Q: What's your name and position in the company?
A: Matt Van Altena, Managing Director
Q: Describe your company in 5 words.
A: Stylish, functional, affordable website solutions
Q: What's your business philosophy?
A: In order for us to be successful, our customers need to be successful. We strive to provide a service second to none that gives our customers a clear competitive edge.
Q: Describe your office environment.
A: It is a relaxed environment that focuses on team work to deliver rapid results, high quality, and a great customer interaction.
Q: What makes you different from other web design companies?
A: Our flexibility, expertise, and customer service. Our Design & Development Departments have some exceptional staff that allow us to bring creative, novel solutions to not just meet, but exceed the customer’s expectations. That coupled with an overarching desire to build a long-term customer service focused relationship with each customer ensures that exceptional loyalty.
Q: How do you get the majority of your business?
A: 9 out of 10 projects we work on are either from referrals or are existing customers. We have an exceptionally loyal customer base.
Q: Describe how you manage projects from the initial client contact to completion and handover.
A: Unlike most, I really feel that a conversation with the potential client is extremely beneficial. This is because we tailor our offering to meet their needs. After that conversation, we will develop a proposal based on the scope discussed. There is typically another conversation at this stage to ensure that the deliverables, goals and timeline are all aligned with their expectations and needs. Once the project is approved, the Design, Development, & Customer Service Departments begin their respective tasks. These include but are not limited to the website design, website development, training, configuration, and implementation. During this stage there are frequent status reports and regular conversations. As the majority of our clients host with us, it makes the transition from development to live very simple, however with clients that do not host with us (e.g. our enterprise clients), we have development servers dedicated for customer signoff.
Q: What do you think is the most crucial element of creating a good client relationship?
A: The most critical is managing expectations to ensure that everyone is always on the same page. The best way to manage customer expectations is through a strong project management process and very regular communications. If you don’t do this, the chances of completing the project with a very happy client are much lower.
Q: How do you manage demanding clients?
A: Every company has demanding clients. Managing them really goes back to the expectations management. We are in a position whereby we will drop everything for clients as needed - but there is a cost associated with that – both to us and to them. We make sure that both the client and internally we understand the scope of that cost, and so when the critical call comes in , there is no need to focus on those details, but rather go straight to execution. We are set up so we can offer this ‘drop everything’ approach, without any impact on our other clients.
Q: If a client was trying to decide between a shortlist of web design companies, how would you recommend they go about selecting the right one for them?
A: Hopefully at this point the client has already agreed on the functionality that they will need so they are able to do an accurate comparison across all the shortlisted companies. If they have not then they really need to stop and do that immediately. Costs have the potential to spiral out of control if this is not already firmly understood at this point. Once an accurate comparison can be done on functionality, it then needs to come down to an evaluation on price, quality, and customer service. The client should also interview a few of their customers in their portfolio to get the feedback on those companies’ firsthand experiences.
Q: Where do you see your company in 10 years time?
A: A 10 year plan is a bit unrealistic due to the rapid evolution of our industry. More realistically, our plan over the next 5 years is to continue to be revolutionary in the way we bring together an incredible service offering to our customers while also meeting the evolving technological capabilities of their customers.
Q: Where do you see the web design industry in the future?
A: Web design will continue to evolve with more and more emphasis in tailoring the design to the medium – whether it be mobile, touch, app, site, fluid, etc. This requirement will necessitate firms like ours to continue to invest in incredibly creative designers to dream and exceptionally talented developers to bring it to life.
Q: What computers do you have use in your offices, PCs or Macs?
A: Both PC and Mac
Q: How was your company name chosen?
A: Innovating for the Web was and is one of our core service offerings so the name came from there - Web + Innovation.
Q: If you were to give your clients one tip on how to get the most from their website what would it be?
A: Be willing to consider all possibilities. Some ideas may not be the correct choice right now, but you cannot know for sure until you consider them and their ROI to your business.”
