I managed to get to, in the self-imposed two-week deadline, 11 companies: 3Bit, Marker Studio, OnFire, Pitch, TheWebCompany, Studio Alexander, Silverstripe, Young and Shand, Gravitate,  Swaytech and Starsoft. Thanks also to Lee ter Wal Design, whom I work a lot with and also recommend. I have emerged far more knowledgeable about the scene in Auckland and the business in general, and am impressed with what I saw.

Every firm had strengths which lent them to a particular niche, or made them better for a certain kind of client. At the cheaper end the game is about selling to clients who are fairly unsophisticated, and while the websites are fairly basic, their main service to us all as end customers is in actually getting their clients to have a half decent website in the first place. Many of those clients will later graduate to more sophisticated websites and development companies, and these early experiences will set the tone.

At the very top end firms are performing complex work for high traffic sites owned by very large businesses. And stretching from the bottom to the top are a vast array of firms (over 800 in Auckland I am told), from small, medium and large generalist firms, to firms of all sizes that are stronger in one area, such as heavy duty technical work, branding or marketing.

Despite the competition, there are thousands and thousands of local and not so local businesses demanding quality work. Businesses understand that websites are critical, and a little sales effort and a record of quality work will help you find them.

There are a number of ways that I can sum up what I learned, and I’ve settled on this:

The Buyers and Sellers guide to Design and Development firms in Auckland.

Buyers Guide

Designing and building a website can be done at a range of costs and benefits:

• $3,000–$5,000 will get you a very basic WordPress website based on a pre-existing template. It will be roughly acceptable but probably not inspiring.
• $5,000–$15,000 will get you a well-designed functional brochure-ware website. You’ll use a smaller, younger firm to do so, and you’ll need to be very clear on what you want. This isn’t the time to iterate too much, but you should get something that represents your small business well.
• $15,000–$50,000 gets you a well-designed website with a degree of capabilities. It may include eCommerce, or even hook into one or more of your legacy systems. These are for growing and medium sized businesses, and are well worth the investment.
• $50,000 and above, and that can be over $1m but is typically $100-200,000, gets you a range of websites/updates for serious businesses. This is a space populated by advertising agencies running multiple campaigns, or large companies with very complex requirements and legacy systems.
• Anything over $200,000 and you should be working on the principal website for a huge business (by NZ standards). If you are paying more than this for a marketing website then you should let me handle it and I’ll split the difference with you 50/50.

Prices

Firms charge between $90 and $200 per hour to external clients. $120 is the acceptable limit for an up-and-coming firm, while $120–$150 is what most professionals are charging.

If you are paying $90 to $120 an hour then you are either very lucky, or you have ordered up thousands of hours of work in advance. For those huge commitments you may pay low rates, but be prepared to enter into a binding contract, as the biggest shops make money on time and margin, and with lower margins you need longer commitment.

If you want (or are) one of the smarter eggs around and can do complex work that others can’t, and incredibly quickly, then look to $150 and above for the right rate. Like a great mechanic they will make it up in time saved and better results.

Note that these are prices firms charge to end clients. Retaining an individual directly or is often cheaper, though you may not get the same time commitment. Firms that are selling services to clients at one rate do need to make a fair margin on any contractors they hire, and also need to be amply compensated for the overhead, risk and brand strength that comes with a larger more established firm.

Intermediation

The industry is in parts very fragmented and layered, with some specialist firms receiving work from agencies who in turn hold relationships with clients. Sometimes there are three or more layers, and I wonder whether the end-clients even know about the people who do the actual work.

I must sound a warning here. Retaining a master agency who then retains other firms is a very good way to spend a lot of money and get a lousy result. This layering pushes the end client further away from the designer and developers who do the work, and it becomes a game of Chinese whispers.

Meanwhile the client may have internal ‘run by committee’ issues, so that multiple voices from agency, development and design firms and clients are driving the results. The results are generally a mess, and a quick scan through this blog will show a few of them. Ferrit is a classic example. A large number of people and firms were associated with that disaster, yet very few are willing to acknowledge that now.

