So what sort of potential problems are introduced when the dynamic is clients come along with the design and you guys are just implementing it.
I mean, he's obviously had the really nice experiences with that.
Yeah. The designs have always been good that I've been given.
In the past. I've dealt with one client. They had an external source doing the designs for them because they did all their branding. So they had to do the website as well, but they were not website designers. There was a lot of back and forth with the designers trying to get things responsive because they didn't understand the responsive nature, the website, and how it should be. The project manager got a bit confrontational.
That must be tricky to make sure that you communicate that you're not angling to try and get the design work brought in-house.
When I was directly with the designer, I could get them on the phone and they could hear the tone of my voice. I'm not calling you an idiot. I'm just genuinely trying to help the client get the best result here. The best solution.
Okay. Welcome back to Digital Marketing From The Coalface. Alex isn't here yet. So rather than not do a podcast, I decided I would get a couple of the devs involved. So I brought in Dave Marshall and Amy Black. So we've got Dave and Amy and we're going to talk. Well, a little bit geeky maybe, but, um, I actually need to calm down a bit first because, you know, I haven't got any kids. Don't you? Yeah. I haven't got any kids. Well, maybe I have because I just got a text message saying, hi dad, this is my new number.
So I was like, oh my God, why are you telling people this on podcast?
Someone's been on ancestry.
Is that not real? Then? Is that is that is that not? See, see, what would I do without the clever? What would we do without the devs? So yeah. Well, maybe cover some sort of semi geeky things to do. We'll also talk about the non geeky stuff. And if you've got an opinion that's fine. If you haven't that's fine. You don't have to look terrified. So I've written a few things down and, well, just. I'll set off in some territory that you're probably quite comfortable with. So the question I had was when choosing between WordPress and HubSpot. Yeah, okay. Because we do WordPress stuff, we do HubSpot stuff, we do Joomla stuff, we do webflow stuff. But when choosing between HubSpot and WordPress, which is the best, and why do you hate WordPress?
Is it rubbish?
Yeah.
Well, so like, right, increasingly we are working with companies who are either thinking about using HubSpot as a content management system, or they're already using it and they haven't used it very well or yeah, usually they haven't used it very well. And they're kind of almost thinking like dumping it because, oh, you know, we doesn't really do what we thought it would do or our website looks rubbish. And they think that's because of the content management system and all that kind of thing. Um, but when people come to us. Starter for ten. When people come to us with a site that we didn't build, obviously, because they've come to us already with a website, whether it's WordPress or HubSpot, generally speaking, which of them are more, uh, challenging to get your head around?
Well, I mean, yeah, there's a thing of, we kind of always say we hate WordPress. You know, it's a bit of a bit of a running joke. And I think it's typically because when we've got on WordPress websites, we've taken on ones that have been built badly and not used properly. You know.
Is that because WordPress sites are easy to build badly?
Yes, yes. So you get all these page builder things, Elementor, WP bakery, and it makes.
Hubspot's got a page builder.
So, and it makes it great for anyone to go and build a website and, you know, do what they want, which is where the problem comes in because they go and do what they want. And it's not always people. Maybe we're full developers, I or designers I that's build on it. So it just looks a mess. They add in all this functionality. So it slows pages down. There's a lot of code getting loaded in. So generally speaking, by the time we're looking at it, we're just going, oh right. Where do we start unpicking this? And when you start telling the client, well, you're best not to have that there. You're quite bad for loading. They then start getting a bit, well, why can't I have it? You know, it's there for a reason. This stuff. The tools to use. So we're on the back foot already when we're dealing with those kind of websites because they've been built badly. So if you kind of build a website, WordPress site using those tools from the start and take that into account from the start, it's not a bad thing to do.
It's when you say like built that from the start. Do you mean like built properly using a page.
Built properly so you know you're designing it from the start, taking in account, right? We're going to have this functionality there. We don't want to have a slider here and a slider there, and then accordion there and accordion here, because it's just adding in too much functionality. It's slowing the whole thing down. It's you can use it sparingly, use it wisely and make sure that you know, any scripts and things that's used are kept to a minimum. So the site speeds not getting cranked up and it's being slow and a poor user experience having things flashing and moving everywhere as you scroll down the page. It's just that that old thing of just because you can doesn't mean you should. Mhm. Yeah. It's just because all the tools are there and these page builders doesn't mean you should use them. Yeah, there's far too many options for a lot of it. And people just, they don't realise that that's what slows the website down when they use all them.
Yeah. Because it's just a case of installing a plugin and any halfwit can install a plugin and suddenly your website does some more stuff, but you don't really think about the implications of that. Like it's okay. So websites being badly built is the main challenge. Have we ever actually taken a new client on board? They've got a WordPress website and actually whoever built it's done a pretty good job of it.
Um.
We don't talk about specific clients in this podcast.
I think there is probably one that wasn't too bad.
Mhm. Okay.
That a property company and there was a few things that was a bit slow and a little bit out of place.
But you know, that site looked quite smart.
It looked.
Very smart. And you're talking about.
It's been a lot easier to knock it into shape and you know, bring things into a bit of consistency.
Did you both work on that? Oh, yes. Yeah. Why did you find it?
Yeah. It was okay. Yeah it was.
It's been easier to get some consistency with it, I think.
Well to what extent. Right. To what extent as developers. Because even within the team here and when you know Rob's not here at the moment, but even within the team here, I'll hear you guys say something like, well, I don't do it that way. Oh, well, I do do it that way. Even with you guys. So to what extent is like a badly put together website badly put together versus just put together differently to the way you guys would do it? How can you kind of just say, well, actually, this is nothing to do with like, I wouldn't have done it that way. This is just plain rubbish. Oh.
Oh.
Here we go.
Serious pause until Amy talks. I wasn't just talking all the time, but.
Yeah, WordPress is a bit different though, because you can add in endless amounts of plugins. You can put stuff in the what is it, the content bit of WordPress. You can have extra fields along with your Elementor, your like the content can be anywhere in WordPress for that one site, whereas stuff like HubSpot, it's all in one place. You're using one theme. It's only for that theme. Your options are only for that one theme. You can kind of mix and jumble about. So you don't really need to do anything dev wise with it. You can make a mess of it without coding anything.
