Web agency spreads its net for customers

KNOWLEDGE: Jason Lane, Nicole Hampton and Iain Whittaker are keen to educate businesses and organisations about the importance of strong media and web presence.

In the fast-changing world of the internet and social media the teachers need to always be a step ahead of their students.

Education is the approach Whanganui web agency Two Monkeys is now taking with clients but to do that, they themselves are always learning.

"It comes back down to educating people on what it is that they need," Two Monkeys' Nicole Hampton said.

"Having a website is only one part of the puzzle. That's what I've witnessed recently, a lot of business mentoring going on and lightbulbs going off for people and it's really exciting to see people get that understanding just by having a conversation. We love it."

Two Monkeys was set up in 2011 by Iain Whittaker and Jason Lane who, both with a background in e-learning, moved into web development.

"Very quickly you realise when you build websites for people, actually people need a lot more than just a website. They need help in terms of advising them how to market online and that sort of thing," Mr Whittaker said.

"We've grown more and more to be a full service. Nicole's come on board more recently and started working on developing our whole social media thing."

Mr Whittaker said social media and web presence needed constant attention to work effectively.

"It's very important, to make it work, to not just have people ticking boxes to say 'oh we've done that or we've got that award'. It's more actually knowing how to use this stuff," he said.

"People know they need to be online.

"They've got that but they're not quite sure how that works."

Meanwhile, Mr Lane said while the company now had clients around the country he was happy to be based in his hometown.

"I think there's a growing vibrancy," he said.

That was also reflected in the way Whanganui organisation were viewing the importance of the internet.

"When we started out you'd get people saying 'oh, why do we need to be on the internet?'

"You're slowly seeing that shift now where people say 'hang on there's got to be something to this'."

Mr Lane and Mr Whittaker spend about 20 per cent of their time on research and learning about new platforms.

"Every week I get into the office and Iain says 'there's this new thing'," Mr Lane said.