Rating of the leading web studios of Ukraine

About rating

It has long been the idea to make a rating of web studios in Ukraine, and there were requests for such a rating. And recently there was a great opportunity to do it.

It all started with research for our company, or more precisely with competitive intelligence. The goal was the following: to identify the leading web studios in Ukraine, to gather as much information as possible about them and to develop a number of management decisions to increase the competitiveness of their own company in the market of website development.

Naturally, working in this market, we knew a lot of strong companies, there was a lot of information in free access and we even found attempts to make similar ratings earlier (although those guys did not succeed). We selected 18 companies that were deemed worthy of attention, each company collected a maximum of open information on the Internet (mainly on their corporate sites), and then resorted to the most common method of exploration — pretended to be customers and knocked at our colleagues (for this they came to a familiar a company that was just about to make a website for themselves, and together with the manager of that company began to knock on competitors.
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After 2 weeks we had all the information about each company. In the ranking, we left the top 10 companies in our opinion.

Below is a rating table with points. The analysis was carried out on the 5 most important criteria for the client (price, relationship to the client, experience, guarantees and responsibility, creativity), each criterion was assigned a score from 1 to 10, and at the end, to get an adequate assessment, we used the method of weighted coefficients, t .to. analyzed criteria have different value for the client. We determined the degree of importance of the criteria on the basis of our own research (last year we conducted a small study to find out what is important for a potential client when choosing a particular studio, but this is a topic for a separate article).

Rating of the leading web studios of Ukraine 2009

No	Title	Price	Relationship to the client	experience	Guarantees	Creative	Score
one	Art Depot	ten	ten	ten	9	ten	9.80
2	Aiken	8.75	9	eight	eight	7	8.34
3	Media5	6.87	7	9	ten	9	8.17
four	Polk	8.25	9	eight	7	eight	8.11
five	Avanport design	4.18	eight	eight	9	eight	7.25
6	World Web Studio	one	7	ten	ten	ten	7.00
7	Sparkle Design Studio	4.23	eight	7	7	eight	6.66
eight	Altima Web Systems	4.06	eight	7	eight	6	6.62
9	Studio7	2.67	eight	7	eight	7	6.37
ten	New age lab	5.25	7	7	6	7	6.36

It is important to understand that although we analyzed 18 companies, 8 were not included in the rating for various reasons: they do not reach the top ten, although, at first glance, they are very serious organizations.

Now in more detail about the 5 evaluation criteria. The rating was made during the crisis time, so consumers' accents were shifted towards prices. Here's what we got:

25% - Price

25% - Attitude towards the client

20% - Work Experience

20% - Warranty and liability

10% - Creative

The rating for each parameter can be viewed separately by clicking on the name of the criterion in the table on our website - the companies will be sorted accordingly.

The first criterion "Price" : we presented approximately the same requirements for the site to all companies. The site was a simple corporate type (we did not analyze other types of sites, but I think the results will be about the same). The lowest price threshold was at $ 2000 and this company received 10 points, i.e. maximum. The highest level reached almost $ 10,000, and this company received only 1 point, i.e. minimum. And then they calculated points for all the others with the help of inverse proportion. It is important to note that in this column there can be a significant error, because, firstly, we did not bargain at the price (which many expected and called prices with a margin), and, secondly, many practice price increases after start of work (by 20-30%).

The second criterion “Attitude towards the client” : here we included also politeness in communication, reaction speed, concern about our goals, professional advice, etc. This criterion was the most important before the crisis.

The third criterion "Experience" : here we, first of all, evaluated the portfolio, its quality and quantity, experience in specific business sectors, etc.

The fourth criterion "Guarantees and liability" : this criterion considered the possibility of official relations, company certificates, victories in contests and festivals, awards, existing customers of the company, etc.

Fifth criterion "Creative" : these are fresh and interesting ideas in the portfolio, your own studio site, etc.

In general, I can say that we especially liked the Art Depot company, of all we would choose them. Aiken and Polk have performed well. Not bad World Web Studio, Media5 and Avanport-design.

Interesting Facts

In the process of analysis, we encountered a number of very interesting facts:

1. Odin company 70-80% "borrowed" the brief from another.
2. Interesting questions were asked in one brief: “Do we need a content management system?”, “Need javascript?”, “What browsers do our customers use?”, “Do we plan to use databases?”, “Is there a strategy to promote a website design? ", - how does an ordinary person know the answers to such questions ??? And on the last question, I think so far ...
3. One company said that they often fly mail and all contacts are deleted.
4. One company did not send the materials either after the letter or after the call, and on the second call I was informed that I was “lost” (I recall the KVN phrase about Gadiu Petrovich: “I lost”). Also, many had to be reminded to send this or that information.
5. One of the companies made a mistake and sent not our offer.
6. 9 out of 10 companies confirmed their willingness to roll back (one did not answer). When answering the question about rolling back, many answered interestingly: “You can always agree!”, “Can we meet, talk about bonuses for you?”, “Let's talk about it !?” , What did you mean?". Many responded very carefully.
7. Some companies in the whole market development sites in Ukraine have a level of profitability of 1000% (found out on the basis of in-depth analysis of the cost of services, fixed and variable costs).
8. One company from the analysis, outwardly quite serious (good quality, cool clients, a good own website), turned out to be completely unprofessional in reality (or can the manager only “from school”?)
9. Several “modest” companies call themselves “leaders” of the market in several directions (how many leaders do we have?).
10. A girl manager from one company sent us a link to the presentation, which was located on ftp ... with a login and password! As a result, we got access to all clients, sources, etc., but of course, we didn’t download anything, and companies reported a security hole.

