At Sahara, their vision is that websites don’t have to be expensive or difficult to manage.
With offices in Reykjavik, Iceland, and Orlando, Florida, this full-stack digital marketing agency serves clients of all sizes across various industries, both locally and globally. With a team of 30 employees, Sahara functions as both an advertising agency and production company, streamlining the process from concept to implementation, making it more cost-effective.
In 2022, the agency partnered with Duda to gain full control over their client websites. They were looking for a user-friendly platform that would allow them and their clients to easily keep sites up-to-date and integrated with the digital marketing campaigns they create.
“Our focus is on delivering measurable business results to our clients,” says Sigurdur ‘Siggi’ Svansoon, CEO and Co-Founder of Sahara. “With Duda, we are better equipped to offer full 360 services, and we’ve achieved excellent results for clients who added web design to the services they have with us.”
“Our decision to start offering web design services came out of frustration,” says Siggi. Many advertising and social media agency owners can relate to Siggi's experience – they know how painful and costly it can be to get clients to make minor website updates that can have a huge impact on the digital marketing campaigns they are creating for their clients.
These updates might include:
Setting up a landing page that improves the results of the Google Ads
Updating a food menu on the website for a paid Instagram post
Simply adding a top banner to the client’s site for a campaign running across multiple platforms
Siggi has experienced all this and more at Sahara. His journey began in 2016 in Iceland as a social media agency. Soon, clients started asking for Google Ads and web design, leading Siggi to co-found another agency called Hey Digital, which primarily focused on WordPress sites.
“At that point, it became clear how managing our clients’ websites could benefit both our current client base and future clients,” says Siggi.
Giving clients everything in one place
In 2018, Sahara merged with two other companies, Hey Digital and Silent, a video production company founded in 2009. The vision was to create a full-stack agency – a one-stop shop offering creative services, including graphic design, video production, photography, and all aspects of digital marketing.
Initially, they built websites on WordPress but faced several challenges. “When we handed over websites to our clients, we aimed to ensure they felt confident managing the site themselves. However, it didn’t always go as smoothly as planned,” says Siggi.
Often, clients struggled with routine tasks like updating WordPress or its plugins. As a result, within a year, some websites experienced issues, and some clients needed additional support managing their sites.
So, Siggi started looking for an alternative to WordPress that would be user-friendly, cost-efficient for their clients, and would allow his team to easily manage and optimize websites for the campaigns they were creating.
Duda checked all the boxes.
A win-win solution for the agency and its clients
The next step was to ask clients if they wanted to move their websites to Duda. “We do not charge a big fee to create the site, nor a high monthly retainer,” explains Siggi. “Our promise is that the client can take over the site once we launch it, and we will make any adjustments needed for their marketing campaigns. The handover process has been very smooth.”
This approach benefits both the agency and its clients. Duda gives Sahara the control needed to efficiently manage client websites, enabling them to deliver a comprehensive 360-degree service and achieve more impactful marketing results. For Sahara's clients, it means spending less on web design while getting more value from their investment.
Siggi estimates that his website clients are saving 50-70% monthly. This is possible because they can make most of the website updates themselves, or Sahara will make them quickly and easily without the need for expensive development hours.
“The Duda editor is structured to minimize errors. It has enabled us to streamline our web design services. We can actually create and maintain beautiful websites without the technical barriers that can be very frustrating,” says Siggi.
Sahara clients get direct access to the Duda editor at the beginning of the design process. Using client management features like integrated Site Comments, web designers receive instant client feedback, eliminating endless email revision threads. The team can also easily implement all the tracking needed for better campaign performance evaluation.
Duda allowed Sahara to integrate web design seamlessly into their existing services. This not only minimized errors but also allowed the agency to hand over website management to their clients smoothly, freeing up the agency to focus on more complex projects and digital marketing efforts.
“Adding website design to our service was more than just growing bigger; it was a smart plan to keep leading digital marketing by giving our clients everything under one roof. Duda has allowed us to streamline our processes, reduce costs, and focus on what we do best – delivering exceptional digital marketing services,” concludes Siggi.
To make the most of its strategic partnership with Duda, Sahara is launching a new brand. Klick offers visually stunning, user-friendly websites, and scalable eCommerce platforms to businesses from all sizes.
To learn more about Sahara, check out the webinar ‘Streamlining Your Website Building’, with Sigurdur ‘Siggi’ Svansoon.
