EXPERIENCE
25+
Years Building Websites
WELCOME TO THE LAIR
Every
evil
plan starts somewhere.
Pull up a chair. Watch your step on the grizzly bear rug.
This is where good businesses stop blending in online, underdogs start punching above their weight, and technical gremlins are dealt with accordingly.
Mind the cat. He’s in charge.
I don't build websites I ADOPT BUSINESSES
Every so often, a good business sends up a distress signal.
That’s usually when I appear. I have a habit of arriving precisely when things have become a little… complicated.
For a little while, your business becomes my business.
I learn how it works. I discover what makes it special. I become quietly obsessed with the details. The website. The branding. The photography. Google. The customer experience. The awkward technical bits that keep giving you a cracking headache...
I absolutely won't hand your project to an account manager... I certainly don't disappear in a puff of smoke after you sign on the dotted line... I coordinate whatever needs coordinating. I pull up my sleeves and get to work. I solve whatever needs solving. I become just as obsessed with.. coughs.. umm I mean invested in your success as you are.
You deal with me.
Every email.
Every decision.
Every tiny improvement.
And when everything is finally running the way it should, I quietly disappear into the shadows in search of the next good business that needs a digital villain.
I'm your practically perfect professional meddler and villain-for-hire.
Profile of a Digital Villain
SERVICE
30+
Years in Customer Service
BUSINESS
13+
Years in Business
DIGITAL VILLAINY
30+
Businesses Made Better
STANDARDS
0
Corners Cut
OBSESSION
∞
Nothing Overlooked
GOOD BUSINESSES DESERVE BETTER VILLAINS.
Confidential personnel file
Confessions of a Digital Villain
Confession 01
An OG nerd from
the days of dial up
Hi. I'm Alicia.
I’ve been building websites since the days of Dreamweaver, table layouts and dial-up internet in the late ‘90s. I’ve also been behind a camera since developing six rolls of film from one night out was considered perfectly normal, especially when you worked for Kodak. Well, normal for me anyway.
Read the full confession Close confession
Back then there were no templates, no YouTube tutorials and no shortcuts. If you wanted something to work, you learnt it the hard way. And that passion for nerdy stuff became a career.
These days I build websites, improve SEO, untangle technical problems, migrate businesses to new platforms, fix Google headaches, photograph products, people and places, create fancy stationery, forms and notifications, write copy, design graphics and generally make the internet behave itself.
I'm your friendly neighbourhood Digital Villain!
I adopt businesses, hunt down technical gremlins, inject fun and personality, solve whatever needs solving and make things run exactly as they should. Then I quietly disappear into the shadows... until you need me again.
“Your friendly neighbourhood Digital Villain.”
Confession 02
Not Your Average
Web Designer.
Running a small business means wearing twelve hats. One minute you’re answering the phone halfway through crisis management, the next you’re juggling customers, suppliers and staff, then suddenly it’s three o’clock and you’ve forgotten to eat lunch. Again.
I’ve lived that life. After more than a decade owning and running one of Australia’s largest costume businesses, I know the work doesn’t stop when the doors close. That’s when the website updates, product uploads and all the other jobs there was never time for during the day finally begin.
It’s usually somewhere around then that you realise every business needs someone behind the scenes quietly pulling the strings. A Digital Villain, you might say...
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Before Studio Von Terrible, I spent more than twenty-five years owning, running and managing businesses of all shapes and sizes, from psychology clinics and large retail stores to running the office behind the largest tour group ever to leave Australia, for the 100th Anniversary Harley Homecoming in the USA.
As Executive Assistant to the Tour Director, I was responsible for making the impossible happen. Every booking. Every ticket. Every visa. Every shipment. Every insurance policy. Every itinerary. Every rider enquiry. Every spreadsheet. If it involved paperwork, logistics or organisation, it landed on my desk.
Together, we got more than 500 Australian riders and over 300 Harley-Davidsons to the United States for an eight-week adventure.
And pulled it off without a hitch.
On arrival, the San Francisco Police Department escorted our convoy through the city and closed the Golden Gate Bridge as more than 300 Harleys crossed together to begin the ride down the Pacific Coast Highway. Watching years of planning finally come to life from the back of the lead Harley, directly behind the San Francisco Police escort as we rolled onto the Golden Gate Bridge with 300 Aussie Harley riders behind us, remains one of the most extraordinary moments of my life. If you’re curious about the Harley adventure, it’s quite the story. Read more here.
