About Michael Marshall

Michael Marshall is a business owner, web developer, screenwriter, lecturer and musician. Over the past decade Michael has produced award winning work for a multitude of large brands across South Africa and the international market. Michael has been running Marshall Arts Pty Ltd from 2009 to the present and is currently primarily focused on developing high end live-streaming virtual event platforms for companies such as Asba, Multi-Media, Currn't Events, Immersive Showtech and Carbon6.

Early career

Michael's early career as a musician began in 2014 with his band Elysium. Elysium produced music and played shows in Johannesburg from 2005 - 2008 and this is where Michael began to make a name for himself as a singer, event organiser and lyricist. From 2008 to 2014 Michael played in a dozen bands across South Africa as a vocalist or guitarist or drummer or all three. In 2014 Michae was approached by Intellilab, a Television company run by TV Tycoon, Nico Steyn. Nico wanted Michael to teach Lyric Writing on his new television show SugaRushed which featured musicians who wanted to become famous in Nigeria. Over the next year Michael worked with Intellilab and eventually was given the opportunity to produce several episodes of UJ TV. During this time Michael wrote his first screenplay which was produced by Mzanzi Magic through a young filmmakers program called The Bubblegum Factory. Michael wrote a second screenplay which was produced by Mzanzi Magic in 2015. At this time, Michael was still playing music with several South African lineups, but he was focusing on his career as a storyteller through his lyrics, screenplays, television segments and more. In 2014 Michael moved back from Cape Town to his home town in Johannesburg to be closer to his family and he built a voice over recording studio in his mother's garage. Over the next 6 years that studio booth would become the foundation Marshall Art's corporate advertising career. Within the four walls of that soundproof garage booth built specifically for voice over recording Marshall Arts recorded Voice Overs and wrote copy for brands like Clinique, Dial Direct, Anglo Platinum, Investec, Netcare and that's just naming a small fraction.

In 2016 Michael was steadily producing radio and TV commercial audio at the studio in the garage while taking the odd job as a screenwriter. AFDA Johannesburg had approached Michael late in 2015 to apply for the Masters programme, but Afda did not realise Michael ws only 24 at the time. His application for enrollment into the Masters was declined, but the school asked if he would consider their 1 year Honours Post Graduate Degree. Because He had not studied at tertiary level before and did not have a single qualification from a tertiary institution he decided to study at AFDA majoring in Writing and Directing, while running his business full time. 2016 was a aa busy year indeed with contracts with Litho pharmaceutical and Anglo American Platinum at the Voice Over Studio while doing a degree that most consider full time. Michael graduated from AFDA with a Post Graduate degree in Motion Picture Media, Majoring in writing and directing. It was at AFDA in the final moments of the year, that Michael picked up video editing for the first time.

2017 would see Michael's career shift dramatically. With the skills as a video editor he could now offer his clients a far more holistic service. BBy using stock footage or small crews of young filmmakers, Michael shot adverts for ZZ2, BAIC, the Optimal.me, Buygaloo and more.

By 2018 Michael had produced a solid portfolio of creative media work where Marshall Arts had done every aspect of the production from the conceptualisation to the final mastering and even distributing for broadcast. Michael was working closely with members of family who were all creatives in various fields. Michael worked most closely with Kerry Marshall and Catherine Hall. Kerry, a graphic Designer, had the eye to help Michael's projects look and feel like they came from a high end agency. Catherine, a cinematographer, was able to shoot high quality footage on unbelievably low budgets. Together they were a great team,

Towards the end of 2018 Michael was brought on as a consultant for Buygaloo, a South African start up that offers a digital marketing solution to brick and mortar retail stores. Michael consulted with Buygaloo on Marketing and their launch strategy for the Beta TEst. In August of 2019 Michael and Buygaloo launched the Buygaloo App at Maponya Mall with great success. The app was a hit amongst the shoppers and the shops and the feedback was phenomenal. With the Beta test successful and next stage pf the app development underway, the future was looking incredibly bright. But then of course 2020 rolled around and the world of brick and mortar retail went out the window.

In the early weeks of March 2020 Michael began developing highly secure live-streaming solution that his corporate clients could use to host internal events. It had come to Michael's attention that some of his clients were hosting online events during the early days of the pandemic and that these events were costing his clients aan arm and a leg. Michael decided to put all of his energy into developing a platform that could reliaable host live streaming in South Africa and do so over a SHA 256 encrypted network. By July 2020 Michael had cracked the secret sauce of his live streaming platform and the first live event was held for Absa in on 22 July 2020. SInce then Michael has hosted live events for Coca-Cola, Disney, Standard Bank, Dimension Data and more.

Present day

Marshall Arts has grown to a company of 4 full time employees while still maintaining the original ethos of hiring in freelancers and contractors regularly. In 2021 Marshall Arts was recognised as being in the top 20 partners of Wix Agencies around the world. Marshall Arts produces high quality audio, video, graphic design and websites for companies around the world. The team always has and always will have a work from anywhere ethos and Michael and his wife Jem currently live in Simons Town South Africa

Michael and Jem 299 July 2022

Marshall House Garage - The Studio

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Above: The garage

Right: Michael and Jemmé signing marriage contracts

Building an Ecommerce site on Wix (How easy is it?)

Rating: 3 star difficulty level.

Let's start by saying, building an Ecommerce website on Wix is probably the best way for big and small businesses to get an online store online fast. Wix is an incredible website builder that is

1. easy to learn

2. extremely functional

3. makes updating an online store really easy and scalable

So, if it's so easy and great why doesn't everyone do it? Well that's where you have to look at what building an online store actually entails...

