Small Business, Big Challenge
The culture of young entrepreneurs is on the rise and with it more resources are available than ever before. Optimization seems to be the hot ticket word — and rightly so. New apps and programs have made planning work, tracking hours, writing contracts, invoicing, billing, and keeping in touch easier and simpler than ever. Still, one thing was standing in the way of our best attempt to optimize things for our clients with small businesses…
As a consumer, I like to know what I’m getting when I pay for a product. I read reviews, I compare prices, I do my homework. I think this is true of most consumers today — especially because most of this information is so easily and readily accessible through the internet. Furthermore, when I am shopping for a service, I want my needs to be clearly understood and to know that my money is paying for a solution.
Adelie handles web design and web development among other services. This work heavily depends on the needs, wants, and ultimately the feedback of our clients. Our goal is to elevate small businesses by leveraging the power of the web through design. Now, there are a ton of sites that offer “drag and drop” solutions that are easy to use for most people with absolutely no web development knowledge to make a quick and simple website. The people interested in our services know these options exist but want something more custom-fit for their look, their needs, and their budget. So it would make sense to ask all the questions that would yield the best bang for their buck, right? Not necessarily!
We have found that few people are interested in setting aside time to really understand the best solutions for their business on their budget. The people interested in our services are also mainly small business owners that are wearing multiple hats to keep their businesses up and running. From generating their own leads, to landing the jobs, to performing the work and delivering it back to the consumer — they are handling most of the work themselves. So most people are paying for convenience. As obvious as it was, the implications of this reality were disappointing and mildly discouraging. One of the main reasons we started Adelie was because we saw so many services that charged exorbitant costs to spit out very generic websites that stepped right over the best ways to handle different needs to generate the quickest solutions. Obviously fast turnaround is appealing and important because, as well all know, time is money. So then what?
We could accept that this is largely how the industry runs. Churn out quick templated work. Shuffle expediency to the list of our priorities. “Give them what they want” when what they could have had would have saved them time, money, and headache in the future. We need to make money too and this is faster!
But, eh, we weren’t happy with this conclusion. Allocating time to answer the detailed questions in the beginning will save clients a lot more time and money in the long run. So we brainstormed on ways to incentivize the longer conversation. We are still working out the exact details but we decided to offer a discount off the total cost of the project if the client is willing to sit for just a bit longer so that we can really do the best work for them.
One of the biggest privileges of starting a small business is that you can form the company’s culture of integrity and business ethics from the ground up. We hope that this will pan out for our mutual benefit in the future. More updates to come on the development of this initiative!