The new digital agencies are pretty good, but I would recommend that you understand and stick to what they are good at, and retain direct relationships with firms to fill the gaps.

Good clients

As a client you need to get a range of tasks done to build and maintain a great website, and not every firm can do everything well. Choose between an integrated firm, one that can outsource some pieces to others or choose individual firms yourself.

However you also need to make sure that you are a good client, as only good clients can help firms make great websites, and deliver excellent business outcomes.

• Good clients have a defined mission, vision and values for their company, which will guide the purpose and design of the website. If you are not certain of your mission, vision and values then the project will almost certainly fail. Seek help from a business or branding consultant if you have not done this step, and everything thereafter will become a lot easier. I’ve been exposed to this sort of work many times over the years, and in NZ have worked with Ray Labone, founder of Designworks, who has done this for dozens of decent sized NZ companies.
• Good clients also have a brand strategy, based on the above and on awareness of the positioning of their company and products in the market including  with users. If you have not done this, then seek help from a branding firm, making sure you understand what they need to be briefed. Ray Labone and Grant Alexander are both excellent choices for this sort of work, as is Brian Richards (BRR). Grant, is also part of our Equip BBD team with Ray, while Brian and BRR have their own team delivering Better By Design work.
• Good clients are clear on the purpose of the website, which build from the mission, vision and values, the brand strategy and a healthy does of business strategy. Great web development firms will help you tighten this up, but make sure you are aware of the need beyond “we need a new website” before you engage.
• Good clients know what good looks like - they have favourite websites, understand what competitors are offering and have strong yet flexible ideas on the feel of the website.
• Good clients listen to great designers, knowing when to step back and the the design process take its course. Jumping in too often can lead to poor outcomes, but leaving it all up to the designers can lead to poor business outcomes as well.
• Good clients have one point of contact who is responsible to the business for the website. That person is ideally a nerd, designer and business person combined. The design process takes input from others in the business, but the final outcome has to be driven by this one person, not by a committee, and not with anyone else having a veto. If you want a veto, then get involved. And sorry, not every product or division, or indeed almost no products or divisions, gets to be on the front page.
• Great clients allow developers to use an iterative approach, and expect to hear words like “sprints”, “weekly reviews” and “ship”. They have an over-arching scope, but are happy to pay on a time and material basis versus an estimate.
• Good clients don’t dramatically change the scope, dither for too long on decisions or go out of contact for days.
• Good clients allow the time and money for the firm to use the appropriate design tools to deliver a high quality product
• Good clients form lasting relationships, understanding that websites need constant maintenance and development to stay fresh and usable.

Sellers Guide

While a track record is your best sales promotion tool, I observed that too many firms rely on word of mouth to generate sales. That’s great when it works (it works for me), but I strongly encourage all firms to have a sales strategy that is a little more mature. You may decide to blog, attend conferences and do stunts, or you may hire sales professionals and account managers who enjoy meeting new clients and door knocking. Those firms with the sales professional (hunters or gatherers) were easily out-performing the teams of just designers/developers.

I was generally very impressed by the description of the design and development process from firms, showing a mature industry approach. It’s a continual struggle in general to ensure that clients understand the value of what they are getting, and my cynical view is that paying too much is often worse (Ferrit, Localist) than expecting to pay a few thousand. Work done up front to help clients understand the value of the process is good, and you can price it in such a way so that the client sees the full process as a better deal.

Pricing seems all over the place, so I’ve tried to help with the list above. Like anything, an hourly rate is a poor indicator to clients of what they are going to get for their money, so the best forms are very god at setting expectations or even using fixed price approaches. Make sure, you smaller firms, that your real hourly rates are not getting diluted enough.

