How does Recession affected Web Industry – Web designing & SEO

Journey of EyeBridge through those inspiring days.

Finally when those gloomy days are fading away or at least thats what International Media claims, I would like to share my experience of how we fared in this phase of great depression.

The earning population would agree with me, if I say, each one of us must have encountered the million dollar question some time or the other in the past one year. The questions that seems to be in trend, “How’s your business doing these days?”, “What is the effect of recession on you or your business?” or “Do you still have your job?”

When one of these questions was thrown upon me. I got a lil confused and wondered how to phrase the blessing in disguise. As to be very true during this whole period we have seen “Growth”. And to answer this very question is the inspiration to write this blog and our experience.

As the news of recession started flashing in national dailies, clients started flowing in from where we expected least, some traditional companies which never thought of online marketing or SEO started talking about it. Companies started revamping their age old websites. They started talking about social networking, communities, blogs, facebook & tweeter’s. One thing was clear there was repercussion of the recession in the market.

Now when I try to look at the reasons which resulted in new clients, more SEO work, unconventional & creative designs for us, I feel, during the difficult times many companies started thinking differently and even the traditional ones became receptive to new and innovative technologies to market their products more effectively. The challenge was not only to retain the existing customers but also to get exposed to new customer base. Few companies headed by visionaries have realized the potential of online presence in times to come.

There were many companies which ignored the real benefits of internet before recession. Even after developing a standard website (most of which were of low quality compared to the actual image of the company) they could not able to capitalize on their online presence. But the tougher times brought the best out of them. I always believe “Calm seas never make skilled sailors”. And only because of recession they started exploring the power of online presence and online marketing.

This was an opportunity for us and may be for many other web consultancies, we received many inquiries from some of the most reputed companies to revamp their existing website or to design altogether a new online strategy for them. We just got a new platform to show our talent and to share our knowledge and expertise that our team has developed over years. We took the challenge head on. We knew our expertise which is web design, SEO & online marketing, but this “Time” was asking for something more important and that is “Solution”. Luckily we understood this quite early. We came across many such small and medium sized companies which just needed right direction. We started devising complete solution for our clients, consulting them with the best online strategies for their business and executing the same to prove results.

I would like to discuss few case studies of our clients as an example,

Company Name: Frontier Biscuits

Brief Profile: Frontier Biscuits is one of the most renowned names of New Delhi in bakery & confectionary products. The company is around 100 year old and has some 40 exclusive stores in New Delhi. It almost always had a smooth business flowing since inception, because of its loyal customer base.

Problem: Increase in competition complemented with recession resulted in a lean phase for the company. It made them rethink their fundamental strategies and forced them to redesign their overall approach towards business.

Before approaching us all they had in mind was to do something online, which would attract young population.

Solution: After analyzing their business and existing strategies, the first thing our marketing team proposed was to revamp their existing site http://www.frontierbiscuit.com, which was developed on an old technological platform with a sub standard design and was presenting a very dull image of the company. Our designers gave it a completely fresh look, with more interactive features. We made an online model for franchise development and gave them a live backend, which has control over all the stores data. We also gave training to their staff members on how to analyze the reports. The new strategy with a fresh image resulted in the favor of the company. The news is, Frontier Biscuits have launched a new store recently (during recession!!!) and have seen an increase in customer base.

Another surprising entry in our portfolio was Benham & Reeves group from London.

Company Name: Benham & Reeves

Brief Profile: B&R group is one of the biggest Real estate players in London. They were not new to online and web technologies and already had a strong online presence.

Problem: The problem was not unique; the need of the hour was cost cutting. And the solution was also not different and the company knows it well, cut down the marketing expenses.

Solution: When B&R approached us, they just wanted to outsource some of their online work. OR they just wanted to test us. J.We made it very clear right from the beginning of our relationship that we differentiate ourselves not on the basis of price but on the quality of work. We might not be the cheapest company to work with but certainly will be one of the most efficient ones. We proposed them to make some strategic investments, making two new websites which are purely search engine optimized, as both the businesses are highly search engine dependent. http://www.short-stay-london.co.uk – A hotel in central London and http://www.rentals-london.co.uk – letting and rentals business. Initially we were supposed to do only this much of their work but eventually they offered us more of their online business and today we are handling their complete IT backend. They have six companies which have presence in London, New York, Dubai, Singapore, Hongkong and India.

There are more such examples of success in last few months. But I will share that some other day J

Finally to answer that question, I really enjoyed the recession. For us SEO and creative designing are the clear winners during this period. The recession made many companies to think out of box, making smart investments to strengthen their business.

It just reminds me of a line from my favorite movie:

“I do believe those first two years were the worst for him, and I also believe that if things had gone on that way, this place would have got the best of him.” By Red, character played by Morgan Freeman.

To checkout more work done by us in last six months, you can visit http://www.eyebridge.in and check “our work”.