The Pendulum of our Industry

Posted By  JC - Web Design Director27/10/17

The Web Design Pendulum

We’re a small set up – we make no illusions about it.  We are a 50/50 split between Web Design and Web Development.  Our very first product was created by our development team.  They loved it, the where convinced it was a good thing – it was needed.  The product was a lightweight, versatile, resilient digital signage app.  Our design team?….. not so keen.

I had been using a ‘competitor’s’ product for a while for some of my clients I knew what made it good and didn’t really care to think about it’s weaknesses – if it was broke – it wasn’t my fault. However, this was a nightmare for our Development Director – he strives for everything to work – all the time.  Internet connectivity or not.

Anyway, as we have grown our digital signage application has been left by the wayside a little – it is operating on-site for some of our clients – awea.co.uk and alderrootgolfclub.co.uk both use our digital signage, but we took our foot off the gas with development of it and spent our time elsewhere.

Recently we where finishing a new install of our software, having a few headaches and started to question the usefulness of it – was there any point? Then, almost out of nowhere we have ended up with 3 very interested enquiries, about the product, in a discussion on the phone the ‘pendulum’ was mentioned – and that’s got me thinking.

As I opened with – we are small set up.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing? – From my point of view and thinking about it from a client’s point of view, it is a good thing.  Obviously being a small web designer has it’s negatives – there’s only 24 hours in each day and 7 days in each week but clients want everything – now.  Admittedly we have built a rod for our own back a little with that, by servicing our clients immediately!

The positives far outweigh the negatives though, especially wen it comes to web development.  It is rare that you get a small set up that accommodates both web design and web development. The advantage of being small in scenarios like this mean that all of our team gets hands on experience of all of our projects, as a result we can expect any member of the team to pick up and work on a project, at any time – creating a level of resilience for the client.  Big firms, although they have multiple developers or designers – these people may not have had exposure to your website/software and therefore will struggle to make the changes you need or fix the problem you have found.

Our size also nurtures our pendulum effect – we can have side projects ongoing that we are passionate about but struggle to dedicate the time to that all of a sudden become our main project because we are able to use what we where creating for a client on a live job.  Similarly – we can be working on a main project all hours of the day, only to be let down by the client last minute and all our hard work is shelved until next time.

Although growth is important, I feel that our smallness will be a huge strength of ours going forward and will help to maintain our current culture of passion and excitement for each and every project that we handle as a business.  A culture I’d never want to lose.

If you’re about in Warrington, pop in and see us in our new habitat! If you’re after more than a posh coffee give us a call on 01925 550555 or drop us an email on jc@codeandcreate.co.uk or cg@codeandcreate.co.uk  we’re really enjoy bespoke software projects at the moment – if you’ve got a problem you think our technology may be able to solve, let us have a crack!

Enjoy your weekend,

JC.