To build an online store you need:

1. a GREAT product, that people want and has a good profit margin

2. an awesome brand that people can understand, identify with and stay loyal to

3. awesome photography of your products

4. great reviews of your products

5. a marketing platform like social media or some other way to drive traffic

6. a marketing strategy and the content (pictures or videos etc.) to execute the strategy

7. an extremely user friendly and professional looking websites, as "amateur-looking sites" are the number one cause for a person not trusting a website

8. a registered business with a business bank account (this is so you can collect money)

9. an account with a payment gateway provider (this is more difficult in stricter countries)

10. a fulfilment strategy. - this is how you deliver your products to the people that buy them

That is a short but very important list of things you absolutely NEED before you even build a website. Once you have all of that, building a professional looking site, that is user friendly and functional are only two of your challenges. So being good at Wix doesn't mean you will have a successful online store. Being good at Wix is the easy part of owning an online business.

At Marshall Arts, we build stores for clients all the time. We provide a number of services that take care of all of those needs above. That's why people hire out agencies to build their online businesses all the time. Perfectly normal people with little to none of above "needs" taken care of, outsource their online business and make good money doing so. In a lot of ways, it is kind of like Ghost Writing a novel... Writing a novel is "easy enough" so long as you can speak and write... But there is so much more to a good novel than just the author's ability to craft a sentence. This is what website building agencies understand and it is the main reason to work with them.

What is awesome about Wix, is that even after the agency has built your site, it is easy enough for someone with absolutely ZERO website experience to take over and manage on their own.

Building a site with Wix from scratch, if you have zero website experience, will take you a little while but it is 100% possible and if you have all of the above needs taken care of and all that is missing is your site, then I seriously recommend you start building it right now.

But... if you only have a great product and you need everything else on that list, I seriously recommend working with agencies to outsource those jobs. You'd be surprised how little it can actually cost.

(View agency rates)

Of course if you decide to just go it alone and build yourself a Wix site then I do recommend checking out YouTube for step by step details on how to do that. There is a channel called the Wix Training Academy and they have over 483 videos about how to do things on Wix. So whether you are stuck with a small problem or need to know how to build a website from scratch, their channel is bound to have something relevant for you.

The above video link is a whole playlist created by the Wix Training Academy and it is the ultimate guide to creating an Ecommerce website on Wix. I highly recommend you check that out.

If you decide that you want to speak to us about building your Ecommerce site, managing your product photos, social media strategies, content and more - then why not book a call with us. It is totally free and comes with no obligations. We can just have a chat about what your business needs and then we'll send you a quote.

Book a call with Marshall Arts

Why I chose Wix - 3 years later

My name is Michael Marshall and I build Wix Websites. I have built sites for Disney, Coca-Cola, Suzuki and over 100 mentionable brands and I have done all of that in the last three years and all of it has been using Wix.

Most people are shocked at that point. They usually don't believe me when I show them a virtual art gallery that I made, like this one (click the link to visit the gallery shown in the image below)

Absa Art Hot Spot - Virtual Gallery Experience

I have built everything from Video on Demand sites to Ecommerce stores that make thousands per month and I have to say, Wix has performed exceptionally well on all my projects.

So I made the right choice, but I made that choice 3 years ago and I wondered if my reasons for choosing Wix would be different if I were to be just starting out now.

Why I chose Wix three years ago:

1. Hosting. Unlimited bandwidth and video storage space are an amazing offering. Yes, everyone offers unlimited hosting, but it was vital to me that Wix offered these two services.

2. Impeccable website security. Every heard of someone hacking a wix Website... ? Go on, Google it. I'll wait for you in the comments. In the meantime, I'll tell you that when I googled WordPress hacks three years ago, the results were frightening. So unlimited bandwidth and video storage with great security and I was ready to offer my clients something unique.

3. Ability to use code and embed iFrames. These should maybe be two separate points - and I should also talk about API's but I'm just going to boil it all down and say that being able to do some coding was super important as I knew I would need inevitably need some feature that Wix doesn't provide. With the the ability to use external API's, a bit of JavaScript and a lot of iFrames, I know I can do anything.

4. Analytics - I knew Wix offered analytics and that is hugely important tool in my business.

5. Wix was built by designers for designers. At least that is how it feels. Because I have worked in Photoshop, Canva, Mobirise, illustrator, and Final Cut Pro, learning Wix was actually super easy because it feel intuitive for a designer. The templates are also beautiful and the whole platform feels easy to use, quick to navigate and enables me to design what I want.

6. Everything above was included in one simple price that was easy to understand. I am an Apple user all round. I have the Watch, Phone, Air Pods and Macbook. Wix feels like Apple sometimes. Everything works and it is all from one supplier. Yes, I learned all about the Wix App Market and that is a great place, but for me it was really important that everything I needed my website to do was catered for in one price and that price was going to Wix. In contrast, on Wordpress I must pay a million different app providers for each and every app that i want on my site. I must have a Woo commerce account and Yoast SEO account and that all felt cumbersome and annoying. Wix took care of all the essential features I needed.

So, would my list be any different if I had to chose Wix now. My website builder priorities now would be:

1. Can it build responsive sites?

2. Does it have features that allow me to edit and write code?

3. Is it user friendly and can I "design" what I want?

4. Is it a well priced, all in one package?

5. Does it have good analytics?

6. Unlimited Hosting and storage

Honestly, my needs haven't changed much. These are still THE most important things. Wix does them all. Webflow, Wordpress, Squarespace, Google Sites just cant do everything on that list. Wix is still the only platform that delivers all of the above. So for me it is a no brainer, I am choosing Wix for next 3 years at least and I'll update this blog and let you know if anything changes.