Retainers
Open a direct line to your website's potential.
Your website is most likely THE most mission-critical digital asset for your business. Don't let it become a fire-and-forget exercise that starts with an excited launch and then almost immediately fades into a File 13 internet document.
First, let's get some tough truths out of the way:
Your website isn't a magic bullet that, once launched, will magically hit your revenue targets and make you rich in the first month.
Owning and maintaining a website is a lot of work, month in, month out.
Our world is changing rapidly, and if you think things are changing quickly - become a web designer.
The fact of the matter is, like most things in life, you get out what you put in. A website is no different, and it takes real expertise to know how to do things right.
But I'll just use AI!
You're more than welcome to give it a go! AI is hugely powerful and becoming more so by the day. If you manage to use it to both build and maintain an ongoing, successful web presence, you truly deserve a commendation.
You done? Welcome back. Let's continue.
Though AI is highly useful for most things you can do on the web these days, it is also not a replacement for human ingenuity, relationship or understanding. Unfortunately there's no way to prompt AI to "manage my website for me again this month", or "make my website better again this week, please". You still need a human being that actually knows what's going on in there, why it was built in the first place, and how to actually keep it moving forward.
Will that human leverage AI to help streamline the work and do better work more quickly? You better believe it. Most people know how to use most basic building tools (think: hammer, screwdriver, sander, drill). However, no matter how well they can use those tools, that doesn't mean they can start an electrician business or build houses for a living.
Over-simplification? Maybe!
However, the point is that AI — an infinitely more complex and versatile tool than a hammer or screwdriver in the digital world — if used by an expert in their field, will achieve results akin to what an experienced tradesman would be able to achieve compared to a little-practiced home handyman.
Enter the website retainer.
A retainer creates an open road to an expert that knows websites — perhaps maybe even the same expert that built yours in the first place.
Retainers are like hiring a dedicated maintenance man for your main office. You've got the peace of mind that at the very least if you need anything you can call him in to help you out, and if you make use of his services to their full potential, he can make some pretty awesome improvements to your space over time. These improvements might be aesthetic, but even more importantly, they can also be functional improvements that actually help you win more and more business.
Your website has huge potential — it's still:
the only place on the internet that you can truly have a say in what it looks like and how it functions,
it's your 24/7 salesperson, with no leave days, holidays, sick days or family responsibilities,
it can be the best place to channel all your other marketing efforts,
it's a direct line of communication to your ideal customer/audience, and
if done right, it can be the source of truth for your entire brand — the main window through which the world can see your business most accurately reflected.
Don't waste that kind of potential.
In South Africa, nearly 70% of users access the web primarily via mobile — meaning mobile functionality and performance must be maintained consistently. source: Nifty Studio
Poor maintenance → slow load times → frustrated visitors → dropped conversions. Globally, a 1-second delay in page load can reduce conversions by up to 7% — and bounce rates spike up to 90% as load times increase. source: Reliqus Consulting
More than 53 % of mobile users abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. source: TechKV
Speed and UX behaviour are explicit ranking signals for search engines like Google — meaning slower sites are harder to get seen in organic search. source: Marketing LTB
75 % of consumers judge a company’s credibility based on its website design. source: Maze
Design issues and bad usability are major causes of site abandonment — 70 % of users may not complete a purchase because of poor UX. source: intechnic
Calbie Creative Retainer Options
Tier 3 Retainer
Technical Integrity & Peace of Mind
This retainer ensures your strategic asset is tended on a monthly basis. Technical maintenance, CMS and page content updates, and reactive support are the most common use cases that will happen on this retainer.
Tier 2 Retainer
Proactive Performance & ROI
Our most proactive partnership for single-site clients. We take things beyond reactive maintenance and into proactive optimisation with this retainer option.
Custom Retainer
Bespoke Commitment for Unique Rhythms
A personalised tier for clients whose needs fall between our standard packages. You define a fixed monthly hour commitment (minimum 3 months) to lock in our most competitive rate.
Tier 1 Retainer
Enterprise-grade management for extra-large sites or multi-site entities
Designed for clients operating very large, labour-intensive single sites or managing multiple digital assets. We consolidate your support into a single, flexible bank of hours used across your entire ecosystem.
