It has been more than twenty years since the invention of the Internet. Today, it can be said that it has completely penetrated into our daily life and become a part of our work and life. In enterprise applications, the Internet has become an effective contact medium for customers, playing an increasingly important role in shaping brand image, opening up markets, customer service and internal information exchange. After realizing the importance of the network to the enterprise, the leaders in charge of the enterprise all hope that their company has an "excellent website". A good website must be completed by a good Internet service professional company. So, what kind of company is a good company, and where to find such a company?
It can be said that the entry threshold for the Internet design service industry is very low. One or two people can set up a computer to start a business, and these people can "save" a website effortlessly. But it is not easy to make a professional and useful website. Just like people learn English. Many people can learn or imitate several common spoken words, but they can be fluent in listening, speaking, reading and writing. It is impossible to study hard for several years. This is why we have been in high school for 3 years and in college for 4 years, and we still can't master English skillfully after coming out. Similarly, in the website construction industry, to become a truly professional company, it also needs a tortuous learning curve. After ten years of ups and downs, it has accumulated a large number of cases.
In fact, as a customer, finding a reliable service provider is the most logical in line with business value, but it is not easy to find such a company. The author once met a famous building materials distribution enterprise in Shanghai, with an annual turnover of several billion yuan. The company boss firmly believes in the value of the Internet and wants to build the best website in the industry for his company. Before meeting Wang Qi, the manager of the company's development department led a group of people to visit more than ten companies in Shanghai by car through online search, but he ran around and couldn't find a company that could reassure him. If you calculate carefully, the direct cost of this enterprise to find a website builder will reach 3 to 4 thousand yuan. If you count the indirect costs caused by delaying other work, the cost of finding it will be higher.
With the demand of website construction, how can customers find professional service providers quickly and at low cost without knowing much about Internet service companies? This paper attempts to analyze all kinds of companies competing in this industry from the customer's point of view.
Industry participants
Background of Academy of Fine Arts
Programming background
Editing web pages requires editing software, such as the most commonly used FrontPage and DreamWeaver. It is often the software programmers who have studied computer professional knowledge who have mastered the skills of using these softwares first. Contrary to people with design background, these programmers have a deep understanding of the functions of the website, but the websites they make are relatively dull in vision and have no impact, which makes the enterprise website unable to impress visitors, not only unable to shape the online corporate image, but also may damage the corporate image sometimes.
Host domain name operator
Registering domain names and renting website space are the prelude for enterprises to build websites. Thanks to the advantages of customer information, hosts and domain name providers naturally extend their business to website construction. Because of the large profit margin of domain names and hosts, it is relatively difficult to expand business, and website construction services are more difficult to gain the trust of customers because they need more complicated professional knowledge. Domestic mainstream domain name and virtual space providers always regard website construction as a "sideline". Some large-scale companies don't even have their own professional design and technical teams, but subcontract this part of their business to smaller companies, causing some unnecessary troubles to customers.
Guest appearance of software and hardware company
Some customers want a company to provide packaging services for various reasons, so that the company can do the company's website while doing ERP projects or network integration. In this case, software companies or system integration companies have to undertake website construction projects that are not their own majors. Over time, these companies also regard website construction as one of their sideline businesses. Similar to domain name registrars, most system integrators do not have their own professional teams, and often outsource this work to smaller companies with lower costs, so that the interests of customers are actually damaged.
Harm of subcontracting
Among all types of website construction providers, subcontracting projects and using temporary personnel for design and development bring the greatest risks and harm to customers. A virtual hosting company has attracted many customers by using its own market network and market popularity, but because there is no development and design team, it can only outsource the project to its partners. In this way, the project implementer, the customer and the outsourcing company form a triangular relationship. For various reasons, customers can't communicate directly with project implementers, and customers' requirements and modifications can only be communicated through a third party, which not only wastes extra time and energy, but also brings unnecessary misunderstandings.
The use of temporary technicians will also bring similar subcontracting harm to customers. A large enterprise in Shanghai wants to build a company website based on J2EE. After several rounds of comparison and selection of website construction companies, I was impressed by a company that is good at advertising design and entrusted the company to develop website systems. Because this company's advantage lies in visual design, it is not good at software system development, especially the company has no J2EE technical engineers at all, so it has to temporarily hire on-the-job graduate students from Jiaotong University as developers. Due to the lack of practice in school, students encountered many difficulties in the initial stage of building a website platform. The operating system cannot be installed, the Oracle database cannot be connected, and so on. It is very simple for professionals. It took the team nearly a month to get through. The pressure from leaders and the unsmooth implementation of the project have caused great pain to the project implementers on the client side. The bigger trouble comes from the temporary cooperation of these developers. After the project is completed, the website has problems and needs to be maintained in time, but these students can't be found through the website company.
