The problems with big web design agencies
Posted by Henrik Madsen on November 16, 2008
I was chatting to a new business prospect the other day, about designing a new website, and we came to the subject of agency size and internal resources. And I was pleased to tell her we’re small. One of the smallest web design / web marketing agencies in Perth, in fact.
Why was I pleased? Because small makes us agile, responsive and attentive.
“When I need to have even the simplest change made to our website, the job has to be booked-in and scheduled and often takes three or four days to get done,” my prospect had said, referring to her current web designers.
Being small allows us to hire-in task-specific specialists - to assemble the optimum team for each unique job. Bigger agencies tend to rely on a rank of salaried generalists, who often sit expensively twiddling their thumbs between projects.
Being small means we have lower overheads, savings we pass on to clients. Being small means we spend less time on admin, arcane procedures and management, freeing up more time to focus on clients.
Being small cuts out chinese whispers: client briefs account executive; executive briefs account manager; manager briefs studio manager; studio manager briefs creative. If but one word changes at each stage the outcome is invariably different to the client’s original brief. And the process starts over.
And being small avoids the ‘Everybody’s Job Story’ in which there are four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody…
There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it but Nobody did it.
Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it.
It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when actually Nobody asked Anybody.
Having worked in senior roles at some of Europe’s and London’s biggest marketing and communications firms, I’ve been there, seen it, done it. If nothing else (in fact I learned a lot) big agencies taught me just how not to do things…
PS to Everybody: If Anybody needs Somebody to do Anything for the next two weeks, Nobody’ll be here. But Anybody, actually Everybody, can still make contact by email. Life’s a beach, just once in a while.
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great posts. its really interesting.
Can you please avoid using a hyphen–minus character. It makes your copy very hard to read. Instead use real hyphens and em–dashes
The line (line breaks as indicated):
“hire-in task-specific specialists -
to”
should be:
“hire?in task?specific specialists—
to”
but at first I read it as:
“hire—in task—specific specialists?
to”
@Nicholas - thanks for your advice. I don’t feel the question marks work there and em-dashes are rather too formal for me (and the BBC incidentally - I just read a few of their lead stories), so I’ll probably just stick with the humble dash.
I think your ideas are wrong and extremely presumptuous to say the least. It’s too easy for a small web designer like yourself to come out and criticise your competition like this… I’d dare you to do this on an industry forum away from your own blog.
The fact is the larger firms do well because they are good, maybe even better than smaller firms like yourself. large firms need procedures in place that may demand a little more time to react to a customer, so what! They may charge more, so what! But at the end of the day if they can make a website that is good for the client then that’s a good thing.
I own and run my own freelance web design business here in Perth and I’m more than happy for the larger firms being my competition. They serve a place and a customer need.
I think you may need to focus on what makes you good relative to the web design, not relative to your competition.
Good luck
Pete
Thanks for your input Pete.
I’ve run my own businesses (here and in London) for past 15+ years and my article was really a collation of positive client feedback - many of them multi-nationals, all of them with experience of working with bigger agencies.
I too am happy - delighted in fact - to have larger firms as my competition. Often, even mid-way through projects, I am asked to take over their work (for one or more of the reasons cited above).