Website performance studio
Adkin Agency was founded with the idea that businesses shouldn’t have to choose between a beautiful website and one that performs well.
Most web design agencies care more about how everything looks than how much extra business it brings. This studio has a deliberately narrow focus, specialising in what actually makes websites better.
This comes down to four factors:
Speed – faster to load
Making websites faster to load, focusing on core web vitals, ongoing performance, and the design and content decisions that cause the problems.
Accessibility
Making websites easier to use with WCAG conformance, keyboard and screen reader support, and staff training where it helps.
Visibility
Making websites easier to find with technical SEO implementations, structured data, and being found by search engines and the AI tools people now ask.
Conversions
Making websites better at converting the visitors they already get by finding where visitors drop off, working out why, and fixing it with evidence.
Alongside those sits the core practical services that keep websites alive and growing: design and development for new website builds and rebuilds, Australian-based web hosting and ongoing support for the small jobs that pile up.
Working with the standard tools most businesses already know:
- WordPress or HTML-based static sites
- WooCommerce or Shopify for e-commerce / online stores
Why this studio exists
Design agencies are measured on how their work looks, and most are genuinely good at it. But the parts of a website that determines how effective it is – whether search engines can find it, whether it loads before someone gives up, whether every visitor can use it, and whether anyone actually enquires – sits outside that measurement entirely.
This studio exists to make those four aspects someone’s explicit responsibility, from the moment we make contact rather than the week before launch.
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Why I started a web design studio focusing on performance
Read article: Why I started a web design studio focusing on performanceOver a decide inside web design agencies taught me who those beautiful websites are really built to impress – and it isn’t your customers.
How the work is done
1. Diagnosis before proposal
Every engagement starts with a manual review, not than a project scope document. Improvements in load times aren’t worth anything if the actual problem is the booking form process.
Sometimes the outcome is that nothing needs doing yet – and that gets communicated at no cost.
2. Measurement over opinion
When possible, recommendations are provided based on objective numbers rather than blanket statements – performance metrics, conversion and bounce rates, WCAG conformance levels.
When there isn’t a number – and there often isn’t – that is stated plainly rather than dressed up as data.
3. Changes with simple explanations
When your website is altered, reasoning is provided so it can be easily forwarded to someone else in the business.
If desired, all changes can go through a process – examples will be provided so it can be reviewed internally before anything is experienced by a single customer.
4. Focused work for better results
A small studio like this can only run a few projects at a time, rather than attention spread thin over too many websites.
This is a constraint, not positioning – and it’s what makes this possible. Tailored in-depth reviews and ongoing improvements take time and can’t be offered at volume.
How to improve website performance
Websites are the best marketing asset a small businesses can own, but they can always be better.
Faster websites are better websites
Slow websites cost you customers.
Building websites to the highest performance standards – improving load times, Core Web Vitals scores, and the overall experience for every visitor, on every device.
Websites should be accessible to everyone
Improving accessibility makes websites work better for everyone.
Auditing and implementing WCAG 2.1 and 2.2 standards, ensuring your site is usable by all visitors regardless of ability.
Also providing training to help your team understand why accessibility matters.
Technical SEO & online visibility
Being found online starts under the hood.
Fixing the technical barriers stopping search engines (and AI chat bots) from finding, crawling, and ranking your site – so the right people can find you at the right time.
Better web design + development
Everything is designed with performance in mind from the start.
From simple business brochure-styled websites to e-commerce stores and complex web applications, and bringing over a decade of industry experience to every project.
Capable of building:
- WordPress & WooCommerce web development
- Shopify e-commerce websites
- Simple static sites using pure HTML, CSS and JavaScript
- Complex web applications using React and TypeScript
- Internet services using Node.js, Laravel, PHP and / or Python
What the agency doesn’t do
As a small studio, there’s only so much that is possible in a day. Instead of saying yes to everything and only then figuring out how to do it, here’s a list of tasks that are not part of the offering:
- Paid advertising
- Google, Meta and LinkedIn ads, plus media buying need to be handled by specialists
- Branding and identity
- Logos, naming and brand strategy belong to studios who do that properly
- Creative brand assets
- Brochures, print design, motion graphics, video editing, etc.
- Content marketing
- Assistance can be provided for strategic direction of a blog, but writing industry-specific articles should be handled by a marketing agency
- Email hosting and office-based IT services
- While it seems related to web development and hosting, this is better handled by a dedicated team of experts
If you already have an advertising agency, in-house developer or SEO provider doing work you’re happy with, the studio is built to work alongside them and cover what isn’t already handled, rather than duplicate an existing engagement.
If you are looking for recommendations regarding any of the above, the studio is happy to point you in the right direction.
Who’s behind the studio
Adkin Agency was founded and is run by Brock, a Perth-based developer and UX specialist who has spent more than a decade improving hundreds of websites inside web design agencies across Australia – often being asked to make websites faster, long after the decisions that caused it to be slow had been signed off.
This studio was created to provide website performance services done in the right order.
Start with a free website audit
Describe what your website isn’t doing and you’ll get an honest read on what’s actually causing it to go wrong – including whether it isn’t worth fixing yet.