Everything you need to know about Clutch…
What is Clutch?
Clutch is a B2B research, ratings and reviews site that identifies leading IT and marketing service providers and software. Clutch evaluates companies based on over a dozen quantitative and qualitative factors, including client reviews, company experience, client list, industry recognition, and market presence. Clutch helps companies manage their online reputation through 3rd party, verified reviews and increases their online visibility and traffic.
The main question that Clutch tackles is “How do you find a company with the qualities and experience to tackle your project?”
As the founders describe it themselves, ‘Clutch was created to solve an important, two-sided problem. How do buyers of professional services and software find the best companies to meet a specific need? And conversely, how do leading services and software firms stand out from the sea of mediocre competitors?’
Research and looking for best software house is often time-consuming and expensive (not to mention the situation when we’ve trusted someone who doesn’t deserve it). Clutch, thanks to its researches, does it all for the clients. Only thing clients have to do is to analyze the ranks.
Services & Solutions offered by Clutch
- Advertising & Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Mobile App Development
- Web & Software development
- Web Design
- IT Services & Solutions
- Business Services
Mobile App Development is further classified into following sub categories
- Mobile App Developers
- Android App Developers
- iPhone App Developers
- App Development Software
How does Clutch collect client reviews?
Clutch collects reviews over the phone and online.
1. Review Over the Phone
Phone reviews are best for projects over $25,000. Phone reviews take 15–20 minutes and are conducted by a Clutch analyst.
Phone Review 5-step Process
- Company submits client references, or a client schedules an interview with an analyst
- Clutch analyst and client talk for 15–20 minutes, and the call is recorded and transcribed
- Clutch analyst edits the transcribed interview for length and clarity
- Clutch analyst publishes the review to a company’s profile
- Clutch analyst sends client his/her review and provides a 3-day window to request edits
2. Review Online
- Online reviews are best for projects under $25,000. Clutch has custom review forms for each industry.
- Companies have a unique link in their company profile, which they can send to their clients to encourage them to leave a review.
- Clients also can review a company from Clutch’s main review form.
How Clutch rates companies — Leaders Matrix Methodology
The Leaders Matrix is a 2x2 matrix where service providers are mapped based on their areas of focus and their proven ability to deliver. Leaders Matrices are developed for key service markets where unique skills are required.
A. Ability to Deliver (This is what determines our ranking & score)
The “Ability to Deliver” dimension is composed of three evaluation criteria, each with several underlying metrics. Each provider is scored from 1 to 10 on each metric with the values rolled-up to the three evaluation criteria then an overall score for Ability to Deliver.
1. References and reviews — The most highly weighted component is feedback from clients. Clutch contact current and former clients and get their input on a range of qualitative and quantitative topics. Client feedback is weighted by project size and complexity. Quantitative scoring includes the following elements:
- Quality — Quality of services and deliverables
- Cost — Overall value and conformance to cost estimates
- Schedule — Ability to meet deadlines and meet agreed project schedules
- Willingness to refer — Willingness to refer a colleague to the company
2. Clients and experience — The second criterion is the evaluation of the client portfolio and types of projects completed for those clients. Key questions include the following:
- Clients — What are the characteristics of the company’s clients? Has the firm delivered to discerning global brands or a less sophisticated client set?
- Experience — How deep is the company’s experience as communicated through case studies? Do the case studies illustrate an ability to deliver complex projects and create value?
- Proof points of focus — How well does the firm’s experience align with their stated services strategy and areas of focus?
3. Market Presence — Clutch considers the following questions in developing the market presence score:
- Marketing presence — Is the company information presented in a clear and professional manner that inspires confidence? Does their corporate website also provide consistent, high quality information with clear examples of past work?
- Reputation — Has the firm developed a strong reputation and authority in their chosen sector? Is this reputation reflected in third party media sources?
- Accolades — Has the firm won industry recognition or awards?
- Social media — Does the company have a social media presence that reinforces their brand position and domain authority?
B. Areas of Focus
Each Leaders Matrix integrates one to three areas of focus, depending on the characteristics of the market being evaluated. For example, in the area of Mobile Application Development, the Leader’s matrix has two focus areas. Both User Interface (UI) design and the technical aspects of Mobile Application Development are important for complex app projects. In the case of iPad app development, an additional dimension is included to account for the focus on iOS and the form factor of a tablet computer.
