Where did the sites with the "average" budget go, or how to make 80 projects a year with the help of Marketplace

There is an opinion that the web development market is gradually “collapsing”. For example, that customers of ordinary sites are increasingly using site designers. Is it so? In part, this opinion is the result of the crisis and the sayings "fear has big eyes." As an example, consider the segment of medium sites.

What are these "average sites"? Has anything happened to this segment lately? Maybe the average sites have not gone away?

The text was written based on the speech of Roman Petrov (@romanpetrov), director of ITConstruct, at the 1C-Bitrix Partner Conference.

We work with clients from different types of businesses: small, medium, large. We try to distribute orders so that if one of the segments subsides, we will have funds in the other. We successfully implement enterprise projects, but at the same time we do many small and medium-sized projects every year. For example, over the past year there have been about 80.
What is the "middle segment"?
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• Online store - 200-750 thousand rubles, corporate site - 150-500 thousand rubles
• Customers ordering such sites are necessarily medium or small business.
• From 3 to 9 months of work from start to launch of the project

What do we want when a client comes to us?

• Work long and well
• So that the client can really spend the announced budget for our services.
• So that the project implementation is not delayed
• To have as few risks as possible: the client has left the manager, the lead project; Out of money; “Let's come back to this in a year, we have annual planning”, and so on
• So that the client to whom we developed the site would later use our support and promotion services.

Description of the typical situation in the middle segment

We have customers who need a website "for show". But most often clients from the middle segment already come with the understanding that they need a website to solve a problem. Boost sales. Creation of dealer office.

But you (the web studio) still know - your competence is higher than that of the customer. You have more ideas, more experience. And the customer is still focused on the leaders in their own or in other industries.

Obviously, the site should work well on mobile devices, be adaptive. But not everyone understands that it costs money. And the client’s budget is still limited. There is a conflict of interest.

On the one hand, we want to work with this client. He is interesting to us. On the other hand, the estimate (for the tasks of the client) exceeds its budget. The development of an individual project requires significantly more resources, and consequently, it costs several times more than the client has.

As an example, I can give an estimate of a typical individual project (2-3 million rubles). 75% is the cost of design, analytics, design and layout. If the project is smaller (500-750 thousand rubles), these items will occupy about 80% of the budget. And for this money it turns out a beautiful promotional site, not an online store.

But the client comes to us not for the promo-site, but for the means of solving business problems. It is very difficult to explain that the decision that he wants to buy for 750 thousand worth 3 million.

What to do?

• Go into large projects in the enterprise . But there is no waiting for you.
• You can go into the low segment .
• You can try to raise the price in the process . Almost everyone is trying to do it, but not everyone succeeds. At the same time, the client will have the feeling that they are trying to deceive him.
• Make the first project in the minus to get a client, and then for two or three years to earn extra work and get a plus. But in the middle segment, this approach does not work: the client is price-sensitive, he rarely orders additional work. Exceptions are rare
• The classic version that we use is to break the project into stages .

How do we do it? To begin, let's look at how the average customer chooses.

How does the customer choose?

• By recommendation . This is the coolest. If the customer came to you on the recommendation, he already believes you
• By experience / portfolio
• By personal communication . You may not have recommendations. But you personally convince him
• According to his image . What does it mean? The customer comes to you with a view of what the site should be. You begin to clarify - it turns out that his wishes do not fit together. “ So this should work. And how exactly? ”-“ Well, here a person leaves a request. And here we have an order in 1C. - “But between what is this?” - “And between this you do something ”

We have long been accustomed to this. Whatever the customer says, but at the initial stage he does not know exactly what he wants . At the same time, when you later hand over the website to him, he will say: “ I immediately told you that. So it had to be done. And here's another, you see, as an online store "Bee", we so wanted. We talked it over with you. I mentioned this in 75 letter, and you did not . ”

There's nothing you can do about it. You just have to live with it. If we are not able to offer an individual project to the middle segment clients at the price that suits them, then we offer them a phased project .

