Tom Nixon

F*** tendering

Preamble: I originally wrote this post as a calm, collected and rational explanation. But Will correctly pointed out that what I should have written is what I really think. So here goes...

I have had it with responding to tenders for clients who would like a website. I'm not so arrogant to ever tell someone who's interested in my company's services to "f*** off", and I absolutly love having converations with people about how I can help them to get more out of the web. But the more time I spend working in this industry, the clearer it has become that tendering is a waste of time for both client and supplier and it's a rubbish way of finding the best supplier for a particular job.

What I’m talking about here are situations where a client writes a brief for a website project, then various agencies ‘pitch’ their offer to the client, without being paid for their time. For many clients, this is their default way of engaging a web agency. Here's why I think it sucks (and yes, there will be a follow-up post on this blog about a better alternative to tendering):

1.    Us web agencies know that the odds are weighted against us in tendering situations. So if we’re getting enough good business knocking at our door, why would we bother spending time (for free) replying to your tender? Even if you're the most interesting client with the most exciting project, the fact that you want us to get stuck into a (boring) tendering process is an immediate turn-off. For the client this means that they may have ruled out their ideal supplier before they’ve even started.

2.   Tendering puts too much emphasis on price. That’s fine if you’re buying a commodity, but website development is more complicated than that. The agency who will ultimately give you the best value for money and return on investment may actually pitch a lower cost solution just so they can win the business.

3.    Most clients expect to see some early stage designs in the pitch, perhaps showing how navigation will work or some graphic design concepts. The problem with this is that you can’t produce a decent design until you’ve completed the necessary background work – understanding the business requirements, target audience, competitors, and other factors that feed into the design. Sure, you can produce something that the client will ‘like the look of’, but without the groundwork in place the designs will be based on too many assumptions to be an effective final design.

4.    The skills required for successful pitching are different to the skills required to actually carry out the work. It’s the same logic as job interviews being a poor predictor of how someone will perform at work. The agency best placed to successfully carry out the project might not be the best at 'pitching' this fact to you. And don’t forget that some agencies employ pitch specialists who are great salesmen, but will have nothing to do with the work.

5.    The time taken to write the brief, wait for the agencies to write their response and then get through the pitches and follow-up questions is all time that could be spent actually working on the project itself.

6.    You get what you pay for, and if you are expecting the agencies to work on the tender for free, then the amount of time that they spend on it will be proportional. You might think that the pitch missed the mark, but given a real budget, the agency’s work might be fantastic. You will learn very little from these pitches.

7.    The pitching process relies on agencies being given a detailed brief that they can respond to. If you are outsourcing the work, then the chances are that you are not qualified to write the brief (sorry!). You can describe what you think you need, but it’s the agencies who are best placed to help you to understand your requirements. But agencies are less likely to challenge you on your brief if they know that there’s a handful of competitors who will just give you what you have asked for.

In my next post I will explain a better way to find the right web agency (and it won't necessarily lead you to my company, in case you're wondering if this is a cynical attempt at selling to you!)

How to try out an e-commerce idea quickly and easily

You can easily spent tens of thousands of pounds (and a number of months) on an e-commerce project, nailing down every detail of the design and then building a fancy website. But with the web  it's so much better to get started on something quick and simple, see how it goes, and then build upon the stuff that works. It's far less risky this way; you get to a better solution faster; and it's more fun as you focus your efforts on doing rather than talking about what you're going to do.

Here's how to do this for an e-commerce website:

1. Decide on a very small number of product lines to sell online. About three works well.
2. Get a very simple (but professionally designed) homepage together with clear calls to action including a link to further product details - one page per product - and to BUY NOW.
3. Create a simple one page order form to allow customers to select the quantity of each product that they would like and provide shipping details etc. No need to create a 'shopping basket' system yet.
4. Use a cheap e-payment provider like Protx (£20 set-up; £20/month) to provide the secure server for credit card payments.
5. Have a web programmer set up the site to email you the customer's order upon approval of the credit card. This is a straightforward job for any web programmer.
6. Make sure you have a stats package set up on the web hosting account so you can find out how people are using the site. Check out Google Analytics for this.

And voila, you have an e-eommerce website, ready for customers to to start buying your products.

Next you  need some visitors to the site. Easy! Head over to Google Adwords and within minutes you can start paying Google for visitors to your website who are searching for keywords relating to your products. An Adwords professional will be able to help you to get the most potential customers possible for your budget, but you can worry about that later. What we're after right now is proof of the concept.

Now sit back and watch the stats as people start using the site. Hopefully some of those visitors will buy your products, but regardless of whether or not they do buy, you can use the stats reporting to see which products people were interested in and which search keywords they had used when they found your site.

You can also sit friends, family, and random people off the street in front of your website and find out what they think.

Feed back everything you learn into a round of enhancements for the site. Maybe add a couple more products, or drop any products that people aren't interested in. Improve the layout of the homepage. And then go live and see how things have improved.

Then rinse and repeat.