Newcastle · Lake Macquarie · Central Coast
Digital Presence in Newcastle & the Hunter
Websites, online stores and search visibility — run by the team that already runs your email, DNS, backups and security.
A website is not a brochure that happens to be online. It runs on the same domain, DNS zone, certificates and mail records the rest of your business runs on, and it fails in the same ways they do. We build websites and online stores, keep them running for a monthly fee, rescue the ones somebody else walked away from, and do the search work that makes them findable. We also run email, DNS, backups and security for clients — so none of it has to sit in the gap between two suppliers.
01 — The problem
The split nobody plans for: who builds the site, and who runs everything the site depends on
A website is the visible part of a longer list. Under it sit a domain registration, a DNS zone, a TLS certificate, a host, a backup regime, the mail authentication records that decide whether your email is delivered or binned, and the accounts of everyone who can change any of it. The natural scope of a web engagement is the site: design, build, launch. The rest of that list belongs to whoever runs your IT, and working out who that is turns out to be part of the job.
The failures that cost the most money do not happen inside the website. They happen in the joins. A domain is pointed at a new site and the mail records in the same DNS zone get rebuilt without them, so email stops delivering on the Tuesday. A certificate lapses because the party that issued it and the party that runs the site are not the same party. Nobody has been careless inside their own scope, and both can say accurately that it was not their part — which is no help to the business that cannot send an invoice.
Online presence has also stopped being one thing. Your site, your store, your search visibility and your mail are separate systems that have to agree with each other, and on the ABS figures below, just over half of Australian businesses use social media as part of that presence too — useful reach, on infrastructure somebody else owns and sets the rules for. The part you control is the site and the estate underneath it.
51%
of Australian businesses use social media for their online presence, up from 47%
ABS, Characteristics of Australian Business 2024–25 (opens in new tab)91%
report their internet meets most or all business needs, up from 88%
ABS, Characteristics of Australian Business 2024–25 (opens in new tab)
02 — Scope
What's included
Web design and development
Custom sites built from scratch — Astro or similar — or built on WordPress, decided per client rather than by house preference. Fast, accessible, mobile-first, and structured so search engines and your own team can both work with it.
Search engine optimisation
Technical, local and content SEO for Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Port Stephens and the Central Coast, aimed at Google and at AI answer engines. It stands on the build being right, which is why we would rather do both.
Website as a Service
The site built, hosted, patched, backed up and monitored for a monthly fee, with a support allowance attached — typically around an hour a month — so small changes get made instead of queued. Higher tiers add tailored SEO.
E-commerce development
Stores that take money and record the order where your team already looks. WooCommerce for catalogue-shaped businesses, custom builds on Stripe where a product grid was the wrong shape, with the payment path and the security around it part of the job.
Website rescue and redesign
Redesigns that keep the pages already earning enquiries, migrations off a builder or a bad host without breaking mail, accessibility audits and WCAG 2.2 AA remediation, and takeover of sites nobody currently supports.
One team accountable for the estate
The site, the domain, the DNS, the certificates, the backups and the mailboxes can sit with one team. That removes the argument about whose fault it is, which is the part of a multi-supplier outage that costs you the week.
03 — Specialisations
Explore our digital presence services
Web Design & Development
Websites built to load fast, work for everyone and stay easy to run — custom or WordPress, chosen on your brief rather than our habit.
Search Engine Optimisation
Get found by the customers already searching for what you do — in Google and in AI answers.
Website as a Service
Your website built, hosted, secured and kept current for a monthly fee — support included.
E-commerce Development
Online stores that actually take money — WooCommerce builds and custom checkouts on Stripe.
Website Rescue & Redesign
Redesigns that keep what your site has already earned, migrations that keep your email delivering, and takeovers of sites nobody supports.
04 — How it works
How we run an engagement
No long discovery phase before you see anything useful. The order matters more than the technology — each step is designed so you can stop cheaply if the numbers don't stack up.
Find out what you already own
Before design, an audit of what exists: who the domain is registered to, where DNS is hosted, what the mail records say, who hosts the site, what the CMS is, and which accounts you can still get into. On an existing site this step changes the plan more often than anything after it.
Decide between fixing, rebuilding and starting fresh
A dated design sitting on pages that rank is a different problem from a site with nothing maintainable underneath. We will tell you when a rescue is the better buy, and when keeping the existing site alive would cost you more than replacing it.
Choose the stack for your site, not for us
Custom or WordPress; WooCommerce or a custom checkout on Stripe. The choice turns on who needs to edit what, how much the site will change, and whether something you need exists in only one ecosystem. We build both, so there is no answer we are obliged to reach.
Build it, and connect it to what you run
Content and structure before pixels, with copywriting, branding and graphic design where they are the thing holding the site back. Where it earns its keep, the site is wired into your CRM, booking or job-management system so enquiries land where somebody will see them.
Launch, then keep it running
Cutover is planned around mail and DNS rather than around the launch date, then verified. From there the platform stays hosted, patched, backed up and monitored for uptime and certificate expiry, with search work continuing on top of it. Launch is a milestone in the arrangement, not the end of it.
05 — Free tools
Try before you talk to us
Free, no-signup tools that put this service to work in your browser right now.
- Website Speed & SEO CheckEnter your website address to run a live Google PageSpeed Insights test — get your performance and SEO scores, Core Web Vitals (LCP, CLS, INP) and the top opportunities to load faster and rank better.
- Domain & SSL Health CheckEnter your domain to check its SSL/TLS certificate (issuer, expiry and hostname match), DNS records (A, MX, NS) and email blacklists — a fast, plain-English domain health report.
