Tuesday 25 September 2012

Working 4 us

A friend of mine runs a gardening maintenance company and was in the office a couple of weeks ago signing up to www.woodingdeaninbusiness.co.uk our (very) local listings site that raises money for the Martlets Hospice in Hove. He was showing me websites belonging to some of the people he has worked with and for and I was mightily impressed. I had always assumed he spent his days clearing gardens when they got into a bit of a state, but actually he often works with well-known and respected garden designers helping them create beautiful and often intriguing spaces.


As you do, we started talking about him having his own website and he was saying that a friend of his was having a website built but that it was very expensive. I asked him how much ‘expensive’ was. And I was actually quite shocked by his response. ‘Over £300’ he said. And this set my mind rolling. Could we build a website for someone like my garden maintenance friend for under £300? There are of course companies that do just that, and some that do it very well. If we were going to do it we would have to make sure that we did it even better, that we took the same approach to delivering a £300 website as we do to delivering a £3,000 one or even a £30,000 one. Note I use the word ‘approach’ I am not suggesting for one moment that we can deliver the same service or product at that price point but we can deliver it with the same attitude.


So the seed was set and we decided to develop a very simple web building ‘process’ one that was  easy to talk about and easy to execute. One that meant micro businesses and individuals could have their own site – in 24 hours at a starting price of £240 (plus VAT). www.build14me.com . In addition to the basic site you can choose extras; more pages, a gallery/portfolio, mobile and or tablet compatible and even a basic content management system. We will produce a website that is professional and hopefully speaks volumes about your company, product or service. We will market our new site on and offline and have plans to build this new ‘product’ into a sustainable and profitable business. For Frank! it is a new departure, but one we are excited about, that allows us to work with a whole new group of people and provide our current clients with alternative options when it comes to reviewing their current sites.


The model

Over the past few years I have seen massive changes in print buying and I see that over the next few years we will see massive changes in the way people buy their internet space. Low cost and well executed web build and maintenance will become the norm - as low cost and reasonable cost print has become the norm. We will see companies and individuals that no longer build huge, cumbersome sites. Instead they will build smaller sites aimed at niche audiences, sites that have one aim, one ambition and one story. As always, there are exciting digital times ahead.


Happy to chat about www.build14me.com - just mail me, Jo Weatherall on jo@frankontheweb.com or call 01273 670 100