Welcome to SME Design,
I’m Mark Smith, and I’ve run SME Design out of Gippsland since 2006.
I didn’t come to this through IT. My background is marketing and business development. I’ve owned retail and hospitality businesses, and run an import/export operation trading into the United States. That matters, because when I build or renovate a website I’m thinking about revenue and conversions first, not just how it looks.
I got into web design almost by accident. I built a couple of sites pro bono for a local sporting association and word got around. Local businesses started approaching me because their existing sites weren’t performing — they looked fine, but weren’t bringing in customers. SME Design grew from there.
I work with a small network of specialists rather than trying to scale into a large agency. I’d rather stay close to my clients than manage a big team. When you call, you get me.
Proof it works: affiliate sites built from scratch
Alongside client work, I’ve built and run affiliate websites competing in the US market. Those sites live or die on SEO — ranking and converting organic traffic is the entire business model. There’s no showroom, no referral network, no repeat trade. If the site doesn’t rank, it earns nothing.
At their peak, some reached close to 100,000 unique visitors a month.
I mention this because it isn’t theoretical SEO knowledge. It’s SEO I’ve used to earn a living from my own websites, in one of the most competitive markets in the world. The same approach goes into every client site.
What local businesses come to us for
Most clients arrive with an existing website that isn’t performing. Usually it’s one of three things:
It was built to look good, not to be found. No technical foundation behind it, so it never ranks for the search terms that actually matter to the business.
It’s a beautiful brochure with no distribution. The site is fine. Nobody’s seeing it.
Visitors arrive but don’t act. Traffic is coming in and going straight back out without an enquiry or a phone call.
The first conversation is always about your business, not your website. What do you actually want from it — more traffic, better quality leads, a higher conversion rate, or all three? That answer shapes everything else.
From there, there are two paths:
1/ Renovation. Keep the existing site and apply SEO and conversion work to lift its traffic and its enquiry rate.
2/Rebuild. Start again, when the existing site’s problems run too deep to fix economically.
Most of the work conducted by SME Design is website renovation. We only recommend a rebuild when it’s genuinely the faster and more cost-effective option — not as a default.
What “SEO” and “Digital Marketing” actually mean for your business
Both terms get used loosely, so here’s what they mean in practice.
SEO is the work of putting your business in front of people who are already searching for what you sell. It starts with a single question: what search terms do you want to be found for? Everything else follows from that.
Digital marketing is broader — promoting your business through online channels, with the ability to plan, run and measure a campaign in a way traditional advertising never allowed.
Both are wasted if the site can’t turn a visitor into a customer once they arrive. That’s why I treat conversion, not traffic, as the actual goal. Rankings are a means to an end, and the end is your phone ringing.
Involved in the Gippsland community
SME Design supports local organisations directly, including Little Athletics and hockey clubs across the region.
I also worked with the team behind the Hallora Marathon to help build it into what it is today. The event raises funds for the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre:
Hallora Marathon raises funds for Peter Mac:
Year Raised
2021 $21,000
2022 $23,534
2023 $40,010
2024 $55,178
2025: $60,000
We also support Kiva, a micro-lending platform.
If you run a community organisation and want support with your marketing, get in touch — we allocate some capacity each year to assisting worthwile organisations
Where I work
We are based in Warragul and work with businesses across West Gippsland and south-east Melbourne — Drouin, Trafalgar, Moe, Morwell, Traralgon, Pakenham, Dandenong and the surrounding towns. Most clients I’ve met in person.
Want to know whether your website is actually working?
Call me on 0408 085 438 or get in touch for a straight answer about where your site sits and what would make the biggest difference.