With over 22 years of experience, Tristan Boyd, founder of Markegy, has built a business grounded in one core philosophy: creating websites that work for clients. What began in Sydney as a small branding and design studio has grown into a full-service digital marketing agency that blends web design, SEO, and strategy into seamless solutions. In this interview with
Website Planet, Tristan shares how Markegy’s approach has evolved through the years, their process for building high-performing WordPress sites, and why performance, optimization, and lead generation are at the heart of everything they do.
How did Markegy get started and how has the company evolved over its 22+ years of experience?
Markegy is the latest version of a business that has been developing and evolving since 2001. I founded the first version of the business, in Sydney Australia, Boyd Design, which focused on branding and advertising, but quickly moved into website design, online marketing, SEM and online infrastructure (Hosting, CRM, email marketing etc.)
The core idea behind our business model was building websites that work for our customers. Delivering new leads, solving business problems, being an investment rather than an expense.
This business rebranded as The Web Department around 2007 when Karin Boyd joined the team. The Australian company was sold in 2011 when Karin and Tristan moved to Austria.
The Webdepartment was reborn as an Austrian company in 2013 using the same philosophy. Designing and building websites that solve problems and help our customers to grow. As our focus moved more towards providing strategic marketing solutions, we once again rebranded to Markegy. Marketing Strategy.
As the world of marketing has developed and evolved, we have adapted our offerings to focus on the technologies, products and services that deliver the best results for our customers. Now we are about to launch a new range of marketing services focused on Local search, SEO / AI SEO and Paid Ads to stay focused on solutions that bring the best possible benefit to our customers.
How does Markegy ensure its WordPress websites are both visually appealing and high-performing?
Keeping our websites visually appealing and high-performing comes down to understanding the development process as we create designs. Knowing what not to do in the design stage, makes the delivery of the website more efficient, and helps us to ensure our websites load fast and deliver a good user experience.
Here’s a rundown of our process:
- In-Depth Discovery & Strategy: We start with an in-depth discovery process to understand the client’s business, customers, and goals. This ensures the website is built with a clear purpose .
- Custom Design: A unique, professional design that captures the brand’s identity and provides an exceptional user experience.
- Optimised for Speed & SEO: All websites are built to be fast-loading and optimised for Google search from day one . This includes details on the the server side, such as: Software maintenance, SSD drives, NGINX server speed, and the latest PHP versions. And on the front end, caching, and optimisation systems (JS, HTML, CSS and images) to speed up load times.
- Collaborative Process: The process of creating a website is collaborative, involving the client in the discovery, design, development, and launch phases to ensure the final product meets their expectations .
How do you combine web design, development, SEO, and online marketing into a seamless service for clients?
Markegy combines these services through its two-tiered model, which creates a clear and integrated path to digital marketing maturity for its clients .
- Foundational Services as a “Marketing-Ready” Base: For customers that come to us for a website first, along with the hosting and maintenance plans, we create a “marketing-ready” technical and creative foundation. This ensures that when a client is wants to move on to marketing services, their website is already optimised for ready to go.
- Integrated Strategy from the Start: For clients who engage directly for strategic marketing services, Markegy begins with a “Marketing Readiness Audit”. If the existing website is deficient, the first step is to use our development team to get them up to speed to ensure we can deliver and track successful marketing programs.
What kind of hosting and maintenance support does Markegy provide to keep websites secure and fast?
We provides comprehensive hosting and maintenance support to ensure websites are secure, fast, and reliable. The key features of this support include:
- Regular Updates: Markegy performs updates for WordPress, plugins, and themes twice a month to ensure the website is always up to date and secure .
- Backups: Two separate backup systems are maintained: daily backups of the entire hosting account for the last 7 days, and daily offsite backups for up to 90 days stored on the Amazon S3 cloud in Europe .
- Security: Regular security checks to scan for malware and visible vulnerabilities .
- High-Performance Hosting: The cloud hosting solution is an enterprise-class service optimised for WordPress, featuring SSD drives, NGINX server technology, a custom caching mechanism (SuperCacher), CDN, HTTP/2 enabled servers, and latest PHP versions .
- Content Updates: Depending on the plan, a certain amount of time for basic content updates is included .
- Tiered Plans: Markegy offers a range of plans from “Auto” to “Essentials,” “Performance Plus,” and “Custom,” allowing clients to choose the level of support that best fits their needs .
How important is performance optimization, such as speed and CDN integration, in your client projects?
Performance optimisation is a critical component of Markegy’s client projects. A slow website can frustrate visitors and negatively impact Google rankings .
To address this, Markegy implements several performance-enhancing features:
- SSD Drives: All hosting plans use Solid State Drive (SSD) technology for both files and databases, which provides a 1000x increase in input/output operations compared to regular drives .
- NGINX Server Speed: NGINX web server technology is used to accelerate the loading of static content for all hosted websites .
- SuperCacher: Markegy has developed its own caching mechanism based on NGINX reverse proxy to further improve performance for WordPress sites .
- Free CDN: A free Cloudflare CDN is available to make websites load faster globally by caching content and distributing it across multiple data centres .
- HTTP/2 Enabled Servers: All servers support the HTTP/2 network protocol, which significantly speeds up website loading in the browser .
- PHP: Markegy promptly implements the latest versions of PHP to ensure faster PHP executions .
- Advanced Speed Optimisation: The “Performance Plus” and “Custom” maintenance plans include advanced speed optimisation services .
How does Markegy approach building websites that are optimized for leads and conversions?
Markegy’s approach to building websites optimised for leads and conversions is centred on creating a strategic marketing asset, not just an online brochure. We see SEO and conversion optimisation as an integral part of every website we build.
- Strategic Marketing Foundation: Even our entry level packages include a free online marketing consultation and basic keyword research to plan how the new site will attract leads.
- Compelling Home Page Copy: Even if we are not delivering the copy for the website, we offer advice and help the customer to develop text that will work.
- Content Structure and Guidance: We also help clients structure their information logically across pages like Services, About Us, Case Studies, and Contact, making it easy for customers to find what they need and take action .
- Advanced Functionality: Markegy can integrate features like appointment bookings, detailed project galleries, or downloadable resources to better serve clients and capture leads .
- Clear Calls to Action: Our website packages are designed to guide visitors towards a specific action, such as scheduling a discovery call, or asking for a quote.