The HubSpot kind of, you can get the off the shelf themes and templates there, but you, when we build them, we create all the modules and we'll put some modules in to create the, the default page design. But then you also have the drag and drop areas where the clients can drag in their own stuff. So they do get that flexibility to design the pages themselves or remove layers that they don't want, but it saves them getting too carried away. And all the code that you use is just loaded within the module. So if you don't use a module, it's not loading that code in. So that's kind of cutting back in time. Whereas the likes of these page builder tools, they just load all the code in all the time just in case you do decide to use it. So.
But is that maybe without going in too deeply into the realms of, of, of the tech, why do people love WordPress so much? Because that's one of the things we come up against when we, when we're talking to people, you know, we're not anti WordPress, but we have clients who are utterly wedded to WordPress for all the wrong reasons, or so it seems to us. So is it the stuff you've been talking about, the ease with which you can just chuck stuff in there and add new functionality and all that kind of stuff? And from a designer's point of view, they don't have to worry about like too much about the templating system because WordPress just kind of lets you go in and hack about with files and do whatever you want. Whereas like another content management system that we use, Joomla is altogether more structured, and if you do that, you're just going to come seriously unstuck.
The way I've always seen it and always said is I think WordPress has done so well, is because they had the free WordPress dot com websites. So whenever I knew my first website dot com, they went to WordPress and got the free website, and then they used that for a few years. And then when they realised they needed a more grown up website, they were like, well, I know WordPress, so I'm going to get someone to build me a proper WordPress website. And it's just kind of grown from there. It's just that brand recognition thing. You say WordPress and most people who are in a business know it's for building websites, but if you tell someone Joomla, they would be like.
It's a much smaller user base, isn't it? Yeah.
So it's just, it's that brand recognition thing because they kind of carved that early niche of providing the free ones. They've gained a big following from that. And it's now just a case of, because it is so simple for developers to build a site that looks quite nice. And then just.
See when you came here, when you came to read eval, um, more or less straight from uni. You were kind of almost immediately thrown into the Joomla ecosystem. And so you cut your teeth using that system. But was there ever a period in your professional career where you actually thought WordPress was pretty good and it was a tool you'd use?
No.
For what reason though?
I used it in uni and I found it really, really confusing.
Compared to what? Dreamweaver?
Yeah, it would have been Dreamweaver, and then WordPress would have been the first one to use. And then I came here and Joomla was then that I didn't have a Scooby about to start with.
But did you. But it made just as much as you don't like WordPress?
No, I like Joomla. I think it makes more sense in the back end than WordPress does, but that's just preference.
Okay. But I mean, we've recently been speaking with a potential new customer and they are going all in on HubSpot from a CRM for marketing automation, but they want to keep their website in WordPress. Now, HubSpot knows about people loving WordPress and even as a plugin. So you can actually put all the content into HubSpot, but display it in WordPress, like a headless CMS kind of situation. But they said, oh no, we definitely want to stick with WordPress because we've got a few people in, in the organisation who've used it before and they quite like it and they're quite comfortable with it. Is it just that? Is it just because it's been there's hardly anybody hasn't touched WordPress. And so therefore there's loads of people like it because they kind of don't know any better.
Maybe most people know their way around WordPress. And we.
Do.
See.
People going from WordPress back, sorry, from HubSpot back to WordPress. Can you, can you kind of like, why do you think people might do that? You know, we've been approached by somebody like saying they wanted a HubSpot migration, which is normally move a website from WordPress into HubSpot, but we've had some the other way around. Oh, no, we want a.
Because they probably don't know anyone that knows HubSpot or to show them properly or the pricing. Do you think it's possibly pricing as well.
Probably the pricing. And like Amy says, probably that, you know, they don't know their way around HubSpot. If it's a big beast, HubSpot, there's a lot to it. And it is easy.
More so than WordPress.
Yeah. You need to get familiar with it.
It's what you do with any CMS. Julie. I wouldn't have a clue with WordPress. I know my way around HubSpot, but I very, I've used WordPress hardly ever because we were very much a Joomla shop. I always found WordPress just confusing, but only because it is very different the way it's structured to Joomla. And I was very familiar with Joomla.
I guess if someone's already in WordPress or has people who are familiar to WordPress and they've moved away from it, no one knows how to use it, then they're just gonna be like, oh, let's just go back.
Yeah. The thing with HubSpot is like, because it's got the CRM and all that in the back, there's a lot of different menu bits, which can look a bit daunting. And then people look at the price and they go, well, we're paying for this and we're paying for that and we're not actually using that. So what's the point in sticking with it?
In actual fact, you can be you can see all that stuff there and you're not paying for any of it. Yeah. You're actually just it's just there because you can turn it on if you want to.
If you're.
Prepared.
To pay for extra. So, but once you kind of figure your way around it, it's absolutely fine. But yeah, if there's not the same level of support there internally for HubSpot, like, you know, they might have someone there that goes, I know WordPress.
So, so you guys are, you do do, um, quotations and things for clients, but it's usually, um, when somebody needs something very specific. So I'll say, well, you guys are going to do all that work. You can kind of speak to each other and put together prices for it. The conversations I have are often quite different. I mean, you know, with marketing teams or sometimes the business owners and the thing I'm usually talking to them about, if we are discussing what system to use to build our website is whether or not to go down the self-hosted route, which means you either get someone like us, read evolution to manage the website, get a server, put it on the server, keep the software up to date, keep it backed up, keep it monitored, keep it secure, do all that stuff, or you go down the SaaS route software as a service route. Now, HubSpot is a SaaS solution. Webflow is a SaaS solution. Squarespace is a SaaS solution. WordPress. You can almost set it up as a SaaS solution by using is it WP engine and places like that where they'll kind of, for a fee, just kind of take care of it for you? Not entirely convinced on the efficacy of that, but maybe it works, I don't know. But if you're talking to people about the benefits of, say, a self-hosted system, which I think a lot of people would think having the technical capability that we've got, why would we prefer a SaaS system like HubSpot, where you don't have to worry about the server and backups and all that stuff? It's kind of, here's the ecosystem, go build. Why do you as geeks, very nice geeks, but how do you guys as geeks? Why do you prefer this kind of SaaS solution over having something like WordPress, where you can actually log in to the root of the server and do stuff.
