We get it, we’re navigating the new business landscape too. Many of our clients and fellow entrepreneurs settle into what is being called the “New Normal” I find myself asking the question more and more about potential clients – “Is there a way to provide them a website that meets their needs?”
By needs, I am finding more and more this is in relation to budget. The old adage that something can be cheap, quick, and good, but never all at the same time is important more now than ever as businesses are required to mobilize at incredible speeds to pivot to a more online-facing strategies while also deploying high-quality online experiences, and they must do it under budgetary constraints that are unprecedented. We at Chewie Media are finding now more than ever that business want – no, need – all three of these features to survive. So how does one circumvent this adage?
What’s Old is New.
When we approached this problem, it was actually an initiative that we began the company with over ten years ago with the idea that we could offer monthly website plans to clients without the up-front fees. The messaging at the time was complicated, trying to explain the benefits of having a website plan and not a large lump-sum bill was difficult at the time as the industry standard was the build a website and then hand it over – website design and development was largely transactional and didn’t involve the website provider sticking around after the fact to make sure everything went well.
The clients that we did bring in under these plans over the year quickly enjoyed the benefits of such an arrangement – a long-lasting relationship where we end up learning the ins and outs of our clients’ businesses over months and years of working together while keeping the website up to date and being the point of contact for any question web related. These plans were so beneficial for our clients that I am proud to say that a majority of those clients are still with us today.
We began providing more of the traditional website build and sale model projects, and while we still offer – and greatly encourage – a monthly maintenance plan to protect and keep all websites up to date, it was with these original plans that we saw a lot of incredible stories and relationships with clients. It felt like we were actually changing lives and businesses.
The ability to budget monthly for a website allowed some of our clients to get off the ground where other website developers would have been too costly, and cheaper solutions wouldn’t have allowed them to do what was needed online. We were right beside our clients’ businesses as they hit milestones they didn’t dream possible, achieved personal successes, and even saw things go so well that some of them were able to retire.
Bringing It Back
As I said at the beginning, things have changed in the business landscape, and we see an opportunity to help more businesses pivot and achieve their goals online by offering our websites in a way that makes it affordable, easy to manage, and leaves clients feeling supported and secure day in and day out. Our new website packages are coming in the form of leasing out our websites to clients. We still provide the same industry-leading design and customization while building you a brand new website, except when we are done building your new website, you only get a monthly invoice in the email for the same amount each month.
Clients can budget monthly knowing that the price will not increase, and that there is no up front cost. Also, for the life of the site we provide our managed hosting for the website, complete with daily backups, security and malware scanning, as well as maintenance and support for the website so that things remain up to date and secure. We also provide content updates to ensure that the website content is fresh.
Not to Toot Our Own Horn…
Now, yes, it did get a little salesy there. I believe in the service and I believe in what we are doing here. If it’s one thing that we’ve learned from this pandemic, it’s that we need to continue to find new and innovative ways to keep doing what we’re doing. We realized that you need to be in this for something more than to just go about business day in and day out – there must be a purpose to it. Our purpose is to make what we do as accessible as possible to our clients.
We learned a while ago that we thrive on the relationships that we get to forge with our clients. In order to be able to create the kind of long lasting relationships that we want in an industry where the average relationship lasts less than 3 months, we need to do something different than what’s out there.
…and that starts with finding a problem and providing a solution.
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