Foxley [SMART 100, 2016]

This SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity.

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1. THE BEGINNING

This innovation initially came to life when…

This innovation came to life after the founders, with 15 years in web and 3000+ website projects under their belt, realised there was a fundamental flaw with the industry: 80% of websites fail to generate an ROI. The problem was that most sites lack strategy so they thought “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could smash together web design AND marketing AND SEO into one platform so designers globally can create hugely effective sites with ease.” Foxley was born with a strong focus to drive traffic, leads and sales, and slash website build time and cost by up to 90%.

2. WHAT & HOW

The purpose of this innovation is to…

For non-technical designers who need to create ‘effective’ websites, Foxley is a cloud-based marketing platform that makes web design profitable and fun. Unlike WordPress, Foxley has a smart marketing/SEO scorecard, which together with gaming elements, drives breakthrough results for clients.

It does this by…

A built-in Marketing Scorecard is based on a marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO) algorithm which will determine how visible a website is to search engines through page and site scores, and predict it’s effectiveness before being published. The gamification component motivates users to implement intelligent marketing suggestions to drive more traffic, leads and sales, making web fun and profitable.

3. PURPOSE & BENEFITS

This innovation improves on what came before because…

It currently takes 12-16 weeks, 7+ people and $10,000+ to build an effective website. It’s vastly inefficient, an extremely complex process, labour intensive and cost prohibitive for a lot of small businesses and designers. Foxley slashes build time and cost by up to 90%. It allows designers to create websites that even big and well-resourced agencies struggle to deliver.

Its various benefits to the customer/end-user include…

For designers: Differentiation – reduced loss of work to offshore developing nations. Complete control by keeping projects inhouse. Ability to create lead-generating sites. Dramatically increased Profit (currently just 5.5% margin in web services). For clients: Websites become ‘effective’ marketing machines.

4. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

In the past, this problem was solved by…

Traditionally, you need a web developer, a designer, an SEO team, and a marketing expert to create an effective, results-driven website. This blows project cost out to tens of thousands of dollars and takes month to execute. The problem is most small businesses can’t afford $20,000+ which is why although $200b is spent annually on web services, most is wasted.

Its predecessors/competitors include…

WordPress, SquareSpace, Wix, Weebly, Webydo, Webflow, Jimdo, PageCloud, IM Creator — web design platforms are a dime a dozen. The problem is that they are JUST web design platforms and fail to address the bigger problem of ‘ineffective’ web design.

5. TARGET MARKET

It is made for…

Foxley is a wholesale only white-label platform for designers allergic to code, with our initial focus on Australia/NZ, USA/Canada & UK. We’ll be targeting freelance designers and boutique design studios initially, with an enterprise level solution being developed in Year 2. Our initial addressable market size of freelancer designers in these western markets is 6.6 million to which we hope to capture 10,000 early adopters Y1, growing to 30,000 Y2 and 100,000 designers by the end of Y3. When we reach this number of users, we estimate we’ll be hosting in excess of 1m websites on the platform.

It is available for sale through…

Foxley is a cloud-based software available by subscription online. Membership starts at just USD$97 p/mth.

Our marketing strategy is to…

Our go to market strategy involves traditional search marketing methods however, additionally, a strong focus on sponsorships, joint ventures, partnerships and an aggressive affiliate strategy is in place to tap into the millions of designers who are crying out for a better way to build and grow an awesomely profitable web business. Other offline initiatives include live events, direct mail.

FINE PRINT: This SMART 100 profile and the information it contains is a duplication of content submitted by the applicant during the entry process. As a function of entry, applicants were required to declare that all details are factually correct, do not infringe on another’s intellectual property and are not unlawful, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, obscene, or otherwise objectionable. Some profiles have been edited for reasons of space and clarity.