There's a pros and cons for both the SaaS solution. It's great because there's someone else taking care of it. They run the updates, they, you know, constantly putting out new functionality and just, you know, they put it out in dribs and drabs as and when they create it. So they're not doing any of these big migrations, you know, that we've kind of stumbled upon with Joomla and kind of been hit roadblocks with because things change dramatically, you know, HubSpot, they can put a feature out. We've seen them beta testing things. So they'll put something out and it'll be there for a while, and then it'll disappear again, and then they just drop it back in. The only problem is sometimes they drop it back in without actually telling us they've dropped it back in again. And it's just when you're showing things to clients, as Amy discovered, that, yeah, it's kind of their.
Functionality I wanted was actually, is.
That that hub DB thing where suddenly the editor was back and yeah.
But they never made a big song and dance about it. So whereas like a WordPress, if they do a big release, you know, you get a full list changelog list of we've added this, we've added that you can now do this and that. So it's quite good in that respect. But the thing with HubSpot is, you know, that they're keeping software updated, you know, constantly making it into the new version. And if something breaks, they will be on it because.
Their whole business model relies on their system being available, the service being, you know, absolutely rock solid, etc..
And they've got folk around the world, twenty four seven fixing these things and working on it. So it's not a case of if it breaks at ten o'clock at night, sorry, we're not back in the office till nine in the morning type thing. They'll have someone there.
So it feels like it's expensive. It's the twenty four over seven support aspect of it and the infrastructure it's on the speed it runs at. If it's built properly, the way you guys do is it kind of makes that three hundred quid a month or whatever the content management system costs just pale into insignificance. Yeah. Even though WordPress is free and a server you can get for thirty bob and a fried fish.
Yeah, WordPress is free. So I mean, I deal with most of the plugin updates and backups and things for us. So although WordPress is free, You've then paid for the hosting costs, but that's paying for our time to monitor the plug ins, make sure they're up to date. If you run the update and the plugin breaks, you've then got to roll it back. Find out why it broke, see if there's a new version. See if there's a patch. Contact the devs of that plugin to. Then let them know that this broke and why. Liaise with them back and forth. Get the new version, test that out.
Then you.
Run it. You see what I'm talking about. Imagine how boring it is running it. So yeah, that's the cons of doing the self-hosted thing of it's a lot of work and a lot of back and forth, and it's gotten worse. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot more plug ins out there. And the clients want more functionality because they see that. So they're installing more and more plugins into the site, but the plugins are getting updated a lot more regularly as well. So I don't know if it's.
So the workload for keeping things up to date has increased.
Yeah. I mean, I can go.
Through updates pretty much every day.
Yeah, I can go through the WordPress sites, update all the plugins, have everything up to date, look at it two days later and there's like another fifty updates across all the sites. Again, it's just like.
Well, you're saying, well, it doesn't entirely happen behind the scenes in HubSpot, does it? Because I get emails saying, oh, this theme has been updated. Yeah, this is updated. If you get.
If you get an off the shelf theme, yeah, you get the updates from them saying, this theme's updated and you've got to go and install the update because they don't want to do that automatically in case you've gone in hard made changes, hard coded it in the theme. So if they update automatically, it could go and break the whole website. So it's up to you to go and get the latest version of that off the shelf theme to download and install. But if it's a theme that we've written from scratch, then it's fine.
You guys, as devs, do you feel like less of a dev using a tool like HubSpot compared to using Joomla or WordPress or craft or any of the other self-hosted? I can get my mitts on the server type systems. Do you feel less of a dev, the fact that you're using this SaaS based ecosystem that HubSpot.
Provides, you probably.
Well, you should.
You do more dev work with something like HubSpot than you do WordPress because, well, everyone uses the builders or.
Oh, right. Okay. So yeah, you'll have to figure out how to use like hub DB to create the functionality the client wants, things like that. Yeah. Okay.
So yeah, it's just a different type of dev work. So it's the, the front end dev work rather than the backend dev work. You know, when we're self-hosted sites, we've got, you know, we do the backend dev work. I do a bit of that. Phil does quite a lot of it for us. And then the front end dev work, doing all the template things. So it just gives us a bit more time to do the front end dev stuff that the client actually sees and probably appreciates more fully than the.
Than all the other stuff.
That they can't see.
Okay. So purely from a dev point of view, you broadly prefer SaaS tools to the self-hosted tools.
Yeah. It's not as simple as that for me. I don't know about Amy. I mean, for me.
Do you miss some of the freedom that you maybe had with Joomla.
Um, yeah. I mean, it's good with some of that. And where if something doesn't work, you can then just kind of it's easier to go in and hard code something in and just say, right, this is what we're going to do. And then you've always maybe got that little niggle at the back of your head. It's like, well, HubSpot goes down or goes kaput. I know they're a multimillion dollar company.
And anyway.
Yeah, chances of them going. But it's a thing of if they did go kaput. Yeah, that's the website's gone. You know, it's all in their system. Whereas if WordPress turned around and went, yeah, we're no longer running anymore, you know, we're not doing any more updates. We've still got all that WordPress websites saved on our server, so they will still work and we can keep them updated and make sure they don't get hacked, etc. whilst they're migrating clients onto something different that is going to be supported in the future. So there's always that niggle at the back of your head there with that bit where you know it's better to have the copy of it, the site. So yeah, it's a six and a half a dozen. What do you think?
If you never worked on a self-hosted system ever again, you only worked on. I don't know, HubSpot, web flow, squarespace. You'd be quite happy. Yeah. You kind of like that because it lets you focus on crafting like really lovely websites. The text or kind of taking care or at least the, the server level tech is all taken care of. Yeah. Okay. It's interesting. Okay. Moving on slightly. I'm gonna ask you independently what's what's your worst? How did I not know this moment when you when you've been doing dev work? I'm not too geeky. If you can remember, generally not geeks had loads.