So when I tell you my attention to detail is dialled up to eleven, I mean it. I’ve never been particularly good at saying, “That’ll do.” If something can be improved, refined or polished, I’ll keep working until it feels right.
From building high-ranking Shopify websites and memorable brands to writing entertaining copy that still keeps Google happy, designing everything from business cards, flyers and stationery to beautiful email signatures that give a business the polish customers notice, I enjoy the details most people don’t. The domains. DNS records. Google updates. SEO. Email. The technical gremlins. The little jobs that somehow become tomorrow’s emergency. Because running a small business already means wearing enough hats without trying to become your own web designer, copywriter, graphic designer and IT department as well. They’re the sort of things I genuinely enjoy, so you don’t have to.
Business owners don’t need another salesperson making promises they’ll never keep. They need someone who quietly rolls up their sleeves, gets stuck in and starts solving problems. That's me! So for a little while, let me handle the digital chaos. You keep doing what you do best.
I don’t stop when the quote runs out. I stop when the job feels finished. It’s probably an inefficient way to run a business. It’s definitely not the most profitable. But if I were sitting in your chair, it’s exactly how I’d want someone to treat mine. I help business owners the way I’d want to be helped. With honest advice. Clear communication. Ridiculous attention to detail. And you can have the confidence that, while I’m looking after your business, someone genuinely gives a damn about the outcome.
I couldn’t do it any other way.
If your business could do with a Digital Villain to jump in and take care of the technical headaches and all those little jobs you simply don’t have the time, patience or know-how for, you know where to find me.
IT TURNS OUT… WORLD DOMINATION
REQUIRES AN UNUSUALLY ECLECTIC SKILLSET.
One job title never really stood a chance.
Digital Villain seemed easier.
Website developer.
Shopify specialist.
SEO strategist.
Copywriter.
Graphic designer.
Data entry nerd.
Professional photographer.
Problem solver.
Technical gremlin exterminator.
Customer experience maniac.
Professional Googler.
Obsessive organiser.
Cat's executive assistant.
None of these skills are particularly unusual on their own.
Finding them all in the same person, certainly is.
The Real Boss. Evil Genius. Occasional Saboteur.
Every good villain needs someone quietly pulling the strings.
Meet Lucifer.
He runs a remarkably tight operation for someone who sleeps twenty hours a day.. From his favourite chair in the lair, he silently oversees every project with the sort of calculating stare that makes you wonder whether you’re building a website... or accidentally becoming part of a much larger plan.
When not occupying keyboards or conducting mandatory parcel inspections, he can usually be found sitting with his paws thoughtfully pressed together, quietly considering the next phase of world domination.
To date, Lucifer has written precisely zero lines of code.
He nevertheless remains convinced every successful project is entirely his doing. To be fair… I’ve never actually seen proof to the contrary.
Villain Headquarters Local Lair. Long Reach.
Based on the Mornington Peninsula. Frequently found wherever good businesses need saving.
Digital Villainy doesn’t care much about geography. Most projects happen entirely online, so whether you’re around the corner or across the country, you’ll get exactly the same attention, the same ridiculous level of detail and the same slightly unhealthy obsession with getting things right. Straight from the Lair of Studio Von Terrible.
And if you’re local and the project calls for it, I’ll happily come to you. Sometimes a camera, a coffee and a wander through your business makes me fall in love with it even more.
DIGITAL VILLAINY, AT YOUR SERVICE
Meet Studio Von Terrible, Your Mornington Peninsula Digital Villain
Studio Von Terrible is the independent digital studio of Alicia Von Terrible, a Mornington Peninsula web designer, Shopify specialist, SEO specialist, website developer, business owner and professional overthinker with more than 25 years spent building things for the internet.
The Lair is the story behind the studio: where the experience came from, why I work the way I do and why I become unreasonably invested in the businesses foolish enough to let me in.
