Running a successful and scalable web design or other digital agency often means using a platform to help implement repeatable workflows for designing websites for businesses. These platforms, or website builders, help agencies create functional websites with attractive custom designs for their clients. But selecting the right site builder is no easy choice.
Olive Street Design is a Chicago-based web design agency in operation since 2005. With a wealth of experience in web design, the team at Olive Street migrated from WordPress to Duda, and also experimented with Wix. This article provides some key insights and lessons from the Olive Street Team on why Duda is their website builder of choice.
Olive Street Design initially used WordPress to design websites for clients. Nat Rosasco, the agency’s owner, heard about Duda and visited the Duda team in Palo Alto to find out more about the platform. Nat was impressed and wanted to migrate to Duda, however, the agency’s developers were hesitant. An initial small-scale migration started with just 25 websites.
In July 2017, over 250 of Olive Street Design’s clients had their WordPress sites infected by malware. Phone calls from upset clients inundated the Olive Street Team. Many of these clients depended on being online 24/7 for their businesses to earn money and serve customers.
In what became a watershed moment, Nat decided that this was an existential moment for Olive Street Design. The decision was made to migrate 250 WordPress websites onto the Duda platform.
It’s worth pointing out that WordPress isn’t necessarily an inherently bad platform on which to build a website. However, from an agency standpoint, there are other options that get better results.
Migrating the portfolio of 250 websites from WordPress to Duda took roughly six weeks. Three months after the migration, the Olive Street team found that traffic and leads increased for all 250 clients.
Internally, using Duda radically streamlined operations for Olive Street Design. Among the many benefits of switching to Duda were:
In a prime example of the Duda effect, Olive Street Design’s portfolio of sites skyrocketed from 250 between 2005 and 2010 to 1,365 between 2017 and 2021.
There are currently 10 Olive Street clients on Wix websites (down from the previous figure of 25). The actual software functionality of Wix hasn’t quite caught up with the marketing hype given to particular features. Some issues encountered by Nat and his team on Wix websites included:
An interesting decision for an agency trying to drive scalability and growth is whether to centralize operations on one main platform or keep clients on whatever legacy platform they currently have their site on. Managing sites on multiple platforms clearly presents an operational challenge, but it might not be straightforward convincing clients to switch.
The experience of the Olive Street Design team was that they convinced 19 out of every 20 clients running their site on a legacy platform to switch to Duda. One tip is to frame any discussion in terms of leads or conversions. When you talk about the bottom-line value of switching to a particular platform, clients are more likely to listen and be open to change.
When an agency considers adopting perhaps a lesser-known website builder like Duda, it’s natural to wonder whether it will work as well for bigger websites as it does for SMB clients. As a web design or digital agency grows, it starts to attract these bigger names.
Olive Street Design’s portfolio of Duda websites has included sites for organizations such as Pfizer, Harvard University, and the Seattle Times. The power of these big names is twofold—not only do they bring in revenue, but you can overcome any skepticism expressed by owners of smaller businesses about Duda by simply telling them that the platform works for these big names and they are satisfied with it.
Many clients will come to an agency with unique requirements in terms of their site’s functionality. Through ready-made widgets, widget development, and dynamic pages, Duda addresses most of the requests that Olive Street Design receives in terms of specific website requirements.
Other clients may run eCommerce websites, and there’s obviously more involved in building out an eCommerce site. Regardless of the website builder you opt for, it’s essential to view eCommerce as a collaborative effort because the client knows their product inventory and your agency knows your site builder. Working together, you can best build an eCommerce site that looks great, fits with the products sold by the client, and is optimized for conversions.
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To conclude, if there was a tool for your agency to make more money, deliver better and safer websites, give greater peace of mind, grow your client list, simplify your work, and work fewer hours, would you hesitate? Olive Street Design didn’t hesitate to migrate most clients from WordPress and Wix to Duda, and the agency realized all of these benefits.