Well, I think for you it was working with Excel.
I knew that was going to get from.
Okay, there's obviously a story in there somewhere. I mean, we all do it in our professional careers. I mean, it happens to me all the time. What we were talking about previously was SaaS systems. Do you think like we were maybe a bit late to the party with SaaS systems, maybe we kind of focus because what we do, we're like geeks. We can do do the clever stuff with Joomla. So that's the way we do it. And we kind of didn't keep with, if you like, keep up to date. Looking at some of the SaaS systems like Wix and Squarespace and webflow and the like.
But you don't need a dev to do Wix or Squarespace.
Yeah, I mean, we did look at them in the past and, you know, we did kind of dabble with the idea of offering that to clients as a low cost solution for them. But yeah, we just never really felt that it was kind of, we could offer the best, best of our ability with those systems. There was a lot of restrictions.
There, harder to use if you're a dev. Yeah. If you don't know what you're doing, they're easy to use. I would say.
The SaaS systems.
Including Wix or Squarespace.
Yeah. I mean, that's.
What.
They're built for. Yeah. They're actually like build your own website for one ninety nine a month. I mean, you know, what sort of website you're going to finish up with? I mean, probably somebody will turn around and say, yeah, I've got a website. It makes me a ten thousand quid a month and I build it, you know, built it for thirty bob on Wix. And it does happen. But generally speaking, I think those tools have advanced so much that maybe, you know, I don't know, maybe we don't need to do it any other way anymore because ultimately these, you know, ultimately what we're doing is we're building communication tools. We want marketing teams to be able to own their website, do everything they need to do with their website in order to help grow the business that they work for and everything else. So, I don't know, maybe the tech just gets in the way. We've kind of wandered straight back onto the, you know, not SaaS question there, whereas I was really trying to tease out.
Going back to your original question, it's kind of like, you know, the eureka moments. You probably like a weekly basis, you get things like that. And it's just a case of, oh yeah, how did I not know that I could do that a lot better CSS to target all this and you know, things like that or that line of JavaScript, you know, that's doing what this five lines do. How the hell did I miss that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Weekly basis. I can't really think of any.
Conversations we fill in it. I mean, Phil just kind of make some glib think, oh, I use so and so. I've been using so-and-so for the last two years. I'm like, okay, what's what's that filter? That's what happens.
The same with us though. Like if me, you and Rob speak. Yeah. Then there was there's been a few times recently Rob's been like, oh, I did this and this. And I was like, oh, I didn't know how to do that.
But I think it's the nature of what you do, isn't it? There's always.
There's so many.
Developing and other things, so.
Much stuff out there. It's difficult to know all of it.
And when you're trying to do a great job for a client and build them a website that helps them generate business, generate leads, you know, you want to get the job done. You know, you maybe don't always get a chance to go, is this the best way to do this? Well, maybe.
That's probably actually when you do find out these new things, because the client will come to you and say they want to do this. And you're like, I'm not sure if that's possible. I'll go and have a look. And you and you go and ask ChatGPT or Gemini or just gonna look it up in Google and it's a case of, ah, okay, you can do it like that. I never knew about that. Yeah.
So as dev, do you find that like clients asking for things is one of the ways that your skills develop the most?
Because it can be.
Yeah. Because, I mean, Phil will often say, I mean, Phil writes software as opposed to building sites using software. And like he often says, like, you're asking me to perhaps give you a price. I'm going to come on to price things quite soon. But you might say, you know, a client wants to know how much is something going to cost? And it's like, well, I have no idea. I've never done it before. You know, I've got to go and figure it out and try and understand how to do it. Um, and like setting the pricing side of that aside, um, do you still find because going back to the Joomla days, nine times out of ten, a client would say, we need a website and we need it to do X, Y, or Z. And we would know exactly which plugin um, component as you were called in. Joomla would do that. Oh, I need a document management system. Great. We'll use doc man, you know, I need an events management system. I'll use J events. You know, we had something now and again we had to build a Joomla component from scratch, like we'd done for one of the oil service companies that we work for, where they needed an asset management system for sharing huge files with customers who weren't allowed to use Dropbox, for example. So we had to build a Joomla component to do that. So is it still the case that clients are asking for things, and we have to sort of stop and think, how are we going to do that? And is that because we've started using some of the SaaS tools more, as opposed to Joomla, where you've got full access and do whatever you like? Or is it because clients demands are ever increasing? They see something somewhere and they want that as well on their website sort of thing.
It's probably just using different cmses really and the like. Joomla had like a plugin for or a component for absolutely everything. So yeah, if it's, if someone had asked for a HubSpot website doing a certain thing, you would know what it was on Joomla, but HubSpot doesn't necessarily have that. So you've got to create something.
There is an ever increasing ecosystem of stuff for HubSpot as well now, isn't there? Yeah.
It is getting.
Better. And is it is that similar to Joomla where someone's built like a document management system for HubSpot? I know you would probably use hub DB for that, but if it's is that is that happening now? Well, plug and play add ons.
There's a bit. I mean, with HubSpot, it's a lot easier to kind of create these modules yourself. So, you know, with the likes of WordPress and Joomla, you've got to go and create all the plugin files and code them in and add them in where you need. But with HubSpot, you can create a module easily. It's got your section for your HTML, your section for CSS, your section for your JavaScript. So you can kind of go and code stuff in and lay it out all yourself. And it just then drags and drops into the template when you need it. You just automatically create this drag and drop module. Or you can go and have a look in Google and see if someone else has created one like it and take that and adapt it. But that is the marketplace where people are selling some things, but it's not as.
It's.
Not as expansive as WordPress.
Is it an opportunity for us to build HubSpot plugins? Is it something we've looked at, like how you actually build a plugin, put it in the marketplace and make money from it because people are doing that with templates, aren't they? Like sprocket, rocket and people.
Yeah. I think the the limitation or issue with designing a plugin for the likes of HubSpot is the fact that you can't see all the code. Okay.
