Why Us – Not the Other Guys

When it comes to web designers, we’re a dime a dozen, but what about Small Presence? Why would you want to partner up with this bunch of nerds?

Our Clients Really Like Us

We wanted to take a moment to toot our own horn. Take a quick skim through what other small business owners appreciated about working with us.

Kim Whitacre of Lily’s Bridal

“I worked with Small Presence for the past 3 years. They are great to work with and listen to your wants.”

Leah McGrath of Maci London

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John Gorst of Thumb Media Group

“Small presence has handled several web projects for two of my companies and has performed perfectly. I would recommend them for just about any web project that you may have.”

Johndale Stanley of Forgotten Door

“We have been working with Small Presence over the course of about four months off and on as we were wrapping production on our album. The company has done a profound job on everything from design of our Cd cover to the launch of our web site. Just incredible!!!! Small Presence will be our first choice for all future projects.”

Steve Lewis of Mind Arrive

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We’re Real

We’d like to say we’re down to Earth and enjoyable to work with. We’re a geo-dispersed team of artists and computer nerds. We love creating things like food, music, art, stories and websites. We love to enjoy those things. We like learning and we love teaching.

One thing we can say, without a doubt, is that we have lives outside of the office. We don’t work 60+ hour weeks. We’re constantly trying to use our timely wisely. We have families and enjoy spending time with them. In other words, we aim to be balanced.

This means when you need us we’ll be at our best. We won’t be irritated and tired or unduly burdened. We’ll actually enjoy talking with you! What more could you ask for from a designer, developer or sales woman?

Us vs. The Other Guys

Our competition can be categorized into 3 existing groups: template providers, contracted individuals, and large firms. What follows is our honest advice. We even go as far as recommending some of our competition if you’re not the kind of business we can help. Just do us a favor, keep us in mind!

Template Providers

Template Providers are numerous. Some examples are www.TemplateMonster.com, www.HomeStead.com, www.Web.com among many other affiliates who provide templates as an add-on service to their existing services (such as domain registrars and hosting providers).

Template Providers tend to be able to provide very cheap designs to their customers, but they do this in exchange for quality. The old adage is true, you get what you pay for. If you are on a VERY tight budget and can’t yet justify spending $40/month or more up front on a web presence, this should be your first stop.

Another drawback of partnering with a Template Provider is that you aren’t the only website with that design. Some templates look pretty nice, but that just means more people are likely to use it. You can usually buy-out a template so they stop selling it, but what about all the previous websites that use it already? Also, how consistent is the template with your brand? This may not mean much now, but as a business grows, it becomes very important. Brand is perception and perception is reality.

Contracted Individuals

Contracted Individuals are hobbyist-gone-pro service providers. There is nothing wrong with this(as we all start somewhere), but the issue is that they haven’t taken the time to create and follow effective business practices with the client in mind. They also haven’t had much practice and therefore they fail to understand the key benefits of the web for small businesses and instead seek to toy with the most recent and hyped techniques.

Contractors typically charge less than other more experienced individuals, but this is because they can’t yet offer the valuable skills that businesses need. If you are on a tight budget and you have a good amount of patience for trial and error, this is a good option to investigate. Ask around, checkout www.CraigsList.org or your local college campus.

Large Firms

Large Firms are better equipped for large projects that have complex needs. Just about everyone at Small Presence has worked as part of such firms in the past. The projects can definitely be fun and challenging, but they are also full of useless bureaucracy that slows down the creative process.

Large Firms also charge large fees. We would recommend such firms to those with budgets upwards of $10,000. This usually means you have investors backing you.

Small Presence

We built Small Presence from the ground up to serve small businesses, because we feel that’s where we are most comfortable. We enjoy working with real, kind and clever individuals. We meet a lot of very interesting people and develop relationships that are very rewarding. We also are ourselves a small business and can strongly relate to the troubles and triumphs of running a small business.

We invite you, with arms wide-open, to get in touch with us. We’d love to find a way to help you and your business grow, especially on the web.