Raise your level

Naturally, after reading this article, many will be interested: “How to make business processes no worse than in the best companies in the market?”. Actually, the original goal was to answer precisely this question. We were not going to share information with colleagues, but at the last moment we thought that we were working in the same market and it would be good to make it a little better. Therefore, this section deals with improvement issues, in the form of general recommendations.

1. Customer Relations:

• The first letter to the client should contain: a warm greeting, a presentation of the company, answers to the client’s questions (if any), a link to your portfolio, a description of the guarantees to the client, contacts of the sales manager.
• After sending the letter, in 1-2 days, it is necessary to call back and find out whether the client received your letter (firstly, the mail may not work correctly, and secondly, it is an opportunity to remind you about yourself).
• Communication should be polite and friendly, try to speak with a small smile, the client will feel it.
• Try to understand the goals and needs of the client, help him in this matter. As experts, perhaps make suggestions.
• If the client is interested - try to make an appointment, personal communication is 50% of the sale.
• All documents that you send to the client must be on company letterhead with contacts (presentation, brief, quotation, etc.).
• The client should remember you, have a positive opinion and be satisfied with everything.
• For effective customer relationship management, you should use CRM.

2. Company presentation:

• The presentation should highlight your positive aspects and at the same time should not be overloaded with information.
• The presentation must contain information about you, the benefits of working with you, contacts.
• Remember that not everyone has PowerPoint, so the presentation is best done in several formats: pdf, flash (although this is not necessary).
• For example, our presentation: link .

3. Brief:

• The brief should be short, do not overload it with unnecessary questions.
• In the brief, there must be questions about the client’s goals, questions about the target audience, examples of sites that the client likes (besides the standard ones about the functionality).
• For example, our brief: link .

4. Commercial offer:

• It is important to make the CP not large (ideally up to 2 pages), all additional information can be described in the letter.
• Do not forget about the importance of this “personal approach”; the client immediately sees and appreciates this.
• Must be in a separate file so that the client can print and discuss with colleagues who make decisions.
• The cost needs to be decomposed into stages, so it will be more reasonable in the eyes of the client.
• Do not forget about the stages of work, the description of the reception-delivery stages.
• It is advisable to place information on payment, prepayment.
• The offer must end with the contacts of the responsible manager.
• After 2-3 days, call back and find out about the decision; if this is not done, there is a high probability of losing the client.

As for the rest of business processes, it’s clear here: make good websites, try to reduce the cost, win festivals, and all this will turn into real customers!
Common mistakes

Common mistakes

We believe that it is better to learn from the mistakes of others, and always improve your company. Therefore, we identified the most common mistakes of our competitors:

1. Documents not on letterhead. When analyzing, we often saw “naked” briefs and offers, without a company name and contacts. But an ordinary client always knocks on several companies, how should he identify your document exactly?
2. Cold attitude to the client. Many people are amazed by their attitude: often there were no answers to our inquiries, often they sent naked letters without explanation, few people delved into our goals, often did not call back to ask about our decision, etc. Whom the client chooses: a company that communicated well with him, penetrated his goals, held a meeting or a company that sent a bare miscalculation and disappeared?
3. Overload with unnecessary information. Often companies told some technical details that the average person doesn’t know about, often sent briefs of 10 pages with a bunch of unnecessary questions, etc. Does the potential client have more to do than sit and fill out a 10 page brief? And if the client turned to 10 companies and received 10 briefs? It is more convenient for the client when they say “We will make an excellent site for PHP, we will raise the MySQL database, a dedicated server, and we have a fairy tale CMS!” Or “We will make a site for you that in 2 months will bring a lot of customers every day” ?? ?
4. Ignorance of the basics of sales. Often, it’s not the sales manager who communicates with the customer, but the techie. As a result, the client does not receive the necessary information to make a decision, or they simply forget about it.
5. Tell the truth. A very common method: to promise the maximum, and set the price for the minimum, and in the process, say: if you want better, it costs more. This is a 100% lost customer sooner or later. And everyone has long known - money only in regular customers.

Conclusion

We conducted this study for 2.5 months, after which a complex program was developed to improve our business processes, which stretched over many months and continues today. The results were not long in coming - in the process of improvements the number of customers increased by 2 times, and the average contract value increased by 60%, many new customers from Russia, now successfully working on a number of serious projects that can be seen by the end of the year. The secret is simple: customers are more willing to accept our updated offers. If you are our “colleague” - take our recommendations and improve (do not hesitate to contact us: we will help you with advice)! If the client is always happy to hear you: call, write! :))

PS If you know companies that are not in the rating, but you should add - write to us, be sure to consider.

To all competitors who unwittingly participated in the study, thank you very much, the top 10 showed themselves well! If you have questions about your points in the rating - write, call, there are contacts on our website.

As in any rating, we may have inaccuracies, and you can find something to complain about, so please express only constructive criticism and suggestions, we will take everything into account and next time we will try to do better!

Original article here: secl.com.ua/article-rejting-veduwih-veb-studij-ukrainy.html - when copying a link to the original or to the main site is obligatory !!!

The article was prepared by:

Nikita Semenov ( SECL ), CEO of the SECL GROUP - assistance in the world of marketing.

Refat Ametov ( nobilix ), Director of Internet Sales Technologies Internet Agency - Internet Sales Technologies.