says and what it means is the core of what I bring.

Agency sideDesigner to senior producerA Bachelor of Design, a year as a digital designer at a small design agency, then six years at Annix, where I worked directly with clients from day one and was promoted to senior digital producer.
Agency leadDigital production leadThree years leading production at a Melbourne agency, building the systems for a team that grew from 3 to 9 across 20+ client projects at once.
Client sideHead of DigitalA large residential home builder, 2024 to 2026: the audit, the tender, the rebuild and the automation behind it.
NowIndependent consultantAudits, project rescue, fractional leadership and website care for Australian businesses and not for profits.

Case study · Large residential home builder

Led a home builder's website rebuild from the client side

As Head of Digital at a large residential home builder, I audited the website and the workflows behind it, and recommended a full rebuild rather than more patching. I wrote the brief, ran a formal tender, appointed the agency and stayed on as product owner through design, build and launch: 18 months from brief to launch.

The conversion rate went up 75% after launch, from better structure and content rather than A/B tests. Bringing day-to-day work in-house cut agency spend by an estimated $250K in my first year.

Read the case study

Platform strategy

Made Craft CMS an agency's core platform

Leading digital production at a Melbourne agency, I led the assessment of several CMS options, chose Craft CMS and wrote the strategy for making it the agency's core platform. Then I embedded it in how the team worked, with training materials and best practices, and brought in automated code deployment along the way.

Craft became a cornerstone of the agency's service offering. It's still the platform I know best, and the one this site runs on.

See my Craft CMS work

Operations

Rebuilt an agency's delivery system in ClickUp

Agencies run on handovers, approvals and deadlines, and most lose time chasing them. I rebuilt the agency's ClickUp workspace around how work actually moved: a standard hierarchy so anyone could find their way around any job, custom fields used as real data, and statuses that showed where every project was stuck without opening a single task. Clients got a live view of their hours: as the team tracked time, they could see their balance draw down in real time.

It gave the team visibility and consistency across 20+ projects at once. I'm ClickUp Admin and Expert certified and a Verified Power User, and I set ClickUp up the same way for clients today.

See ClickUp consulting

Leadership

Built the systems for a team growing from 3 to 9

Over three years the agency grew and its production team went from 3 people to 9, running more than 20 client projects at once. Growth like that breaks informal processes, so my job was building the systems that let more people deliver to the same standard: a rebuilt ClickUp workspace, a reviewed deployment pipeline, redesigned delivery workflows, clear roles and standards, and mentoring producers into senior roles.

It's the same work I now do for clients as their part-time digital lead, from the other side of the table.

See fractional head of digital

Automation

Cut a floorplan job from 30 minutes to seconds

At the home builder, every home design came with architectural floorplans, and each one had to be coded by hand for the website. I designed an interactive floorplan system and built a terminal tool behind it: drop a floorplan in, and it finds the rooms and structural options, asks what to call them on the website, writes the code changes and optimises the plan for the web. Each floorplan went from 30 minutes of work to seconds. Image pipelines crop and convert photos automatically, and the product platform integration I led saves 30 minutes on every house-and-land package and 2 hours on every home design published.

Together that took out around 80% of the manual publishing work. The value wasn't the technology. It was choosing which steps to automate and leaving the judgement calls with people, and that's how I approach AI and automation for clients.

See the AI and automation audit

Why I work this way

Mid-market digital problems are rarely one specialist's job. A single engagement can need design, technical SEO, conversion analysis, vendor management and integration scoping in the same week, and a team of specialists spends a lot of its budget just coordinating.

So I cover the whole of it myself. I can read a codebase, brief an agency, run a tender, build an automation and present to a board, and I know which of those is needed right now.

How the business works

When you engage Anthony Keal, you work directly with me. Keal Collective Pty Ltd is the company behind it, and on larger projects it's a collective in practice: vetted people I bring in, with me as lead.

Want to talk it through?

A free 20-minute call, with no pitch.

Book a 20-minute call or send me a message. I answer both myself.

Book a 20-minute call