We’re carrotmedia, based in Newcastle upon Tyne with a reputation for rolling out fantastic web and design solutions for our clients.
As the Managing Director of Carrotmedia I would be slightly biased about my own company but I’m going to tell you about a real problem that happened last month.
We recently had one of our e-commerce clients depart as they wanted a turnover beyond £2million. We have a fantastic relationship with all our clients so to be told they are going elsewhere is a painful experience. Once the initial shock was over and I sat back to analyse what had happened, I came to the realisation that I actually agreed with our clients. This left the question: “What were we going to do to make sure this won’t happen again?”
In just over a year we had taken this ecommerce site from nothing to a £250,000 turnover. When I was talking to another client about the situation their first reaction was; “can you do that for my business?” We have a track record of building websites to this level but then get stuck.
We called an emergency meeting in the office where we all sat down to discuss how we can build ecommerce business for our clients faster with less cost. A throw away remark was made; “well short of starting our own ecommerce business how will we find out?”. This was a great idea and putting your own money on the line will definitely help the team concentrate on finding the right formula for our own solution.
I’m currently in the process of choosing a product to sell online. Once the product is secured we will be planning, building and launching our own website. We want this to be an interactive experiment and we’ll be talking you through the process from start to finish.
Our client moved to an agency that has a track record and portfolio of big brands in a similar market place so were attracted by this potential opportunity to draw on their experience. Don’t forget that we neither had the opportunity to prove our capability or had such an impressive portfolio. Could it just be a case of the grass looks greener from the other side of the fence? At the end of the day we had lost a client and something had gone wrong; let the experiment begin!
Hi Guys, Looking forward to the experiment. Can you clarify something
“We recently had one of our e-commerce clients depart as they wanted a turnover beyond £2million”
Did they think that you guys were not able to keep on supporting them at that turnover ?
Do you have a sliding scale cost based on turnover which would make it expensive to reach that turnover and stay with your company ?
Or are they thinking to get to that level they need to use another company ? Surely the growth from 0 to 250k is as difficult as 250k to 2bar ?
Good Luck
We are also not restricted by marketing spend or procedures. Everything we know can be put in to the online store in a positive way. Sometimes clients cannot see what they will get out of our advice, especially those that are new to selling online or not educated in social media / online marketing.
Can’t wait to see what this brings!
Hi Brad,
I’m not going to say we did nothing wrong as I think there were aspects from the work we did for this client which didn’t work as well as we hoped. One of the primary reasons for them leaving was the cost involved in carrying out design, development and marketing to push for a £2mill turnover.
There was no reason why we couldn’t support them at that turnover but they felt we lacked the experience. They moved to a web design agency with a track record in their market place. We don’t have a sliding scale of costs determined by turnover but quote for the necessary work as it arises.
I’ve been in this industry long enough to be confident enough to say we didn’t manage our client’s expectations correctly. Our experiment is all about learning to make us better at our jobs and prove we are prepared to take the same risks as our clients.
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