Market Research

[e-web solutions]

Hi just a bit of research I need to gather to put forward to my directors to show that we are loosing money.

If you were looking for a web developer where would the first place be youd look.

I wont list it as a poll. simply list the method you'd use then the reason why.

thanks in advance :)

[Richard Conyard]

I shouldn't really answer this James since we are a web company, however we get most of our leads through client referal rather than any advertising.

We now keep advertising down to a minumum since even when we have cranked it up we still got more leads through referal.

[creospace]

I work through referal too, although you have to market to forge new partnerships in order to get more referals!

Gary

[e-web solutions]

well thats what im hoping to do in the end. but ofcourse i need to advertise to get the contracts to get the referals.

[SillyJokes]

I'd find a website I like and discover who built it.

[e-web solutions]

but how would you look for that website.

would you find the company through the yellow pages, search engines, yell.com?

[SillyJokes]

I would just start surfing for sites similar to what I wanted.

For instance a new shopping site is easy - just look at as many as you can in two hours - loads.

Or even use one of those thousands of shopping directories out there as a starting point.

Then I just pick up the phone and ask the director who made the site. Some might tell me to get lost but most would probably be human just like me and tell me.

It isn't rocket surgery.

[directmarketingadvice]

If you were looking for a web developer where would the first place be youd look.

I'd probably look in a place like this or consider people I had met at networking events.

And then I'd check out their website to see if I rate their work.

There are a few ways around the "not enough existing clients to get referrals" problem.

For example, if you have experienced web designers working for you, then they must have previous clients (even if it wasn't while working for you). They can go back to their old clients and get referrals.

If that doesn't apply, there are some other solutions.

Steve

[e-web solutions]

what other solutions.

i was thinking that some good advertising works.

also some good pr. such as going to trade events.necc. competitions in local press.

[directmarketingadvice]

what other solutions.

What would and wouldn't work for you depends on a number of factors.

For example, what's your selling point(s)? Who will be your clients? What part of the market are you going after? What are your prices? What the payment structure for your web designers? etc. etc.

Without knowing the details of your business, all I could do is take a scattergun approach and post up a whole load of ideas until one is applicable to you. Even then, that one idea might not be the best one for you, just the first one that might work.

I really don't have the time or inclination to do this.

If you want professional help with your marketing, that's what I do.

However, if you want help with your marketing without paying for it, my advice would be to find web designers on here that you've got some rapport with and contact them privately and ask them how they managed to get their businesses of the ground.

At some time, some of them may have been in a similar situation as you and may have tried and tested ideas you can apply.

That's probably your best bet.

Also, someone (sorry I didn't take the time to find this) posted in the last few days about a nephew who was earning money doing web design while at school by redesigning crap websites and sending the redesign to the company.

There's a bunch of variations on this approach that you could consider. However, again, what would work for you depends on the details of your business.

As for advertising, there's no reason why it couldn't work if you could can get cost effective access to qualified prospects.

Maybe PPC would be the way to go with this. Though it's useful to know what your click to sale ratio is before you try PPC.

Hope this helps.

Steve

[mrbusiness999]

James, I think you will find that in business people like to know what they are getting themselves in for, that is why referrals are so important, because if a friend of mine for example told me how wonderful his web designer was I wouldn't hesitate to contact him, just based on the fact that I trust my friends judgement and he is giving me positive feedback. It's also like ebay, where sellers with better ratings seem to have more sales because they are seen as trusted.

Now speaking from experience, press competitions you will find that yes you get a lot of responses but this is mainly because they want something for nothing and wouldn't be bothered other wise. Your best bet is to maybe go with a small advert in your local yellow pages and yell.com then just provide amazing customer service for your existing clients.

When we first launched we didn't really have a clue how to market, but all of a sudden we got involved with a quite large insurance agency and then business just took off because of referrals and people in their industry seeing what we created for them, and wanting us to do the same for their company. I think that if you ask any web design company, once the first big contract comes then business takes off because they are seen as more trusted.

