Hi everyone,
I am a senior software engineer with 10 years experience in the industry. I have just opened my own company with some friends providing various IT services. One of our basic services is to provide website/eCommerce for startups and small business with very low-cost, starting from €999. Our website: http://latekco.com/
We are having problem finding new customers. Does anyone know a site where I can look for businesses in FInland to find potential customers. Any advice for me on ways to find new customers will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you everyone for reading this and have a nice rest of the day!
Low cost IT solutions
Re: Low cost IT solutions
http://www.markups.io/items/free-bootst ... -template/roger_roger wrote:I just had to laugh after visiting your website, the first carousel is put me off kinda thing. I am not sure why you wanted to post your photo as some kind of model over the city background, it looks totally unprofessional or the beginner (rookie) in design kind of.
Every case is unique. You can't measure the result of your application based on arbitrary anecdotes online.
Re: Low cost IT solutions
I see they put a lot of effort into their site!!Beep_Boop wrote:http://www.markups.io/items/free-bootst ... -template/roger_roger wrote:I just had to laugh after visiting your website, the first carousel is put me off kinda thing. I am not sure why you wanted to post your photo as some kind of model over the city background, it looks totally unprofessional or the beginner (rookie) in design kind of.
Don't think they're gonna do much business if they don't improve rapidly, enough web designers in Estonia who do much better work for a fraction of the money!
Re: Low cost IT solutions
I had a website done by a professional. They designed a WP template matching our brand and house style. Perfectly suited for our purpose.Do you know why web designs are expensive in Finland? because people actually invest time, money and effort in learning and doing UI/UX in good way. Although the designs might not be out-of-the-box but still doesn't give you feel like rookie stuff.
But to maintain the template (necessary because of all the software updates) I have to pay them over and over again.
For a second website I used a free of the shelf template that the developer keeps updating. Less good looking, but much more economic friendly.
Re: Low cost IT solutions
Hi folks,
Yes I used a free template for our home page because I wanted to concentrate on the content.
I have been in this industry long enough to understand how it works, so don't think you know much about design or how IT business works roger_kid
Our strategy is to provide service with fixed-price contract, so end customers will know before hand the exact amount paid for the service. How to achieve that is our secret
Yes I used a free template for our home page because I wanted to concentrate on the content.
I have been in this industry long enough to understand how it works, so don't think you know much about design or how IT business works roger_kid
Our strategy is to provide service with fixed-price contract, so end customers will know before hand the exact amount paid for the service. How to achieve that is our secret
Re: Low cost IT solutions
Get rid of the shiny suit, its not IT, its lunch and drinks.
Re: Low cost IT solutions
Thanks for the feedback, I removed itcors187 wrote:Get rid of the shiny suit, its not IT, its lunch and drinks.
Re: Low cost IT solutions
i think his site looks puker. very nice. your a very rude man
Re: Low cost IT solutions
I am still trying to work out what puker is.
Anyway. Website-specific feedback: clean up the awkward grammar and simplify the copy on your main image. Slow down the transition, I'm a native speaker and I couldn't grok its meaning before it was gone. You're pitching in Finland, so you need to give a non-native-speaker time to translate in their head. Or ideally your site should be in Finnish... Marketing 101, get your message across succinctly or you don't get the message across at all.
As for the service, if I were in the market for a "low-cost IT solution" (presumably because I'm a startup or a small business?), then a thousand euro is not even in the ballpark. That'll be ten times my budget. I happen to have owned a small business in the past, and my research told me that it wasn't worthwhile to even have my own e-commerce platform because I doubted I could attract enough direct website sales to ever justify it. A typical startup / small business still has a budget of close to zero euro though. Building a business can be done with time OR money, so typically, the owner is making up the budget deficit with many hours of hard work in selling their product. Once they begin to see some success, they are looking to spend less time on DIY and have the money to hand this work to someone else. Thus the focus is not so much "low cost", the focus is "trouble free" or "easy" or "comprehensive" or "professional" or "managed", or pick your word, something along the lines of you taking on the grunt work so they can grow the business. That is quite possibly when 999€ becomes a decent price to them.
Marketing 102: know your market and pitch accordingly. if it were me, you'd have completely missed the mark here, either with the description or with your target market, I am not sure.