We offer it here with such magical phrases. Literally with some variations, this is a sales script:

Julia. Here you need an online store. But we know for sure that you will work with him for six months and new requirements will appear. You will need another solution. And now you will invest in individual development and you will have half the money for six months. Therefore, we suggest first to gain experience. And then take it into account in a full-fledged individual site.
We are now watching your competitors. Look Masha, look Dasha. They have such sites. They are beautiful. But how they work inside, whether they bring customers - we do not know. Because now we are talking about design. And you need to debug business processes, warehouse, integration with "1C".

Have you already agreed with 1C? Did not agree? We will advise, by the way. We can make an individual decision. But it differs in price in price several times. And in time we will do 5 times longer. And you need money now.

We advise you to start with the site on a ready-made solution. It will begin to work, make a profit. At the same time, we individualize the ready-made solution for your style. And in the process of the site, according to your desire, it can be recycled to your requirements and wishes.

Do you have an iPhone? And I have an iPhone. Look, your iPhone is different from mine. First, you have it in gold, and I have silver. And secondly, you have a cover, but I do not. You see, individual. With the site you can do the same. You will be different from Masha. And your site will also be more adaptive. It looks like this.

Enjoying ready-made solutions from the Marketplace . We select the appropriate. There is a small selection of worthy pieces 15. We are refining, launching, developing and promoting. The result is a good site. Customer satisfied. Or not happy.

We usually select solutions in the Marketplace from the work of several developers. They hang in the leaders of sales "1C-Bitrix." If the solution is unfamiliar to us, then we look at two indicators:

• How does it behave
• Neatly done

If spare parts are sticking out of all the cracks, then we suggest the client to choose something else. If everything looks decent, then we honestly say: " We did not work with him, but it was done carefully, let's try ."

In a phased implementation, we use two approaches:

• When a customer is willing to pay quite a bit.
  We say: “Ready-made kit, installation of a ready-made solution, integration with 1C. And then they are waiting for you with open arms in technical support. You pay for the time, do whatever you say. If you want a snowball on the site, it will be a snowball on the site. You want a Christmas tree, there will be a Christmas tree. ”
• When the client is not very sociable.
  We say: “Here is the project manager. Let's list the tasks, we will evaluate the mini-projects. Or here's a project manager. Payment for actually spent time. We do, we discuss consulting, programming, design, testing, everything. ”

Underwater rocks

But you may encounter a number of pitfalls that we encountered. There are companies that were partners with 1C-Bitrix back in 2008-2010. Then they sold it like this. A client comes in, says: “ I want a feedback form and an online store .” You say: “ Here is 1C-Bitrix. He has a feedback form module, an online store - 25 thousand. " Client: “ Normal .” Deploy the finished product. And the client says: “It's not like that. It should be different, you did not say that it works like this. " And this led to unnecessary disputes, free work or customer dissatisfaction.

A ready-made solution from the Marketplace must be sold without stepping on the rake of high expectations . That is, the client needs to show a ready-made solution and say: “We will put it here. Here is the SKU. They will be like this. Do you have 1C? "-" Yes "-" This needs to be finalized. And this too, and this . " That is, you need to work without creating excessive expectations for the client. Because miracles do not happen.

Ready solution - a great option to start. But ready-made solutions may in the end require a large amount of changes and improvements . You may encounter what the client has to say: “ You've matured. Now you can not use the finished. It's time to create an individual . " Or: " Let's choose another ."

You can not sell the function of marketing description. Sell ​​what you see. Very often in marketing descriptions something is exaggerated. Therefore, before you sell, learn on your own how the proposed product works.

And a very important point: in the middle segment, design is still important . That is, the client wants his site to look like his site. Therefore, at the first stage we say to the client: “ You have bought a website, let us fill it with your information. Put your goods in there. Write there your news. Your contacts. Put your banner, slider, to make the site completely yours . ” Let the client live with him. And when he does something with his hands, he becomes attached to him. And he says that he wanted to do it.

We believe that the middle segment is not too reduced in size. Just the market has changed, life has changed. People are not ready to wait for 7-9 months until they make the site. And making websites in the forehead became unprofitable for us. Because the online store - these are three adaptive states. In each of which you need to make up to 40 pages. This is a very big job. Therefore, we make 80 sites per year on a turnkey solution. And half of them then "stand up" for support, for promotion. And for the year they give us the same profit as an individual medium-sized site.