In this episode of The Business Startup Podcast, we discussed all things website! In this digital-first world, your website is far more than just a placeholder, it’s the foundation of your entire marketing strategy.

We unpack how B2B and IT companies can transform their website from a static “business card” into a dynamic, central hub that drives engagement, supports the marketing and sales teams, and reflects the true identity of the business.

We explore the importance of aligning your website with your brand, your people, and your wider marketing ecosystem — including LinkedIn, podcasts, and thought leadership. Whether you’re a startup building your first site or an established company looking to scale, this conversation offers practical insights into creating a website that actually works.

In this episode, we cover:

• The shift from a “business card website” to a lead-generating platform

• Why your website should act as the central hub for all marketing activity

• How to align your website with your brand, culture, and people

• Clarity before design: briefing the web team effectively

• Using your website to support content marketing (podcasts, LinkedIn, insights)

• The importance of consistency across digital channels

• How to create a website that builds trust and drives business growth

• What’s next: SEO, content, and lead generation

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated by an AI tool that did its best, but it's never met different British accents it could fully decode. Expect a few funny mistakes. Enjoy!

[00:00] - James B

Well welcome everyone, super excited about this and a little bit nervous because it's the first time we are doing a four-way.

[00:08] - Steve S

Oh I see!

[00:10] - James B

Indeed, we'll see what happens.

[00:12] - Andi J

The best websites have a clarity of thought about them and when you put that, what you said, they start with a brainstorm, we start by understanding who are we trying to sell to and what is it that makes us special and when we captured that and we've kind of been working through that over a number of months anyway but when you capture that It meant that you could brief optics the web...

[00:32] - James B

Hi there, Welcome to the Binary10 podcast. My name is James Blake, I'm the CEO of Binary10.

[00:38] - Steve S

And my name is Steve Smales and I am the Chief Operating Officer.

[00:43] - James B

Well welcome everyone, super excited about this. Yes, me too. And a little bit nervous because it's the first time we are doing a four-way.

[00:51] - Steve S

Oh I see.

[00:53] - James B

Indeed, we'll see what happens but... No, we're really excited to welcome Andy and Raina to the Binary10 podcast.

[00:54] - Andi J

Thank you for having us.

[01:03] - Raina D

Thank you.That's my first podcast.

[01:04] - Steve S

So Raina, just to introduce Raina, Raina is our marketing executive. And you've been working a lot on our website with Andy as well.

[01:10] - Raina D

Yeah, so I've been working with Binary10 now one year now. So yeah, I am the marketing executive and I have been seeing all the content, social media. So if you see... weird staff on social media, that's probably me.

[01:26] - Andi J

Anything Binary10 on social has got Raina's hand all the way through it.

[01:30] - Raina D

Yeah, and my biggest project right now is the website launch and the whole rebranding. So yeah, it's quite exciting. We are doing a lot on the website and we are planning to do a lot of content push on the website.

[01:47] - James B

It's super exciting and it's great to have you here today to talk about this. Thank you. And if we saw... Take a step back, so when it started, of course, as part of our series, building a business, of course, everyone needs a website in the modern time, and especially, we're classed as a tech company, and I remember that it was something we had to do really quickly, and let's be frank, I kind of pulled a bit together, we worked together, got all the material, signed up for Wix, and sort of did something in a few days. We needed a presence, didn't we? Yeah, and we knew that the website wasn't about selling our product, or at least we thought that back then. You know, it was more just of a contact page so that people could sort of, you know, check for reference, see what we did. And I'll be honest, I mean, I was pretty proud of that when we put that together and we're like,

oh, my God, we've just built a website, Steve. Check it out. How good is this? It's just a shame that in the last sort of couple of months, I've realized that it's not up to standard at all. And rightly so, we needed to put some effort in and actually rebrand a bit and, you know, get a website that really...

[02:49] - Steve S

Told our story but actually had lots of other benefits which i'm really keen to talk about yeah and I think it was fine for where we started i mean we were a two-man band initially and we were sort of data migration you know was the main and i suppose still is our main service but then it was our only service uh and it was very much the tale of us two and just starting that that sort of data migration consultancy but seven years on things have changed we now got a lot more people working for us a

huge amount of people good people that we want to promote as well as you know, the company. And more products coming down the line as well.