For the actual.
The actual.
Code. Yeah. You don't get on the server, do you?
So try to get someone to fit in and code into that.
It must be, it must have to just work with the a p idea for doing it.
There'll be certain bits with a P. I've never actually looked into it properly, but the likes of WordPress and Joomla, you know, you download the whole website code. If you're working locally, you have all the files there so you can see exactly what you're targeting, you know, make the right calls and have a component that integrates seamlessly.
So that's one example maybe where, um, the SaaS CMS puts you at a bit of a disadvantage if you, if we've got a website and it uses a plugin, a Joomla plugin, and we're moving to HubSpot, that could come unstuck because like, there isn't a plugin that does that inside the HubSpot ecosystem.
For example.
We could put it in a subdomain and just keep running that bit of the website using Joomla. But you know how how is HubSpot thriving? How are any of these SaaS systems thriving if they haven't got that massive ecosystem? I mean, there's something like ten thousand plugins for WordPress. All right. A lot of them are shit. But you know, the same with Joomla. There's a lot of plugins for Joomla as well. You know, how do the SaaS systems manage to hold their own when the when the competition has got so much drag and drop plug and play upload in two seconds type functionality.
Probably stemming back to. People are realising that they don't need all that flashy functionality on their website. Makes sense. You know, back when I first started, you know, it was a case of a lot of the websites were quite similar. It was, you know, basic content page.
Once you built.
Yeah. Just copy and paste. That's what you're meant to do, isn't it? Yep. So but yeah, it's a case of, you know, you had your home page about us page, your service page, your contact page. And that was kind of it. There was no you know, you maybe had a slider on the home page and that sort of thing. But then this as these components and plugins started becoming more readily available. There's more functionality got added, which brought the site speeds down because there's so much more stuff getting loaded.
So it's more a case of it's all maturing and people are realising that we don't need all that fluff. What we really need is great websites that get found in Google, that tell a great story, that persuade people to type, give us their details, pick up the phone, do whatever to make contact. And that way the website does its job. Yeah. Kind of thing.
Yeah. You don't need flashing logos and sparkling.
That used to be the joke, didn't it? Back in the day. It's like, oh, my logo spins on my website. And that was the coolest thing along with the blink tag. I mean, that was like the coolest thing you could do. And you think there's been like almost like a bit of regression. It's almost.
Like.
It's been like it's now simpler.
You know, for insights. Kind of yeah, it can be the bane of our life.
Which is the tool that you can put your website through. That's provided by Google, which tells you why your website's so slow, which might be a ranking factor, probably is a ranking factor. Keeps kind of flip flopping on that one. I think a little bit when their own properties get shown to be so rubbish. But either which way? I mean a website that is quick and doesn't like. I mean, I had one the other day, it was quite a big company and as I went to click something, it moved. What do they call layout shift? Yeah, it moved and I clicked completely the wrong thing and finished something completely. And it is infuriating. And I can understand why. Why, you know, the arbiters of what is good in the world. So as far as the internet is concerned, which apparently is Google, you know, decide that like they'll penalise websites that do that sort of stuff. But I think generally speaking, I think this is all being it's all getting a bit simpler, maybe.
Yeah. So because people can more readily see how slow the website is, you know, Google goes away and does its little jiggery pokery and comes back and gives you within milliseconds what each item on your website is taken to load and where the savings can be made. I think that's making people more aware of it, and they're stripping back all the fluff that's not needed.
Because it's all been it's all been done before. Everyone's seen the fancy parallax functionality. Well, you know, that's there to sort of make something look clever. And people certainly for a long time wanted their website to be completely different to every other website because it made them, they thought it made them stand out. It doesn't make them stand out. It just confuses people when they try and use their website. Telling a better story. Actually having a strong brand makes you stand out, you know, using parallax functionality, which makes things move around on a web page isn't the way to do that, is it?
It can create a pleasant kind of user experience.
When you do, they.
Know you don't really.
Care. Wow. Thereafter, they just want the website to give them the information they're.
Looking for is good, honest content that's presented in an easily digestible way. If you make it difficult to read that content, then yeah, people are going to move on. So by removing those barriers like parallax and spinning things and whatnot, then it makes it easier. But that's not to say that you should remove them completely and just have a big white page with a big block of text on it, because you know that's not going to be easily digestible.
Okay. Speaking about moving on, let's move on to a slightly different subject. Why is pricing so hard in our industry?
Come on, you've been quiet. Not because you go.
first, not because you guys are not good at it. Because we, you know, we put a lot of time and effort into trying to figure out we don't just flog ours at Red River like a lot of decent agencies. You know, we kind of look at things in the round. We're trying to offer a value based approach to charging so that, you know, it's not just like a flat out, you know, whacking big rate for absolutely everything that we do, although that would be nice sometimes, you know, but what is it about what we do? I mean, I kind of, I kind of know, but I'm interested to think, to hear what you guys have got to say about why pricing is so tricky. Amy.
Um.
I don't know. I guess even if you get given like a full design, you can kind of gauge roughly what it's going to cost. But then, I don't know, the client sometimes thinks, oh, but can we also have this? And can we also have that? Or can this do this? And don't realise.
Are you trying to take cognizance of the fact you think during the process things are going to change when you try to give a fixed price to deliver something for a customer? Or is it is it more about you literally just don't quite know how you're going to do whatever it is has been asked.
Yeah, there's some bits that there's certain things that you just don't know how long something's going to take or.
What Phil says like, well, I've never done it before, so I can't tell you how, how long it's going to take. Therefore, I can't tell you how much it's going to cost.
Yeah, that can be a main factor in things.
Okay. Anything to add to the exhaustive explanation of why pricing is so challenging?
Yeah, you can have clients come in, I want a website. It's going to have like six pages. Give me a price.
Yeah. But it doesn't end up six pages.
It does end up more. Yeah. That's the thing. It never ends up six pages. Always adding more. But then you kind of go, well, how much content is going to be in those pages? Because in the past, we've had clients that'll give us a paragraph and we're like, well, you need to write more. And then we also have ones that'll kind of give you two pages worth of stuff and just say, I want all this on and just dumped on the page. So when you get a amount of content like that, it's not a bad thing, but you need to think about how you can split that up to make it easy to digest.