- Email Security CheckerEnter your domain and instantly check SPF, DKIM, DMARC and MTA-STS — the records that stop attackers spoofing your business and keep your email out of spam.
06
Your website is part of your IT estate
Websites are bought as marketing and behave as infrastructure. A site has an operating system under it, a dependency chain that needs patching, a certificate with an expiry date, DNS records shared with your mail, backups that are either being taken and tested or are not, and admin accounts exactly as strong as the password someone picked in 2019. Every one of those is an IT concern wearing a marketing budget.
The failures that cost the most money do not happen inside the website. They happen in the joins.
That matters because the same estate carries your email. SPF, DKIM and DMARC live in the DNS zone the website also uses, so a website change and a mail outage can share one cause. A compromised site admin account is not only a website problem either — it is a credential, belonging to a person, who may well use that password somewhere else. Treating the website as separate from the rest of your IT does not make it separate. It means nobody is looking at both.
So the argument is structural rather than promotional: put the website with the people who already run the estate under it. We do that work — managed IT, cyber security, cloud, and the mail and DNS underneath — and those pages are on this site for you to read and hold us to. It is not an argument for buying everything from one supplier on principle; concentration has real costs and you should ask us about them. It is an argument that the seams are where businesses get hurt, and that removing one is worth more than shaving a margin off a line item.
- One place to report a problem, whether it presents as the website, the mail or the domain
- DNS changes made by people who can see the mail records in the same zone
- Certificates, patching, backups and 24/7 uptime monitoring handled as platform work rather than favours
- Multi-factor authentication available on the domain, DNS, hosting and CMS accounts that can change your site
- A migration planned around mail delivery, not only around the launch date
07
What a web agency covers, and what we cover
This is a comparison of scope, not of ability. A web engagement is scoped around the website: design it, build it, launch it, hand it over working. That is a complete and legitimate piece of work, and a studio that does not manage your DNS zone or your staff laptops is not doing its job badly — those are not in the job. Where a business already has its IT handled by someone competent, that division works fine.
The table is here so you can see where the boundary of a website engagement sits and decide who owns the rest. If the answer is your IT provider, and they are good, keep them. The case worth worrying about is the one where the answer is nobody, or two parties who have never spoken to each other.
| Typical web agency | Peritus | |
|---|---|---|
| The website itself | In scope. This is the engagement: design, build, content, launch. | In scope. Custom or WordPress; stores on WooCommerce or a custom Stripe checkout. |
| Hosting | In scope where the engagement includes it; otherwise arranged by the client with a hosting company. | In scope, on infrastructure we manage, with patching and backups attached. |
| DNS | Touched at launch to point the domain at the new site. Ongoing management sits with whoever holds the zone. | We can hold and run the zone, so a record changed for the website is changed by people who can see what else depends on it. |
| SSL certificates | Issued at launch, then renewed by whichever host or platform issued them. | Issued, monitored for expiry and renewed as part of the platform we run. |
| Email deliverability (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) | Outside the scope of a website build unless mail was in the brief — though the records live in the DNS zone the site uses. | In scope. We run mail for clients, so authentication records are ours to keep correct when DNS changes. |
| Backups and recovery | Website backups where the hosting provides them. Anything else the business runs is a separate arrangement. | Website backups as part of the platform, alongside the backup and recovery work we do for the rest of your IT. |
| Endpoint and staff security | Not part of a website engagement. It belongs to whoever manages the business's IT. | In scope through our managed IT and cyber security work, which can extend to the accounts able to change your site. |
| Who you call when email stops | Your IT or mail provider, since mail is not in the website scope. | Us. Site, domain, DNS and mailbox come back to one support path. |
Related services
See it in action
Real outcomes we've delivered for businesses across the Hunter.
Browse our case studies08 — Questions
Frequently asked questions
01Do I have to buy IT services from you to get a website?
No. You can engage us for the website alone, or the SEO alone, and nothing else has to move. Plenty of businesses have their IT handled well by someone else, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to win a second line item. Putting the site with the rest of your estate is an argument, not a condition of the work.
02Which of these five services do I actually need?
No site, or one that cannot be salvaged: Web Design & Development. A site that is dated, stranded on a builder, inaccessible or unsupported: Website Rescue & Redesign. Selling online: E-commerce Development. Built and then kept running for a monthly fee: Website as a Service. Search Engine Optimisation sits on top of whichever you land on. Not sure? Describe the situation and we will point you at one — including when the answer is none of them.
03Do you build on WordPress or something custom?
Both, decided per client — custom sites in Astro or similar, or WordPress, and stores on WooCommerce or a custom Stripe checkout. The trade-offs and how that call gets made are set out on the Web Design & Development page rather than repeated here.
04Will moving my website break my email?
It is the risk worth planning for, because your mail authentication records live in the same DNS zone as the records that route your website. We read the zone before anything is pointed anywhere. How a migration is sequenced and verified is covered on the Website Rescue & Redesign page.
05Who runs our DNS and mail if you build the site?
We can run the DNS zone and your mailboxes, and for a good number of our clients we already do. Your domain stays registered to your business either way. The practical case for having the zone with us is that your site, mail, backups and security are one connected system, and the failures we get called about are not inside one of them — they are between two of them, where each supplier can accurately say the fault was not theirs.
06Do you run Google Ads or paid advertising?
No — no Google Ads and no paid media, at any tier. Our side of this is the site, the store, the platform underneath them and the organic search visibility that comes from getting all three right.
Let's talk
Ready to improve your digital presence?
Talk to Peritus Digital — Newcastle's local technology partner. We'll assess your situation and put together a practical plan.