We just wanted to be able to say yes. Debut is how we finally can.”— Elizabeth SladeCHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND, October 3, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The rate at which New Zealand businesses are shutting down hasn’t been this high since 2010. Liquidations are climbing, profit margins are being squeezed, and the small enterprises that suffer most are often the ones with the weakest online visibility. Half of the country’s small businesses still operate without a professional website. For many, the expense has simply been unaffordable.
Christchurch-based marketing agency C i Marketing has observed this challenge firsthand for 15 years. Whether it’s tourism operators, tradespeople, health practitioners, or professional service providers, the pattern remains consistent. A business built on genuine expertise, run by someone dedicated, who invests everything into their work. Yet when it comes to being discovered online, they remain hidden. Not because they lack value, but because a professional digital presence was never designed with them in mind.
Traditionally, business owners faced the same two choices: spend hours navigating a template tool and hope it works, or pay an agency a fee that doesn’t make sense for a small operation. Neither path includes strategic insight, professional copy, or the technical foundation needed for a website to perform effectively. The middle ground never existed.
Elizabeth Slade has been working in marketing since before social media existed. She founded C i Marketing in Christchurch in 2011 and has spent every year since collaborating with business owners who deserved better than what was available. The ability was always present. The support to showcase it often wasn’t. For years, she had to turn away the very people she most wanted to assist.
"We just wanted to be able to say yes," she says. "Debut is how we finally can."
Today, C i Marketing introduces Debut: a fully managed, professionally executed website service tailored for New Zealand small businesses that have long deserved more.
With businesses navigating one of the toughest economic periods in recent memory, being easy to find online matters more, not less. A website is often the first point of contact between a business and a potential customer. For the businesses that have been missing that moment, Debut is designed to change that.
Debut is not a cut-price version of what C i Marketing builds for larger clients. It streamlines the process without stripping out expertise, strategy or quality.
Building Debut meant starting from scratch. The team drew on their combined expertise across strategy, copywriting, visual design, photography, video, digital marketing and technical SEO to work out exactly what a high-quality small business website actually requires, then built the systems to deliver it consistently. The result is a website that does what it is supposed to do: get found, make a strong first impression, and give the business owner something they can manage independently.
Every Debut website is professionally written, designed, hosted and optimised for search. Ecommerce is not currently part of the standard package but is in development.
To mark the launch, the first 30 qualifying businesses can secure a Debut website at $695 plus GST to set up, instead of the standard $995 plus GST. Monthly from $149 plus GST. No lock-in contract. Full details at debutwebsites.co.nz.
"The day your Debut site goes live is the day you become findable," Slade says. "People can discover you, read about you, be inspired to get in touch. You got there without the jargon, without the overwhelm, because someone just took care of it for you. And now you can get on with what you do best."
Businesses can find out whether Debut suits their needs at debutwebsites.co.nz.
Elizabeth Slade
C i Marketing / Debut Websites
+6433435622 ext.
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