So that's probably the main thing is not having all the content first, like the finished finalised content before the build.
Yeah. So that obviously isn't why it's difficult to price it in the first place. But are you saying that's what makes projects creep in terms of like, we thought it would cost X to build it, but you know, when we actually do the final reckoning, it was way more because we just didn't get the information we were asking for.
Well, it does make it difficult to price it in the first place, because if the client comes to you with that minimal information and asks you for a price, you're having to pluck numbers out of thin air. You know, we can give say, well, if they give us this amount of tax, it'll cost this much. If they give us that amount of tax, it'll cost that much. So it's a case of do you go back to them and give them that really.
If anyone listen to this, they might be thinking, well, you know, if I think of a web page, like a word document, why does the price get affected so much by how much you copy and paste into that word document? And I'm massively oversimplifying it as a way of trying to tease out of you why not knowing about the content is such a big deal.
Well, just kind of going back to what I said earlier, it depends on how you then have to split that content up to make it easy to digest.
And that's what takes up a lot of your time. When you're developing.
Well, you're then developing new layers. You're changing the design layers.
Think of it like a layer cake. So a layer of a website is like a layer cake.
Yeah. So it's a case of take a word document, two page word document. Well, the content on it, if you put that in front of someone, yeah, it's easy enough to read. But if you're looking at that on a screen, you're just kind of getting bored and you probably get halfway through and go, yeah, I've read enough. I can't be bothered with this anymore because, you know, humans have low attention spans. If it's nothing to catch that eye, then they get fed up quite quickly and move on to the next thing. So with a document like that, we've then got to think about splitting into different layers. So, you know, we might think, right, well, we'll have the main header and then we'll have a little strapline text and maybe a little bit of text in the paragraph and in the banner, like a little teaser text. And then the first layer of text could be quite a chunky bit of text, but a nice big image. And the next layer might think, well, we'll put that in a different colour background with two columns, and then the next layer split in maybe.
But why are you having to think about this? Why is the designer not thinking about this? Why is it down to the devs to do that? Is that because.
Well.
Ultimately you're the ones that are handed the final content for a page, and so you have to try and shoehorn it into the lovely design without making the lovely design look like a pig's ear.
Well, we've kind of got to work together, so okay, we'll look at it and the designer will look at it. So, you know, Diana will have a look at that and go, well, I could probably do layers like this and layers like that, but she'll kind of have that in her head. We've then got to think, well, Diana normally likes to work like this and create layers there, and she'll split that like that. And so it's just gonna work in together without really having to maybe have that full conversation and see the designs because Diana doesn't want to go and create a full on design until the client gives us the go ahead and says, yeah, I want you to go and spend all that time doing that design for you. So there is a bit of speculation with us and thinking, well, Diana will probably do this. So we've got to take into account the dev time for building that and so on and so forth. And then Diana also then has to think on that. Well, I could do those layers, but if I go and do that sort of kind of thing, it's going to make it really difficult. So that's going to up the cost. So I better tell them that I'm thinking about doing that.
And do you ever find it frustrating that like maybe a client is like you're working on a site, you've shown the client they're great and they come back to you with one of those, could you just and you look at it and you think that that's going to cost a couple of grand to do that?
Yeah.
Now to them, it looks like it should take five minutes. And without going into the ins and outs of it as to like why it's not going to take five minutes. Do you find that frustrating that people don't understand the complexity of what you do? Yeah. Is it or rather, is it a frustration? Not do you find it frustrating? Is it frustrating?
I mean, kind of having a discussion with a client today for something similar and just asking for a little bit of an extra thing. And it's a case of it's not going to be as simple as what they think it is, and I'm going to have to go away and produce a couple of quotes. And there's two different options for doing this. And they've asked for quotes for both options.
So I think I might know who the client is.
Yeah. So I'll go away and do those two quotes. And I think it's probably going to cost more than they're expecting it to because they just see it as being really quick.
Yeah.
Yeah. And that's what I'm trying to find that frustrating. And or do you, do you find yourself having to like deal with or, or have slightly awkward conversations because someone's asked for something that they think is simple, but it isn't. Either because you're having to re-engineer something or just because it's not.
There's an issue I think is, you know, you quite often get some clients, like if we're on HubSpot and they've come from WordPress website. Well, I could do this on WordPress. Why can't I do it on HubSpot? Well, HubSpot isn't WordPress, but.
You sold me HubSpot. You told me HubSpot was great.
Yeah. So that's the thing because they see it somewhere, they think it should be available everywhere. And in a manner of speaking, speaking, it probably should be.
But we have to code it that way. Yeah, you've.
Got to hard code that stuff so.
It doesn't all come out the box. Yeah.
So that's where the complexity comes. It's convincing them that just because it's available on WordPress doesn't mean you can go and copy and paste that functionality into HubSpot. You've got to refactor that code and figure out your own code and build it yourself. And that's where the time comes in.
And do you think over the years we've been too ready to absorb that? I mean, I do you know, we said that would cost a couple of grand. They've now changed their mind. Oh, okay. We'll just do it. I mean, you know, you've been here less time than Dave, but you've seen us do that. You've seen us chew on things, and we still will to a certain extent. You know, with clients who are paying us lots of money regularly paying us lots of money, we're not going to nickel and dime them. But, you know, this industry, generally speaking, suffers. And it's probably not the only industry that does from over delivery. Yeah. Because people don't realise when they ask for something they.
Don't.
What.
That means. They don't realise that it's adding a lot of extra on. And in that interest of client relation, you don't want to go and tarnish that new relationship that you've got with the client. So you just think, well, I'll just do it. I'll explain to them it's taken a bit extra, but we'll absorb the cost just so they know that it's not an easy thing.
Yeah, that's a danger if you don't tell them that. Yeah. It's not.
An.
Easy thing.
