Author: Clarence Ling
Category: Preliminary
Published: 26 September 2016

Our Difference: Have a Great Joomla Website

Summary: We go through how CLASS is unique from other web design or digital marketing agencies. We specialise in high benchmarking web design and there is no compromise in choosing a classy website. We compare the performance of four agencies internationally and show you our superiority.

Have a great Joomla Website

Our Brief History

Before we identify the key unique traits of CLASS Digital Marketing, we thought we should give you a brief history of our business. First of all, despite being a Joomla web design agency and digital marketer, it was not always the case

So what was the original raison d'être for CLASS? Well, CLASS started out setting up the Client Relationship Management (CRM) for our biggest client, Kozin Real Estate Sdn Bhd (Kozin). At that time, we had two business names running, the second being Clarence Ling Australian Property Services (CLAPS). What was originally an administrative role, recording leads and relevant information, evolved into SMS marketing, email marketing and eventually, social media marketing. All along this period of time, we were developing our web design arm. In fact, the web design arm complements many aspects of our contract with Kozin, for example, with email, sometimes you need sufficient knowledge of HTML and CSS to troubleshoot faulty email designs. Our web design arm has evolved into a formidable force, beating many established agencies and so called professionals in the Australian market and overseas.

Why Joomla?

This scenario is not as pronounced in Joomla, where there are less options but generally higher quality extensions (though they may not be free). Less is more in terms of plugins (or extensions in Joomla) and you do not want a website bloated with plugins or extensions. In terms of security, Joomla has excellent features like two factor authentication and by virtue of being less popular than WordPress, less hackers and other unethical people target Joomla websites. Despite that, Joomla can perform nearly anything WordPress can do, there normally are similar extensions in Joomla that exist in WordPress, though you may need to look harder. It is because Joomla delivers benefits WordPress does not, without compromising on WordPress capabilities that we are most comfortable with Joomla, though if you insist, we will work with WordPress.

A lot of people choose WordPress because of simplicity and user friendliness. Ironically, we found Joomla to be more user friendly than WordPress, but Joomla does one thing better than WordPress, setting aside user experience, and that is control. Joomla has a higher level of control, being a more complex CMS and that is why we like to use it. We think Joomla is great.

Performance Comparison

We will now go on to the fun part, that is demonstrating our performance capabilities.

Now, the way we are going to assess these websites is by using Hubspot's website grader. This grader is a holistic, definitive grader analysing four performance criteria. Hubspot is a leading CRM provider and marketing software as a service (SaaS) with many clients worldwide.

The Australians

Firstly we will look at two Perth based web design agencies, 307 Marketing (which may not be trading anymore, but we have their portfolio) and Two Moons Consulting. We are going to place a disclaimer here. All these websites look amazing, they really do. But when it comes to practical criteria and efficiency, they sometimes fail, as we will soon demonstrate.

Two Moons Consulting

Two Moons Consulting prides itself with having the best talent in Perth. Their websites look great, no doubt about that, but let us see the performance of three of their featured web design projects, which you can look up yourself. But first, let us evaluate their company website:

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing two moons consulting website

Gee, their business website, their public face is not very flash. Terrible performance and so so Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Here is a showcased, featured website of Two Moons:

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing workspace 7 website

Shocking performance. No responsive mobile design, but hey it looks great...

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing castlestone website

A bit better, but still, shocking performance. We also do not know why they have done a half arse job on mobile.

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing site safety essentials website

Now this, this is their best website in their displayed portfolio. It is pretty good, but judging by the poor performance of nearly everything else, Two Moons Consulting websites are pretty looking duds half the time.

307 Marketing

Now this guy running 307 Marketing, if he is still around, to be fair, he knows how to make a good website. But the trouble is, he is quite inconsistent. Now we will not show you his full portfolio, because it is rather large, but we will show you his inconsistency:

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing 307 marketing website one brokerage

This is absolutely, one of the worst scores we have seen with our own eyes. But he improves as seen below:

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing 307 marketing website the loan panel

Pretty good, and he gets better:

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing 307 marketing website the  king tours

Unfortunately, in all these examples, 307 Marketing's performance is never too flash.

The Malaysians

Now we are sampling two agencies in Malaysia in the city of Kuching, Sarawak. Surprisingly, the Malaysians, despite being from a developing country rather than a developed one, score better than the Australians, in general. Here are their main business websites:

Hen Design Studio

Now we have some good things to say about Henry (aka Hen). His designs are so aesthetically pleasing it looks like a classy website, we think he is world class in terms of design. However, that's where to compliments end, and we shall see his score:

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing Hen Design Studio's website

Not too shabby, but it seems like the guy does not actually know SEO.

KonX Solution

These guys perform much better than Hen, but they seem to like complex designs. We also believe that they generally do good work and know what they are doing, but their performance criteria is only satisfactory, probably because of the complexity and intricacy of their website:

hubspot website grader clarence ling testing konx solution website

How does CLASS perform?

We have now arrived at the million dollar question. How does CLASS perform against these competitors and what makes them special? Well, here is our masterpiece's score:

Hubspot website grader clarence ling perfect score 100/100

This score puts them all to shame, and we excel in all four performance criteria. If you want perfection and practical functionality, look for CLASS. We may not make the best websites in terms of appearance, but we make well oiled and efficient websites sure to bring you results that still look amazing (provided you wield it well).

We want to be fair and objective, so we are posting another website we run (Please note although Kozin is my client, I have very limited control over their website and its maintenance, I did not design it. Hence it is not my work):

Hubspot website grader Clarence Ling Walta website perfect score 100/100

This is another we have built, and as you can see, we are very consistent in our web design benchmarks. If you want perfection, look for CLASS. A classy website need not have poor performance.

Summary: The CLASS Difference

  • High performance web design
  • Practical effectiveness & effiency
  • Quality aesthetics without compromise on performance
  • Consistency
  • Value for money

In sum, our defining points are as follows:

All of our designs are 100% mobile responsive as well. A classy website is within your reach.

We also do a host of digital marketing services effectively so we not only do great web design, but help ensure its success.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we are experienced web designers who can punch above our weight. We have no problem delivering classy websites, and we are very much focused on practical issues and delivering actual results, you will not have a mere pretty wallflower with CLASS. We also have solid experience in many forms of digital marketing, which we have field tested. Hence, we are able to bring your online presence from conception to performance. We are relatively affordable and we hope to see you one day as our valued client. Please contact us through the Contact Us tab on this website or email: clarence@clarenceling.com. Our contact information is also on our homepage.

About the Author

Clarence Ling Marketer

Clarence Ling

Clarence Ling is the founder and business owner of CLASS Digital Marketing. He is a self trained Joomla Front End Web Designer and a Digital Marketer, constantly procuring the latest martech (marketing tech) and incorporating current developments in marketing. Based in Perth, Western Australia, he is also a real estate agent in Malaysia, selling Australian property overseas, attached to the largest and best East Malaysian real estate agency, Kozin Real Estate Sdn Bhd. Clarence regularly commutes between Australia, Malaysia and sometimes other parts of Asia in his line of work.

Phone (Australia): +61 413 665 375
Phone (Malaysia): +60 12 818 1160