Field notes from the work
Insights and Resources
Notes from inside mid-market digital. Operational pieces on platforms, vendors, automation, and delivery — based on what actually happens, not what marketing decks say.
When to replatform to Shopify (and when to stay put)
Most Shopify replatform projects don't start with a strategy. They start with a bad week. A checkout outage during a sale, a security patch that broke three integrations, a developer quote for a "simple" change that came back at six weeks and five figures. Someone in the room says "we should just move to Shopify," everyone nods, and a decision that will shape your operations for the next four years gets made on frustration.What a fractional head of digital actually does
Most mid-market businesses don't have a single person who owns digital. They have a marketing manager running campaigns, an external agency building the website, an IT lead keeping the lights on, and a founder or GM making the big platform calls between everything else on their plate. Digital is everyone's job, which means it's nobody's.Server-side tracking, explained: when your business actually needs it
Your conversions "dropped" 30% overnight. Nothing changed in the market. Your sales team is just as busy, the phone still rings, the pipeline in your CRM looks healthy. But the dashboard says demand fell off a cliff. So which number do you believe?How to tell if your GA4 is actually tracking correctly
Here's a question worth sitting with: when did your GA4 numbers last match your CRM?Fractional CMO: what it costs, and when it's actually worth it
You've got a marketing team that's busy. Campaigns ship, the calendar's full, the agencies are billing on time. And yet the number that actually matters, revenue you can trace back to marketing, isn't moving the way it should. Someone on your board says the words "fractional CMO" and it lands like the answer: senior firepower, none of the six-figure commitment. Before you sign anything, it's worth understanding what you're buying, what it costs, and whether the role you need is the role you're about to hire.AI business development manager: what it can and cannot do
Someone in a sales meeting this quarter has said the words "AI BDM" with a straight face, and half the room quietly wondered whether their job just changed. The pitch is seductive: an agent that researches prospects, writes the outreach, qualifies the inbound and keeps the pipeline warm, all without a salary or a lunch break. Some of that is real. Some of it is a demo that falls apart the moment it meets your actual sales motion.Fractional CTO vs full-time: the decision, priced honestly
Every business that considers a fractional executive is really weighing three options, not two: engage fractional, hire full-time, or keep limping along with nobody owning the function. All three have a price. Only two of them print it on an invoice.How much does a fractional CTO cost in Australia?
Somewhere between $4,500 and $15,000 a month, and the difference is almost entirely how many days you're buying. That's the short answer. The rest of this article is the maths behind it, what moves the number, and the honest comparison against just hiring someone.Free Website Scorecard
Searching for a free website audit? Most of those are software-generated PDFs built to scare you. This is different: ten plain-English questions plus a live speed test, combined into one honest score for how your website is performing as a business asset. About two minutes, no sign-up to see your result.Why your Google Analytics data is probably wrong after the GA4 migration
Universal Analytics stopped collecting data on 1 July 2023. Most Australian businesses migrated to GA4 under time pressure, with a vendor or in-house team running a one-to-one port rather than a re-implementation. The result, almost everywhere: GA4 setups that technically work, but don't measure what the business thinks they're measuring.Fractional CMO vs Fractional Head of Digital: which one do you actually need?
You searched for "fractional CMO" because that's the term people use when they want senior digital leadership without the full-time hire. It's the dominant search in Australia for this category. The trouble is, it's often the wrong role for the actual problem.Craft CMS vs WordPress: which is right for your project?
Most people reading this have heard of WordPress. A lot fewer have heard of Craft CMS. WordPress powers somewhere around 43% of all websites. Craft sits at well under 1%. By the numbers, this isn't a contest.ClickUp for agencies: Scaling production without the chaos
There is a specific kind of panic that hits a digital agency when they grow from three people to fifteen.From chatbot to agentic AI: what your business can actually automate
Most business owners are currently stuck in the "Chatbot Phase" of AI. They use ChatGPT to draft an email or brainstorm a few ideas, and while that is useful, it is barely scratching the surface of what the technology can do.How to choose a digital agency (without getting burned)
The pitch is always perfect. The account director is sharp, the case studies are stunning, and the timeline is tight but "completely achievable". You walk out of the meeting feeling confident that you've found the right partner.Website revamp vs website rebuild: Which one do you actually need?
It is a conversation that happens in almost every boardroom: "The website looks a bit dated. Should we just give it a refresh, or is it time to start from scratch?"What a website health check actually covers, and what to do with the findings
Most business owners can feel when their website isn't pulling its weight. Traffic has flatlined. Form submissions are down. The design looks tired next to a competitor that launched last year. Something is off, and the longer it sits in the "I'll deal with it later" pile, the more it costs.How much does a website audit cost in Australia?
If you search for "website audit" online, you will find a thousand agencies offering a "Free SEO Audit".SharePoint intranets: why most fail
The pattern is almost identical across every enterprise business: the company buys Microsoft 365, discovers they have "SharePoint" included in the licence, and decides to build an intranet.n8n vs Zapier (and Make): which one actually fits your business?
Most people enter the world of automation with Zapier. It is the "entry drug" of the industry: it is intuitive, it connects to everything, and you can have your first "Zap" running in five minutes.What to do when your agency goes quiet mid-project
You engaged the agency with confidence. The pitch was strong. The account director was sharp. The timeline was tight but workable. Six months in, responses are slower. Updates are vague. The launch date has shifted twice. The weekly stand-ups now spend more time on process than progress, and the status report is doing a suspicious amount of work with the word "tracking".
How to keep a website project on track and on budget
Most website projects do not fail in a dramatic blow-up. They drift, one reasonable-sounding decision at a time, until the build that was meant to launch months ago still is not live, the budget is long gone, and nobody can quite say how it happened.
The future of digital agencies: the hourly model is dying
Spend ten minutes looking and you would conclude the digital agency market is finished. It is crowded, commoditised, and everyone promises the same things. I do not think that is the real story. The real story is quieter and more uncomfortable: the way almost every agency charges for its work is about to stop making sense, and most of them have very good reasons not to admit it.WordPress SEO: what your developer probably isn't checking
There is a common myth in the mid-market that "SEO is handled" the moment a developer installs Yoast or RankMath.
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