[03:22] - James B

Yeah, absolutely. And so, you know, it'd be great to hear from you guys, you know, how this journey's been. You know, we launched the website a few weeks ago, didn't we? And it's been an amazing success. We've had so much, you know, fantastic feedback. I mean, firstly, I would say that, you know, we kind of kicked it off with a project. You say, oh, Raina, you know, just update our website. You know, just go and do that. But actually, the way you went about it and put thought into every area and collaborated with us, collaborated obviously with Andy, you know, and lots of others to bring it together, you know, the effort that's gone into this and the product that we've got at the

end of it is just fantastic. So how did the journey start? Where did you sort of say, right, this is what we need to do, this is the first thing we're going to do?

[03:59] - Raina D

So I think it started with ideation, like brainstorming, because it's like, you know, catching everything, our values, our... Yeah, our values, our, you know, like approach the whole, you know, the persona, key persona, who is the audience. So catching everything on the page, it started with that because otherwise we can't catch as a design. So we want to look technical, like we are technical, but we want to look human, like we want to show our human side as well. So, you know, catching everything in one page, it started with that. And I think it's all about, like, the collaboration between the whole, you know, the whole team and the optics. I can't, you know, stop talking about optix, how they helped on the redesign part. How they, you know, kind of, you know, showed, like,reflected our brand in design. So if you... if you see we have got like a nice soft edge edged hexagons and from that you see like we are how collaborative we are because you can think of like the bee hives so how collaborative we are then you see the node shape so you you can think like the data flow with that so it's it's a lot of thought behind those shapes, the colors. the fonts, everything. What do you think, Andy?

[05:36] - Raina D

I think... What you said about where we started was really, really important in that the best websites have a clarity of thought about them. And when you put that, what you said, they start with a

brainstorm. We start by understanding who we were trying to sell to and what is it that makes us special. And when we captured that, and we'd kind of been working through that over a number of months anyway, but when you capture that, it meant that you could brief Optix, the web company who worked with us, you could brief them really, really well. So, you know, here's the two or three people we want to... talk to on the website here's the things we need to tell them and that then givesthem the clarity to come back with some really nice design touches that can take it through but you briefing them well yeah it's the starting point of that and being able to capture what makes binary10 different so that to me was the important part of the project everything.

[06:23] - Steve S

Else after that is just process really well i think i think we had workshops with them that worked really well because they were able to give us ideas. bounce them off us and we could say okay yeah well okay like that one or that one no I think that doesn't work for us but yeah I think this is what's important to us and I think the workshops really helped us sort of fill out that that initial scope like how how we.

[06:45] - Raina D

Did like also I would like to mention all like the whole team of Binary10 because you see like the case studies or the knowledge hub or like podcast everything so you see little quotes from different different people inside Binary 10. So they collaborated so good. They were like, oh, I can do it. I can record a code on my phone and I have literally put their voice on the website. So it was really good.

[07:15] - Andi J

I'm going to stop you. You're far too humble, Raina. It's not great because of them. It's all your work. That's really it. That's why it's worked.

[07:23] - James B

That is a lot of reality. But I'm so impressed that, like you said, but how wonderful that was that it did bring the team together. It wasn't like we just said, we're going to do a website and then we're going to bring it to everybody i mean i remember the attention to detail you know we had the sessionwhere you know do we want to go light or dark and everyone kind of put their hand up and said oh i like this and i like that and i think that's so important i mean i i remember i think we spent half an hour talking about the shade of green and the type of font and i was just there going is this really important and you were like yeah because we've got to get this right you know and i was like brilliant you know and that's it it's that it's that level of detail that level of care and then you get you know you get the result Sorry.

[07:58] - Andi J

Stephen. It is. It's a team. The way the team got involved with it is actually really impressive. So I've worked on a lot of web projects in a lot of different companies. And it's really easy for it just to be pushed over there as, oh, this is just a marketing thing. They're going to do it. And, yeah, you know what? I've got all this proper work to do. I don't have time to talk about colors and fonts and design codes and all that sort of stuff. And I'll send you a quote whenever I get. You know, that whole it's

somebody else's job. And it didn't feel like that. Everybody got involved and people checked it andthey were checking the development site before it went live and providing quotes, like you said, to bring the whole site to life. People really got involved and bought into it and it felt like a really... It almost became like a symbolic step in the organization's growth. Like you said, it started with the two of you just working together. Now there's a team. We had a staff day here in this building, and

everyone came together and sort of looking at everyone else in the eye, and it was like, oh, hold on, we're growing up here. And it felt almost like the next symbolic step in that. And I think people wanted to be part of that. So I think it became more than just a web project.