Anyway. Website-specific feedback: clean up the awkward grammar and simplify the copy on your main image. Slow down the transition, I'm a native speaker and I couldn't grok its meaning before it was gone. You're pitching in Finland, so you need to give a non-native-speaker time to translate in their head. Or ideally your site should be in Finnish... Marketing 101, get your message across succinctly or you don't get the message across at all.
As for the service, if I were in the market for a "low-cost IT solution" (presumably because I'm a startup or a small business?), then a thousand euro is not even in the ballpark. That'll be ten times my budget. I happen to have owned a small business in the past, and my research told me that it wasn't worthwhile to even have my own e-commerce platform because I doubted I could attract enough direct website sales to ever justify it. A typical startup / small business still has a budget of close to zero euro though. Building a business can be done with time OR money, so typically, the owner is making up the budget deficit with many hours of hard work in selling their product. Once they begin to see some success, they are looking to spend less time on DIY and have the money to hand this work to someone else. Thus the focus is not so much "low cost", the focus is "trouble free" or "easy" or "comprehensive" or "professional" or "managed", or pick your word, something along the lines of you taking on the grunt work so they can grow the business. That is quite possibly when 999€ becomes a decent price to them.
Marketing 102: know your market and pitch accordingly. if it were me, you'd have completely missed the mark here, either with the description or with your target market, I am not sure.
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betelgeuse
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Re: Low cost IT solutions
The latter part of your sentence makes little sense to me. Patents are not relevant for name disputes and presumably they would not want to make the "share company" public (that's what the j stands for in Oyj).roger_roger wrote:[
Their name Latek Oy has already been running since 2004 and I doubt there would be patent issue while registering the same name as Oyj http://www.kauppalehti.fi/yritykset/yri ... y/18901093
Re: Low cost IT solutions
It means something is cool and nice looking. It's so sick, bruv! You know, sick.. puker.roger_roger wrote:This is what I understood. Maybe mixed up in words
Slightly uncommon low-class English slang.
Re: Low cost IT solutions
The website doesn't look too bad to me. Right off the bat, though. You should say "Affordable," not "Low-cost." As a native English speaker, I can say there is a a BIG difference. Affordable makes it sound like its a good service but might still fit in my bidget. "Low cost" just sounds cheap.
Second,you should fix your grammatical errors. That is the first thing I noticed. If English isn't your first language, then you should pay a service to proofread your English. Bad grammar is something a reader immediately notices, and it makes the website look unprofessional.
Third, several points are repeated (for instance that you use agile development). Save the space and the reader's time and just make your points once.
Regarding the price - €999 is actually not bad for a startup company's budget. In fact, my wife and I are starting up a US based business and will sometime in the future need a website professionally made. For the time being, however, that is too expensive, which tells me that our company is not yet at a point at which it needs a professional website. So for now, We are just using a free Wordpress template and also building a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Here's my comment on the price though - a fixed price has its appeal over an hourly price, but why €999? Is that based on a certain amount of work? 2 different clients could come to you with 2 completely different needs. It seems weird that you'd charge the same amount for both of them. Why not something like "Contact us for a customized, fixed-price quote." To me, that would lend a bit more credibility to your pricing model.
Second,you should fix your grammatical errors. That is the first thing I noticed. If English isn't your first language, then you should pay a service to proofread your English. Bad grammar is something a reader immediately notices, and it makes the website look unprofessional.
Third, several points are repeated (for instance that you use agile development). Save the space and the reader's time and just make your points once.
Regarding the price - €999 is actually not bad for a startup company's budget. In fact, my wife and I are starting up a US based business and will sometime in the future need a website professionally made. For the time being, however, that is too expensive, which tells me that our company is not yet at a point at which it needs a professional website. So for now, We are just using a free Wordpress template and also building a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
Here's my comment on the price though - a fixed price has its appeal over an hourly price, but why €999? Is that based on a certain amount of work? 2 different clients could come to you with 2 completely different needs. It seems weird that you'd charge the same amount for both of them. Why not something like "Contact us for a customized, fixed-price quote." To me, that would lend a bit more credibility to your pricing model.