Scale-big and small
Compared with traditional industries, the website construction industry has a short development time, and the characteristics of sunrise industry determine that the scale of such companies should not be too large. In terms of the number of people, a large and medium-sized city is already a big company when the number of people who specialize in website construction reaches 30-50. Some companies may have hundreds of people, but most of them are marketing and sales personnel, and the core technical and design personnel are only dozens. The size of the company is also related to its positioning. Companies specializing in small and medium-sized enterprises need a large number of projects to accumulate large sales, so they need a large number of technicians and designers with low level to make websites similar to "assembly lines". Positioning high-end companies requires hiring top designers and program developers. There are not many people, but they need to be refined to reflect customer value from the personnel level.
A real professional company
In today's increasingly developed commodity economy, specialization and clear positioning are one of the magic weapons for enterprises to win. Taking the road of specialization is conducive to accumulating knowledge, upgrading the needs of different customers to universal "experience" and reducing customer risks. The website construction industry also follows the same economic law.
A real professional website construction company should take website construction as its main business, not one of several sideline businesses. Should have the comprehensive quality of consulting planning, design, programming, project management, customer service, etc., not just a certain ability; Should have the ability to continuously provide services to customers, rather than a company that exists today and may disappear tomorrow.
Consulting ability
Consulting ability means that website construction companies use their accumulated professional knowledge to guide customers to correctly understand the connotation, function, structural planning method, content organization and other parts of the website that require customers' participation. Professional website construction companies are "guiding companies", which can guide customers to make correct judgments and choices in all aspects. Companies without consulting ability are just tools for customers. What the client says she can achieve and what the client doesn't know, these website construction companies don't know. There is a saying in the education industry called "a bucket of water" and "a bowl of water", that is, to teach students the knowledge of a bowl of water, you have to have a knowledge reserve of a bucket of water. So is the website construction industry. When the "knowledge" website construction company serves you, you will feel that you get more than you want. Of course, knowledge-based website construction companies are constantly learning from customers, systematically sorting out their own knowledge, and then applying it to other customers' projects, thus forming a benign knowledge accumulation and cycle.
Company project management and operation process
Whether the website construction company is professional or not can be fully reflected in the company's project management and operation process. Software companies have CMM certification all over the world, from 1 to 5, which is about software project process management norms. Website construction is a young industry, and there is no international standard at present. Most companies are using software management standards to manage website projects. Some unprofessional and irregular companies have no written project management norms at all, but the project participants grasp the quality and progress of the project according to their personal feelings. This has also caused great uncertainty and risk to customers.
When choosing a website construction company, many customers first care about the design, price and function of the website, but pay insufficient attention to how to complete the whole website project. In fact, whether the website can be completed and published according to the planned and expected quality depends on the project management ability of the website construction company. Website projects also have their own life cycle, from the establishment of service companies to the establishment of projects, and then to the completion of website publishing. There are 5-6 key links. Netqi Technology has established a set of project management methods based on "node confirmation" of key links, which effectively decomposes key monitoring indicators such as progress, quality and testing, and each milestone is managed and signed by a special person, so as to find and solve problems in time during the project. Otherwise, if all the problems accumulate in the end, even experienced people may be powerless.
When customers choose a website construction company, they should not only look at the company's project management flow chart, but also look at the company's implementation documents. Flowchart may be a sales tool, and whether it can be effectively implemented must be guaranteed by specific implementation documents.
work experience
Professional companies have many years of experience in this industry, with dozens or even hundreds of project cases and numerous successes and failures. These experiences can be transmitted to customers in some explicit or implicit way, thus reducing the risk of customer failure. Experience and strength are not a category, which can be verified by an example. There is a large TV media company that wants to build a large information publishing website. The standard for the company to find a station builder is large scale, with a registered capital of more than 654.38 billion yuan. Professional website construction companies rarely meet this condition. They finally found a comprehensive company integrating software and systems. However, this system integration company has no website experience and is not interested in this industry, so it subcontracts this project to a small company at a price of one fiftieth. The final result can be imagined.
Technical standards and specifications
It can be said that technical standards have made modern industry. Because of the standard, auto parts can be produced and assembled, and it is very easy to replace them after being damaged; Because of this standard, computer software can be installed and used on different computers.
In the website construction industry, there is no national standard at present. Some companies don't pay enough attention to this work, and they don't have any standard consciousness in actual work, so they let their habits write web page codes and program codes. There is a ridiculous story circulating in this industry. It is said that the company boss asked the company's development engineers to encrypt the program in order to protect the program code developed by his company. The technical director of the company said it was unnecessary, because the code written by the company was more difficult for others to understand than decryption, so there was no need to encrypt it at all.