But we'll absorb the cost just since it's unexpected. It's a new, new client. But then it's you get that risk of then they come back to you asking for something else. Oh, well, you did this last time, so why am I having to pay now? And you know, it's trying to get that balance with it.
Do you find yourself trying to avoid those conversations because nobody likes confrontation. Nobody likes that kind of slightly adversarial situation. When you're starting to talk about money, especially when you've agreed a fee for a job, but the scope changes so much, you're like, we really are going to have to have a conversation about this.
I pass it to someone else to do.
That's fine. That's not a problem. I mean, it's more my job than your job. If you explain it to me, I can explain it to them. You know, I've got broad enough shoulders. I'm happy to do that sort of thing, so. But I guess that's what I'm driving at. Is it is it almost like as devs, is it almost like a, a pain, a real inconvenience? Can somebody else deal with that? I'll build it. I'll do all the clever stuff, but I'm not going to get into these conversations about why we're going to have to increase the budget, for example. You prefer to avoid that.
I like keeping a happy relationship because you're dealing with them all the time, building it so you don't. Yeah, I don't like those conversations. No.
Well, nobody does really.
They're always awkward. But, yeah, you know, I've passed quite a few over to you over the years, but yeah, I've kind of dealt with some myself and, you know, generally on the whole, when you talk to clients, explain it properly without using lots of geeky terms to try and confuse them. Yeah. Nine out of ten times they're fine. Yeah. You will get that occasional client that just is not happy. And I think, you know.
Early on in the agency's, um, evolution, you know, when we were dealing with customers or working with customers where budgets were really tight, that's when it was a real problem. The bigger companies tend, I don't mean they're a pushover and they'll just pay anything, but they understand that things cost money. They understand when they make requests for things to change, that that might have an impact on cost and they can afford to do that. So I suppose it's just like anything, if you employ an architect to build you design and build you a big house, then the chances are that by the time you finish the five hundred thousand pounds project budget has probably gone to six hundred or seven hundred thousand pounds. It just happens because you go, oh, now I've seen that I want this and now you know it happens.
I mean, look at HS2. Well, even the government don't.
Think we'll ever look at HS2, will we?
But, you know, even big government agencies that, you know, somehow seem to have millions of pounds to throw at things can't get, you know, costings. Right. So it's, it's a problem everywhere. It's just how you handle that. That's the measure.
So we've got um, you know, a bit of work, a bit of work tendered at the priced up at the moment with potential new customers. And one of them in particular, um, they've got a very good relationship with another agency, a design agency. And I would encourage, if you've got good, good relationships with design companies, then stick with them. So that design company haven't got the technical skills to do the actual site build. So what sort of potential problems are introduced when the dynamic is clients come along with the design and you guys are just implementing it. So it's not one of our designers that's done it. You're working with a third party designer and just has to implement it. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. I have a feeling it might happen more often as we do more and more HubSpot stuff.
That kind of almost this time last year, you were dealing with that.
Yeah. I don't think it's it's.
Not I don't mind it.
I don't mind it. No.
Are you finding that that's because the people that have brought designs to us, when you've spoken to the designers, they get it. They're on it. They're not just a graphic designer who's tried to design a website, for example. They actually understand interactive design. They understand web design and, and, and the fact that it's not a fixed size platform that you're actually building for that kind of thing.
Yeah. I guess you just don't get too involved in it. I guess you just kind of build what you've been given rather than being like, oh, I think this would be better. Or that, which is about.
The only aspect of the agency where execution only probably works. Because like if, for example, somebody put together their own search marketing strategy. And they just need an agency to write a shitload of content for them. We're not interested. We don't want to do that.
I mean, he's obviously had the really nice experiences with that.
Yeah, the designs have always been good that I've been given.
In the past. I've dealt with one client. They had an external source doing the designs for them because they did all their branding and things and posters and whatnot. So they had to do the website as well, but they were not website designers. Yeah. And there was a lot of back and forth with them, with the designers trying to get things responsive because they didn't understand the response of nature, the website, and how it should be.
I just make it smaller. Dave is that was that. It basically.
Makes.
That bigger, make it a lot bigger.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I'm talking about the responsive. He's like, well, have you got. Can you show me the designs for what it's supposed to look like on an iPhone? And oh, we'll just make it smaller. Sort of. Yeah.
Well it's the case. Yeah. And things like that. And it's like they do so and it's like, well that's not really going to work on mobile. Why not? It's like, well, a bit too small. And the project manager got a bit confrontational when I spoke directly to the designer. They were absolutely fine. I had quite a good relationship.
With them, racking my brains here. I'm trying to think who it was.
It was an accountancy firm.
Oh. Got you. Yeah yeah, yeah. Very successful accountancy firm.
So. And the project manager at the time it was someone external as well. So I think it was just too many.
I know who that was.
Too many. Yeah. Too many people getting involved. Yeah. And but when I spoke directly with the designer, things did work out a bit better. But yeah, it didn't really work too well. And we have kind of got a current client where we've done a bit of that. And there have been a few tricky conversations in the past there as well. But yeah, the one that Amy dealt with last year that was well.
Even using the term dealt with makes it sound like it was wasn't exactly smooth running.
The client. It was easier than Dave's past the client.
Amy liaised with her.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think it's because we're invested in what we do. We enjoy what we do. We produce a great outcome. We always try and produce a great outcome. And if you're as Dev's developing something that ultimately you're just not bought into, ultimately it's like, this could be so much better. Why don't they just let us do it? It would be so much better. That must be frustrating.
Yeah. If you're given a not so good design or they're not really listening or that that's that's just frustrating. And you know, it's wrong or horrible.
Yeah. You know, it's wrong. And then when you kind of point out what's wrong, they then.
Get moody.
Get moody. Well, they think that you're just.
Trying to be awkward because you're not designed done it. Yeah.
And it's.
Not.
That at all. It's you're trying to point out the flaws.
So the.
Best.
Website.
Possible.
And that must be tricky to make sure that you communicate that you're not like angling to try and get the design work brought in-house to red evolution. You genuinely want to produce the right outcome for the client, but they just think you're being awkward because they don't understand what you do. They don't understand. You know that taking that the concepts, the designs and turning it into this thing that's called called a website that can be viewed on a multitude of different types of devices is, is what your speciality is. And what you're trying to do is produce the, you know, the best result possible for the client.
