The saying goes that the mechanic’s car is the one that doesn’t turn over, the dentist’s teeth are the ones that need work and the builder’s house is the one that is a bit crooked. It’s no different for the web designer’s website, or the internet marketer’s branding which get neglected under the weight of customer obligation.

So too, did SmartClix .. the brand .. get left behind. Diminishing effort went into the website, or the online advertising strategies while we spent all our time running amazing Google Adwords campaigns and landing pages for our ever growing client base. And why should we? We have all the work we need, what sense did it make to try and get more – we can barely keep up now! Well we decided to work smarter, and practice a bit more of what we preach.

In doing this, new systems have been developed behind the scenes to make client management easier and a better experience for our customers too. Now we have fully self managed billing, provisioning and reporting so we can get on with the important work of strategy, design and development instead of being bogged down with general administration.

It was a perfect opportunity to not just splash a fresh coat of paint on the old website, but to totally and utterly transform our corporate identity. We sat down for days with a dictionary, a thesaurus and many cups of coffees and went over it. What brand would best reflect the values, and the conceptual idea behind our services? Are we just another “Melbourne IT” style tech company? Or are we more young and funky “Google” or cheap and cheerful “Crazy Domains”?

The more we thought about it the more it was about the “whole pie”. Not just being a web hosting company, not just designers, and not just another fly-by-night Google Adwords cowboy operation. We take pride in offering – The Lot. Everything from domain name registration to sit-down market strategy consultation and training. We’ve taken businesses from mere ideas on paper to fully fledged, 6 figure annual revenues.

We wrote down our complete service offering – 10 core areas, and though we came up with many great sounding words for the name (and even registered a few domain names along the way!) the one that stuck with us each morning when we woke up was the same – zen¹⁰. Even the staff partners liked it – a vitally important benchmark! It was a brand we’d all feel comfortable supporting. It’s short and snappy, and though the word itself is ancient, even spiritual, it has a technical feel to it as well without the tired “web / net / clicks” cliches that lots of tech companies fall to.

There you have it! zen¹⁰ was conceived and the ball kept rolling to full launch! SmartClix is dead, long live zen¹⁰!