Websites that do not implement certain technical standards and specifications will bring serious problems. Except for others who can't easily modify and update the website program, these websites may have errors in different browsers; Probably because they did not follow the rules of famous search engines such as Google and Yahoo, they were rejected by these search engines; There may be potential safety hazards; Perhaps because of the poor friendliness of the webpage, it has brought unnecessary browsing burden to customers and so on.
after service
After-sales service is recognized by customers and needs to be focused on. If the after-sales service is not ideal, it will bring a painful experience to the website manager. Because it is "after sale", it is difficult to detect its quality before sale. But this is not absolute. At least we can get a lot of information and inspiration from the "companies that have been served". Another important sign is the proportion of long-term customers of website construction companies. Long-term customers are companies that website service companies can maintain relationships after long-term service. The choice of these companies is not through the oral expression of sales staff, but through their own personal experience. Lu Yao knows horsepower is the most appropriate description in this regard.
You can learn more about the real situation from your old customers.
When many companies inspect website construction companies, they often examine the design level of the company through case demonstrations, test the technical strength of the company through backstage demonstrations, and feel the scale and strength of the company through field visits. These investigative steps are undoubtedly necessary and effective. However, most of the company's positive demonstrations are presented after deliberate modification, just as it is a truth that people need to dress neatly before going out. Old customers have been in contact for a long time and have rich experience. I believe I can give many good suggestions to the latecomers. So when you find it difficult to choose a company, you might as well ask the website construction company to provide a customer contact list, and try to communicate with old customers simply on the phone, and you will feel much more practical.
price factor
Companies that have done websites feel the same way, and the prices in this industry are particularly chaotic. After the same demand is sent to different companies, the difference in quotations is amazing. A super-large electronic product manufacturing group company wants to update its portal website. * * * sent an inquiry to eight website builders, and the quotations ranged from more than 20,000 to more than 800,000, so that the company didn't know how much it would cost.
There are many reasons for this phenomenon. Some small companies do not have competitive strength in hard indicators such as design and development, so they use low prices to induce price-sensitive customers. And some large software companies, when meeting the needs of big customers, throw out sky-high bets and get it by luck, because they don't make a living by building websites professionally after all. It can be said that this market has been fully competitive. In most cases, the price quoted by the company basically reflects the company's positioning and service level.
In fact, the price gap is not uncommon in other industries. Everyone in the automobile industry is familiar with it, from tens of thousands of cars to millions of luxury cars. The price span is not worse than the quotation on the website, but people have no complaints. The reason is that the automobile industry has fully publicized the consumption orientation, and consumers have already understood how much they want to spend and what cars to buy before spending. So do companies in the website construction industry. A company without strength has no courage to quote a high price, even if the price is reasonable. However, customers often look for prices from companies that make Li Xia and BMW at the same time, and the prices they get will of course be different. Real professional website construction companies hope that customers can complete their own goals at reasonable prices. Too high or too low a price will bring adverse effects to customers and website construction companies.
Trouble with detailed quotation
Many companies will give very detailed itemized quotations when giving their customers solutions, and some customers will ask website builders to provide detailed quotations. The customer wants a detailed quotation just to see how the budget of this website is constituted, to find a psychological feeling of the price of each module, to compare the quotations of different competitive companies, and then to reduce the price item by item. This practice is actually that customers are brought into a price misunderstanding by some companies.
When the functions of the website are inseparable, itemized quotation is meaningless. Just like buying a car. You ask the car dealer to sort out the prices of engine, wheel, steering wheel, door, chassis, steering system and braking system respectively, and then summarize these itemized prices into the total price. Then you compare the prices of different models horizontally. One is that it is difficult to operate in reality, and the other is to lead customers to areas that customers don't understand. If we do a survey, I'm afraid more than 99% of customers can't give the price of a car engine. Let customers make decisions on these projects that they don't understand at all, while the total budget they should care about most is covered up. Of course, if the car dealer provides some accessories, such as leather seat covers and mahogany interiors. The price of each commodity is meaningful to the customer.
Another problem in the quotation is how to reasonably determine the number of web pages. Before the project implementation process, it is difficult for customers to accurately plan how many pages their website has. Even if the number of pages can be roughly estimated, it is inevitable that there will be changes in the process of website production, and the content should be increased or decreased. General project budget needs the approval of leaders. If a project needs to constantly apply for budget and ask the leaders for approval several times, what impression can you leave in front of the leaders? These are all places where Internet companies need to keep thinking and innovating.