Yeah, I think that's why it kind of worked better for me with that previous client. You know, when I was able to directly with the designer because I could get them on the phone and they could hear the tone of my voice.
Yeah.
That's right. You know, I'm not calling you an idiot. I'm just genuinely trying to help the client get the best, best result here, the best solution. So if we can work together and figure this out, that's the best thing. But you know, when it's the just emailing and emailing a project manager and it's the kind of the Chinese whisper, the tone.
Gets lost and.
Then you don't know what they're then feeding back to the designer and it's just, yeah.
Okay, you first div what? From a dev point of view, what is, what's the thing that you get asked to do that just makes your heart sink? You're like, oh, not another one of these.
Make the logo bigger.
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. And I mean, there is we all in our jobs, in our careers, you know, from time to time and hopefully not all the time, you know, are presented with something which you think this is going to take two or three days, it's going to be as boring as hell to do, but I've just got to wade through it and do it. Is there any aspect of your job that can occasionally be like that, or even more? More often, if that's the case.
With every job, there's good bits and bad bits and then there's bits. So.
So but generally speaking, do you think like as a dev, things have evolved so that there is less of the monotonous stuff and more of the enjoyable stuff?
Uh, possibly. Yeah, there probably is some of that, you know, when things are a bit more standard. So it used to be the thing that absolutely filled me with dread was the cross-browser testing.
Oh yeah.
Back in the day when Internet Explorer.
six.
Was still on the go and it just nothing worked with it. that, and you'd finish this really nice website and you go, right now I've got to do the cross-browser testing and see if it works in explorer six. And everything would just fall over. Yeah. And you'd have to go and create all these unique stylesheets.
To make it work on a piece of software that was out of date, insecure, and nobody should have been using.
Just used by one government agency. So of course, it had to.
Work that cross-browser testing and getting things to work on IE6. Yeah, okay. But I thought you were still oil industry ING at that point. Must have just got the tail end of it.
Yeah. Not.
Yeah. But that are you saying that because of the frameworks that we use and the tools.
Frameworks that we use, and the browsers are just getting a bit more sensible. Well, in fact, in explorer no edge uses the chromium framework. So it's basically Chrome with a different look and feel.
So you're not even seeing like, oh, I've tested it on on Safari and it's not working. It's very rare, occasional.
Now, very occasional. You get things like that. The maybe more often what you see is like the mobile devices and it's kind of like their native browser. So it's not like it's like Samsung's own browser or something like that.
Nobody uses. Well, maybe they do.
I think they do use it because they don't know how to go and install a browser.
Yeah.
Yeah. They just see this one called Internet.
Android users.
For you.
Just saying.
Just saying much more technology than you. Apple phones iPhones but well well, but yeah, so that used to be the big, the big bugbear, but it's.
Kind of.
It's gone away now. But there's always mundane, monotonous jobs just cos you're plugging content in.
I hate doing proposals.
Content. Yeah. That's the worst.
Yeah. That's what fills me with dread. You know our proposals are usually quite succinct. And we've got it, you know, we've got it nailed. But now and again there's proposals. If we decide for some weird reason to go after some public sector stuff, wading through their requirements, it just feels, feels, fills me with dread. But what about.
You?
I honestly can't think of anything.
So there's nothing really that like, you're just like, I don't want to go to work today because I know I've got X to do sort of thing. Well, that's good because I mean, you know, as an agency, we try to make sure that people genuinely get some enjoyment from the work that we do. I mean, not, not even in a trivial way. I mean, to me, it's important. I mean, I'll look at jobs that we can potentially bid for. And I just think I'm not going to subject anybody subject anybody to that. Do you know what I mean? Because I just I know myself because I've got the attention span of a gnat that I just never be able to do it, you know?
Yeah. If there's ones that came along where there's a lot of content that I would just get a bit like, just.
Like.
Copy and paste.
Because when we're doing our own website, you know, I didn't really do much of the content copy and pasting, but you could hear all the grumbling in the office from everyone that was doing it. Oh.
Yeah.
You know, I've got another thirty pages to do in this section. So, you know, and we've kind of had a couple of clients, but there's been a bit of content to copy across quite a lot, but it's not been too bad. And we've kind of thinned out the last client that had a lot of copy, they did it, do it themselves. So we kind of kept threatening to take it over because they were being quite slow themselves. So you can imagine they were having the same grumblings going on in the office. But yeah, they did kind of get it figured out themselves. So it's just when you get monotonous, things like that and you're not really letting the creativity flow, that's the kind of.
Anything to add.
No.
Well.
Speaking about monotony, I think we've talked enough.
Turned.
On me. Oh.
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's been enlightening for me. I've enjoyed that. It's been all right. Anyone listening, they might think that's gone a bit more geeky, although, you know, Alex goes off on one and quite often starts talking about the inner workings of AdWords or something, or Google ads as it is and stuff like that. So we do sometimes, you know, wander off into the realms of geekiness. But what what I hope is that anyone listening has got, um, a little bit of an insight into like the fact that devs are just normal, nice human beings like you two guys and you know, they're always trying to do great work for customers and you're often doing things that you've never done before and trying to solve problems. And I think people don't always see that. They just think websites are like, grab a template, put the template in, put your logo in, put some, put some words in, and you've got a website. They don't see all of the stuff that's going on to make that website as fast as it can be, as slick as it can be, as cross-browser compatible as it can be, as cross-platform compatible as it can be fast. You know, all the rest of it. So yeah, I think, I think that's really, uh, hopefully that's been enlightening. All right. Will you come back? Um, I'll be the judge.
If the demand is.
No.
We'll have a look at the downloads.
Yeah, yeah. Our numbers are not great, so don't be disappointed if nobody slows down. I'll put a really controversial title for the podcast and then that'll usually it makes people go, oh, what's that all about? Click. And we'll go from there. All right. That was great. Thank you very much.
See you later.
Bye.