I started building websites when dial-up internet was still screaming at us through the telephone line. Since then I have worked across website design and development, ecommerce, photography, graphic design, copywriting, customer experience, digital marketing and search engine optimisation, while also spending more than a decade running a substantial bricks-and-mortar and online retail business of my own. Studio Von Terrible exists at the point where all of those things collide.
A Web Designer Who Has Sat on Your Side of the Desk
There is a useful difference between knowing how to build a website and knowing what it feels like to own the business relying on it. I have spent years dealing with customers, suppliers, stock, ecommerce, bookings, marketing, Google, photography, product content, staff, systems and the occasional technical gremlin intent on ruining an otherwise perfectly respectable Tuesday.
That experience shapes how I approach small business web design. I look beyond whether something is pretty. I want to know how people find your business, what they search for, what makes them trust you, where they get confused, what makes them choose you and whether your website is helping the business do its job.
Design, content, structure, usability, search visibility and personality all belong in the same conversation. The same applies whether I am working on a service website, an ecommerce website or a substantial Shopify store with products, collections, apps and integrations all talking to one another behind the scenes.
Independent Web Design on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
Studio Von Terrible is based on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, and works directly with independent and small businesses throughout Mornington, Frankston, Melbourne and Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs. My digital villainy also travels happily to Phillip Island, Gippsland, Ballarat, Bendigo, regional Victoria, country Victoria and businesses elsewhere across Australia.
Most projects work perfectly well remotely, so geography does not decide whether I adopt your business. Being a web designer on the Mornington Peninsula does give me first-hand knowledge of the local business community, including the tourism, hospitality, retail, attractions, trades, professional services and wonderfully individual businesses that give this part of Victoria its character.
For businesses looking for a small business web designer rather than a large agency structure, Studio Von Terrible is deliberately personal. You deal with the person doing the work, whether the job involves website strategy, Shopify development, SEO or sorting out something strange that has appeared in the machinery.
One Villain, Quite a Few Useful Skills
Studio Von Terrible works across the parts of a business online that have an annoying habit of affecting one another. That includes Shopify website design and development, small business SEO, copywriting, ecommerce, photography, graphic design, website content, customer journeys and technical problem solving.
As a Shopify web developer and Shopify specialist, I work across more than the visible design of an online store. Site structure, products, collections, navigation, Shopify apps, integrations, content, customer pathways and the technical foundations underneath them all influence how well the finished website works.
Search belongs in that wider picture too. My SEO work covers the relationship between content, site structure, search intent, local relevance and technical SEO rather than treating rankings as something separate from the website itself.
Existing websites that need new pages, products, functionality or room to become something bigger are handled through Website Growth.
I do not believe every business needs every service. I do believe the person working on your website should understand how those pieces affect each other. A beautiful website nobody finds is a problem. Traffic arriving at confusing content is a problem. Strong search rankings leading to a business nobody remembers are also a problem. My job is to look at the business as a whole and work out which problems are worth solving.
What Makes Studio Von Terrible Different?
You work directly with me. No account manager. No mysterious production department. No passing your business around a room full of strangers. Studio Von Terrible is deliberately small because I want to understand the businesses I work with and remain involved in the details.
I am moderately nerdy, mildly sarcastic and fiercely loyal to a good small business. I ask questions. I notice things. I care about customer experience. I dislike unnecessary jargon, beige websites and digital nonsense that exists primarily to make something sound more complicated than it is. Most of all, I want to understand what makes your business worth choosing before I start deciding how the internet should see it.
Sometimes that means building something from the ground up through Website Development. Sometimes it means finding what is already good and making considerably more of it. Sometimes you simply need a capable pair of hands for a list of jobs that has been glaring at you for six months. That is what Villain for Hire is for.
Twenty-Five Years of Digital Villainy and Counting
The technology has changed considerably since my first websites. The principle behind good digital work has not. Understand the business. Understand the customer. Make useful information easy to find. Give people a reason to remember you. Build things properly. Pay attention to the details.
The Studio Von Terrible Case Files show where some of that experience has been put to work. They include real website development, Shopify, ecommerce, SEO, content and digital projects rather than a gallery of attractive screenshots with all the difficult bits politely removed.
If you have finished snooping around The Lair and think your own business might benefit from a Digital Villain, explore Work With Me or contact Studio Von Terrible and tell me what you are plotting.