If all this fails, try coming up with a unique sales point, something that makes you different and that also makes you stand out above every other web design company in your area. For us, we pride ourselves on amazing customer service. By doing small things like taking clients out for coffee or posting xmas cards, we have actually found that even if the client chooses not to use us, they will be more than willing to refer us to friends and acquaintances.

Hope this helps.

[clairemackaness]

I would look at other artists websites and see who made them and then contact them for a quote. I would also probably google and ask for quotes on here (UKBF).

Perhaps you could offer free site evaluations for UKBF members and rebuild sites that are not working to their full potential. We could then list you as designers and hopefully you would gain referralls from our sites. Just a suggestion.

[Steve Roberts]

Take this the right way, but if I wanted to make serious money I wouldn't be in that sector in the first place. It's extremely competitve, often from individuals with negligible overheads. Things have changed MASSIVELY in your sector in the last five years. There is now a huge glut of individuals that can offer such a service, even two of my four kids have designed, and effectively run, their own web-sites. They can run rings round me in anything computer / internet related. As such, I'd never set up a company offering such services.

[e-web solutions]

But were not going to be focusing on just web design now though.

new services such as emailing software have been developed.

Database development and CMS are going to be available to our clients.

all to be available from 1st January 2006.

[Richard Conyard]

I understand where you're coming from Steve, I guess the only problem is with your argument is I'm guessing you're kids are at best talented armatures (to be fair so are a lot of web design companies), and a company would be mad to approach them to take on a professional contract.

However the maddening part of this is that I work for a communications industry that singularly fails to get across this fact time after time to people in the business world.

---
BTW. I agree with your sig, we all pay too much !"£$"!$"! tax - and now it would appear that I will be doing so for an extra few years to pay for a non-existant state pension along with a health system and benefits system that I've never used as an adult.

[mrbusiness999]

[quote="Steve Roberts"]Take this the right way, but if I wanted to make serious money I wouldn't be in that sector in the first place. It's extremely competitve, often from individuals with negligible overheads. Things have changed MASSIVELY in your sector in the last five years.quote]

I couldn't agree more with you here. Unless you have a large client base or are a respected company with a proven portfolio which features some big clients, then you have more chance making money as a freelance developer or designer. This is for the simple reason that it's getting harder and harder to cover the over heads as prices are being forced down. We have just lost 5 contracts recently because of this:

There are a group of students in the local area who are charging £100 for a 6 page website. To them this is all the money they need, it pays for a good night out and a cab home, and they are getting more and more work because of this. They don't have any huge wages to pay or office space to rent and they just save a bit each month to cover the usual business fees. Where as we on the other hand have employees wages, property rental, telephone systems, advertising and all the rest to pay- which is why for the same 6 page package we would charge over 6 times more. I can't even criticise the quality of their sites either as they are all doing web design or multimedia courses at uni and the sites are up there with the best of them. (got side tracked there) but again- how can any one compete with that. So I think as designers and dvelopers we can either look for new jobs, or look to the future of the internet and try and addapt and develop early, before it becomes saturated again.

sorry for hyjacking the thread

[Jayne]

Hi,

I joined the UKBF, then had a nosey at designers sites, then I picked the designer with the nicest looking site :D

Jayne

[Janebert]

I do my own webdesign, so I've never been in the market for a designer for myself. However, I do use designers for my clients, and I tend to find them through networking - online and offline. I did find one through a PPC advert.

Agree with previous comments about this being a difficult industry unless you can catapult yourselves to the top of the league. It seems to me that there are hundreds of thousands of web designers who are only half a step of their clients - some of the things they say make me cringe (I've been involved in IT since 88 and webdesign since 01) - rank amateurs. Unfortunately, that's what you're competing against (because the market is bamboozled by the technology and doesn't know a good webdesigner from a bad one).

Anyway, as a web specialist company you should be able to drive traffic to your own website. And then the question becomes "does your website convert visitors into leads?". If it doesn't, then you need to be asking a different question than the one you started with.

HTH,
Jane

PS Just went to your site and had a look at the portfolio - only one of the sites had a live link. This rang alarm bells immediately for me.