Providers submit quantitative data on their areas of focus and the data is reviewed and curated by a Clutch analyst.
Area of Focus is not considered for creating the company rankings and is provided by the company while listing itself on Clutch
Focus is provided by the company in the form of percentage for different categories (Service Lines, Industry, Client Focus, Mobile platforms, Application platforms, Programming languages, etc.)
In the below image we can see Clutch’s score for a sample company. Following things are outlined in the below image.
- Brief Company Info (Minimum Project Size, Number of employees, Hourly rate and Location)
- Ability to Deliver Score — 38.8 (out of 40) which consists of the following
- Reviews — 20 (out of 20)
- Clients & Experience — 9 (out of 10)
- Market Presence — 9.8 (out of 10)
3. Service Focus which consists of the following
- Mobile apps (55%)
- UI/UX (5%)
- Other (40%)
How to create a company profile on Clutch?
Creating a company profile on Clutch is absolutely free and requires only 20–30 minutes. The procedure for listing a company is outlined below.
1. Create a user account by clicking “sign in” in the upper right corner of Clutch’s site. Sign in through LinkedIn.
2. Begin creating our company profile by selecting, “Create Company Profile.”
3. Share the following information about the company to help prospective clients determine whether our services are a good fit:
- Company name
- Tagline
- Number of employees
- Minimum project size and average hourly rate
- Website URL
- Location(s)
- Contact information
- Overview of our company
- Case studies/portfolio items that personify the customers we work with
4. Identify the percent (out of 100%) that our firm focuses on services specific to our industry. (We should consider our top 3–5 services.)
5. Submit client references.
Why should I list my company on Clutch?
- To get qualified leads or new projects — More than 100,000 buyers use Clutch every month to find business services, software, or consultants. By creating a company profile and submitting client references, we’ll hear from customers who are actively looking for the services we offer. 61% of B2B researchers use third-party sources such as reviews before approaching a business.
- Increasing our Online visibility — High quality reviews from real clients boosts a firm’s visibility online. We can achieve the same result by letting Clutch collect and verify reviews for our business.
- Building Trust with prospective customer — By allowing a third party B2B research company to gather and verify reviews from our clients and verify our company information such as our past work, company size, hourly rate, contact information, etc. we are giving our customers a clear picture of our company.
- Showcase our Clutch rating/Badges — Using Clutch widget, a standalone application that displays our star ratings and/or reviews on our website, we can showcase our star rating. Along with ratings, if our company is featured in a Leaders Matrix (top 15 companies) we can display a relevant badge on our website for the same.
- Free of Cost — Clutch is an absolutely-free site and we can list our company on the website within 20 minutes by filling basic details about our company such as location, contact information, hourly rate, a few of our work and submitting client references.
- Clutch’s reputation — Clutch is a reputed brand trusted by more than 7000 agencies and has over 11000 client reviews. According to SimilarWeb, Clutch had website visits totaling to more than 900k in March 2018, with an average visit duration of 1 minute and 51 seconds.
An Overiew of Clutch’s parameters
Actions Suggested to improve Clutch’s rankings
- Striving to achieve the highest quality possbile.
- Improving the cost estimates of our project
- Defining and then adhering to deadlines for all project milestones
- Focusing on getting a good global brand or Fortune 500 company on company’s portfolio to gain increased visibility in the industry.
- Creating and Uploading case studies on the website as soon as possible.
- Publishing accurate information on Clutch
- Creating a resource deck (company documents, ppts) and uploading it on our website, blogs or delivering it to any new client through electronic or offline means.
- Our Work and clients’ testimonials should be present on our website.
- Improving our social media presence by updating our Facebook and LinkedIn pages with case studies, blog articles, our work, client’s testimonials, our app mockups, etc.
- We should try to go for challenging projects for big names that will provide us with media coverage and also help us in receiving industry accolades.
Clutch is the leading B2B research company and having an impressive score on this platform will definitely improve our leads and drive more traffic to our website. As pointed out in the article 61% of businesses prefer doing online research than talking to a sales representative of any company.
Disclaimer: I am in no way (personal or financial) associated with Clutch or its employees. This post is simply my analysis of the platform.