[09:06] - Raina D

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And also, like, I would like to add one thing. So as you guys started with like... why did we take up this whole project? We took up this project because, like, we have grown so much. We have evolved so much, right, as a brand. So we want to show that. We want to reflect, and we want to be clear what we are in terms of, like, showing that we are the data people. Also, we have this unique selling point of being flexible. We are super, like, we are, you know, people-friendly. we are, we work with like... like the binary chain methodology. So we want to show that on our website. So it was the main goal was to, you know, show that the side of binary chain through the website. So that's the main goal. And also one more thing that Steve just asked me today, that what

was the main challenge, you know, throughout this project? how to navigate the challenges so I think the main challenge was to keep things moving because Steve and Jamie are always like super busy you know just getting the feedback from you know the content review everything we had to do so it was um you know keeping like pushing the things uh just moving everything so it was it was like juggling um with the other

tasks like the social media jobs and the website thing so that was like really challenging i would say but.

[10:53] - James B

I think we helped that a bit because like saying because of our culture because the way we are i mean we actually say to Raina we empower her to say give us a kick you know if you're not getting our time if you're not gonna you know just give it we're not gonna you know get so we're actually gonna get mad about ourselves and say right. We need to come and speak to you. But everything that you said there, I mean, you know, from where we are now, you know, the best way I could sort of put it is that, as I said, when we first built the original site, it was a reference point. It was a business card. But I think it's almost becoming kind of the beating heart of the organization and that it's an extension of the people in that, you know, it centralizes all our content, everything we do, what we're about. And what's great as well is I think we're only at the foundation. You know, like

we're starting. starting to extend from it you know the podcasts are housed there but then we send clip it's out to linkedin and other things which enables people to then come into our world more so you know what do you see as the next steps for the website you know how how much further can we take it yeah i think um.

[11:48] - Raina D

For us, the goal will be like, you know, making the SEO part really good right now. So when people search data migration in UK, they can see our page quite straight away, like just on the first or second Google page. So that's the main push right now. And then from the content point of view, again, we are pushing a lot of blogs, podcasts, case studies, So that whenever a client comes. to our page, they can actually see how much we have done, what system we have worked in, what sectors we have worked in. So this is something I think really important to, you know, in terms of content push, like we are providing what the client needs.

[12:34] - Andi J

It's about providing those proof points, isn't it, for the different people who have different inputs into the decision-making process, but having something for them every step of that journey. Do we need to believe that Binary10 can do the work or do we need to know how they do the work?

[12:48] - Raina D

Get those at the right point in the journey so that people can come through and ultimately fill in the form that says please get in touch about this project because that's what that's maybe like you know they are quite like okay do do i have to try like can i trust them or something maybe just you know just discussing their first um like first bit of their project or something but at least fill the form so we want that trust we want that awareness brand awareness from the website yeah.

[13:15] - Steve S

And one thing I've been impressed about with the way... that you and Optics have developed the website is it's been almost like future-proofed by adding in that flexibility to add in new products, new case studies. It's all been done, you know, it's done to a template, but something that's easily updatable that we can add to as well.

[13:34] - Raina D

Yeah, definitely. So that's, again, going back to Optics, they have done a great job in terms of, like, creating the template, the website template. So they have created in a way so we can keep adding pages, we can keep adding case studies, we can keep adding products, anything we can add. And also, I think their flexibility is quite good. even the project is done whole project is done i can just go back to them and say you know i just can't can't do this one i i don't know how to do it so they are

like quickly replying and just getting to us and say okay we can we can help you and they are providing like little videos of of like how to how to navigate around the week so this is really good to sponsor this episode which we really should do shouldn't we get we might have to now absolutely yeah if you're listening.

[14:26] - James B

Get the sponsor logo sponsor logo appearing on screen right now it's a couple thousand quid well we'll see but no you know on a serious note yeah thanks to Sam and the team there you know obviously they were really fantastic you know and and felt like a partner organisation part of the team and that's you know that's super important yeah but no but thank you for that and obviously thank you for delivering this website you know we know it's just the start but it's it's just really fantastic we're super excited about you know where it's going to take us and maybe we'll come back in a short while and do another podcast on the next level of the website.

[15:00] - Raina D

Yeah, definitely. We should do the SEO thing more because I am learning SEO now. So after two or three months, we can talk about SEO more once I have learned.

[15:12] - James B

See, in the marketing world, it's all about our followers are going up, which is brilliant. Our SEO rating is going up. Let's see where we can get to on the page. Fantastic.

[15:21] - Steve S

So we're heading in the right direction. Yeah, absolutely.

[15:23] - James B

But no but thank you for your time day guys that's been absolutely fantastic thank you thank you so much for having us no brilliant and um we survived we survived the four-way i really enjoyed it and um we'll see you next time see you next time.

[15:40] - Steve S

We really hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you for joining our podcasts. If you want to seemore, please like and subscribe.