Friends, in this important article we will cover many interesting topics related to the process of creating sites and the industry of web studios in general.
Let’s start with the important news — we significantly increase the cost of site development services. For a long time we went to this: we increased our portfolio, earned an ideal reputation, grew as professionals, plunged headlong into many areas of business, thoroughly studied the sites of competitors and the very sphere within which we had to implement the project.
For a year and a half of hard work, we have come a long way from the development of online stores for 10 thousand rubles and the payment of work in fact to cooperation with companies of federal significance. It was important for us to earn a reputation as honest professionals who keep their promise. It was this approach that allowed us not to close in the first year of our existence, which happens with almost 90% of new web studios.
Now, of course, we are not working at a loss: the price tag has increased, the staff is growing, projects have reached a new level of quality. Nevertheless, our prices are still far from even the average price for such a service in the market. We conducted a simple experiment: we called several dozens of web studios — not market leaders, but also not simple “homeworkers” / freelancers — those web studios that develop good websites for an average price tag on the market. Introducing ourselves as a client (the guys we called, sorry for this little trick, but we are sure that you also resort to such methods of studying competitors), we threw off one of our projects and asked to evaluate the development of such a site:
Good afternoon, the company is such and such, are you developing?
Good afternoon, yes. Which site do you need?
We drop the project we developed by e-mail and ask for the approximate cost of developing a similar site. Within 2-3 days, an answer comes. The average amount in which our projects were evaluated is 350,000 (+ — 150,000). Recall that these are far from market leaders, but ordinary web studios, often not even included in the top 300 web studios in St. Petersburg according to the rating of the CMS-magazine portal (we took 177 lines out of 600+ web studios for a year and a half). only those who registered on this portal).
Our average price tag for developing sites like those we sent for such an “assessment” is from 60,000 to 90,000, rarely the amount goes beyond 100,000 rubles. Such a significant difference in price is not a consequence of the fact that customers do not value our work, or that we do not value it, or we cannot name more, or customers do not have money. We ourselves called such a price, since we needed to quickly collect good and interesting projects in the portfolio. The less time spent on bidding and negotiations, the more it remained on the development process.
The formula is simple: the client quickly agrees to a low cost, we perform the work as efficiently as possible, the customer remains satisfied, writes a letter of thanks to us, recommends to partners, our portfolios and reputation are growing. Now that we have a sufficient evidence base — a large portfolio of quality sites and a lot of real feedback from our customers about our work, we want to start earning more.
The average time taken to develop a site is 1-2 months. You must admit that it’s difficult to maintain a staff of 4 specialists, an office and all its components, earning 70,000 on the project. Keep in mind that we do not take more than one project to develop at a time. This allows you to focus on one task and perform it as efficiently as possible, but more on that later.
Let’s talk about the specifics of our approach to website development. And anyway, why should we trust our money?
No managers.
No managers who do not know what they are offering, what they are saying, what they are selling. Your project is supervised by the head of the company, fully competent in all aspects of the complex process of creating a site. Starting from the first call, ending with the final presentation of the site, the head of the company works with you. This ensures maximum interest in the positive reputation of the company that he created.
Perfect service.
When working with us, you will never get this: the manager does not pick up the phone, reports on the work done are sent with great delays, or they are not sent at all, elementary changes are made for months, etc. We believe that it is better to come to you once again and discuss the issue that has arisen than to try to resolve it by telephone. We are really in touch 24/7 and are ready to answer you on Saturday evening.
We exist.
So yourself an advantage? During the work, we heard a lot of sad stories from customers. For example, the manager with whom the contract for the creation of the site was concluded is both a designer, and a copywriter, and a developer, and a cleaner in his company. We have a real office in the city center, where a small but full-fledged team of professionals is working, and everyone is responsible for their area of competence.
No cheating.
Being honest in everything is our main principle. Our contract is not a huge manuscript with a bunch of pitfalls and obscure terms. He is as transparent and honest with respect to the customer. We never go beyond the originally announced price of work. We do not violate the deadlines announced before the signing of the contract. We don’t sell “a pig in a poke” — thanks to an interactive prototype, you will see your future site before the completion of technical work.
All at once.
A site is a multi-component product. We provide many additional services, one way or another necessary in the development of a full site. You do not have a logo, and indeed a brand book? Draw. No photos of employees, premises, your work? We will come and take a picture. No administrator for further site maintenance? Train or take care of the site. We are a full cycle agency.
These 5 advantages may seem commonplace, but our experience shows that 70% of web studios or freelance developers do not fulfill the lion’s share of the above. We have many private examples.
There were companies that took 150 thousand rubles for a full-fledged online store, and handed over to the customer a landing page developed on wix. Or they assured that they would draw a completely unique design for 300,000, but they developed the site on a template. And we, although rarely, work with templates (for example, when the customer does not have money for a unique site), but we always warn the customer about this and offer him such an option as an alternative.
We will not recall such a classic divorce as taking money and an abyss. Among the 50 companies there was not a single (!) Client who did not encounter fraud on the part of web studios or private website developers. We have partially touched on fraud in the field of Internet marketing in our last year’s article. A year has passed since then, and the situation with theft from web studios has remained the same.
In this article, we tried to reveal the parameters by which it is worth choosing a contractor for an important and complex site development service. Not only the words and promises of the representative of a particular studio are important, but the documents confirming these words. In our case, such documents are letters of appreciation and letters of recommendation from existing customers, they almost completely cover one of the walls of the office.
With pleasure we are ready to answer all your questions on any of the communication channels with our company.