We went through what good clients should do above, so here’s my take on what good firms are doing:

• Good firms start their first workshop or pre-sales process with understanding the company mission, vision and values and step through from there. If there is a gap in the process (e.g. website purpose) then they help the client get through that part.
• Good firms know what they are good at, and what they are not good at. They outsource or recommend other firms for parts of the process where they are not strong, or for clients that are out of their zone.
• Good firms are superb at estimating time to spend on projects, at understanding how painful clients will be during the pre-sales process, at reconciling the hours actually spent versus the original estimate, and learning from the process. (They often use Workflowmax.)
• Good firms use clickable wireframes, do usability testing and grok Rocket Surgery Made Easy.
• Good firms are superb at listening to clients, reflecting their needs while also giving standing reasonably firmly on the things that really matter.
• Good firms educate clients so that they increasingly understand what great websites are, and give clients books to read, recommend conferences like Webstock and otherwise help them be great.
• Good firms ensure that clients sign off on various stages through the process
• Good firms deliver beautiful and beautifully functional websites that meet agreed business outcomes.
• Good firms use well supported content management systems that are widely used and appropriate for the use case.
• Good firms test several times. They have a testing team, test scripts and they also conduct regular user testing.
• Good firms have long lasting relationships with clients, and help client achieve their business goals through continuous development and maintenance.
• Good firms know how to sell. Almost all of the firms I visited had no active sales function, preferring serendipity and word of mouth. Responding to competitive tenders takes time and effort, and for only a percentage chance of rewards. Waiting for clients to walk in the door is foolhardy. Forming lasting relationships and producing high quality work wins in the end, but don’t be afraid to pick up the phone.

Summary

I know this is wrong, in places and perhaps overall. I saw a biased and small sample of firms. Biased because they were the firms that somehow saw my tweets and blog post, and small because I allocated only two weeks to the effort.

So please let me know what is wrong, what I should add, change or tweak from a client and firm perspective. I am happy to keep editing this in public — it was gestating for long enough as it is.

I feel I was very lucky to both meet a great range of firms and to be allowed to ask and get frank answers often very probing questions about the business. I really enjoyed the process, and despite my sometimes blunt observations and questions, I hope everyone I met did as well. I have emerged with a lot of respect for the individuals, the companies, the industry, and for whoever is educating you all.

My thanks again to everyone.

Finally — yes — I can recommend all of the firms that I did meet. But before you pick up the phone make sure you understand what your own strengths and weaknesses are, and what sort of firm you are looking for.

I increasingly don’t understand the purpose of Linked-In. They were a nice way of connecting to business contacts, but are and will always be a lousy way of doing anything else.
As they add ‘friend’ updates, news and so forth the real messages (which is who doing what) becomes lost, and the entire business less useful.

It’s all hogwash of course:

The problem with Klout is that a higher score is very often a measure of a higher level of painfulness for the rest of us. Higher scores can be generated from more followers, but also though more tweets and Facebook updates, more retweeting, cheerleading and other sometimes douchelike behaviors. It’s difficult to tell when a tweeter goes too far, but we all have our own internal standards, and choose not to follow when they are broken.

Klout is working on improving their measurement system, but for now it stays opaque and largely discredited by the tech community. However like it or hate it Klout dominates the personal social media measurement space for now, and people pay attention to it, sadly.

Enter Klouchebag, a site which did the rounds a few days ago. Klouchebag analyses your Twitter stream to see how annoying you are to fellow Twitter users. The site is a bit of fun, and is in response to Klout’s measurement flaws. It uses the ARSE rating system, measuring Anger, ReTweets, Social apps (like 4Square) and English usage. Here’s my score – apparently I’m a “bit of a prat”:

One nice thing about Klouchebag is that you don’t have to login to see your score. Tweets are public, so any site that demands a login to analyse your history should be rightfully treated with suspicion.

So is it possible to score highly on Klout and low on Douchebag? It was a wet Sunday, and I had plenty of other things to avoid doing, so here’s a handy chart for selected New Zealand tweeters. I pseudo-randomly picked names from the NZHerald and Computerworld lists and as well some from my own tweetstream. (Click on the chart it to see the enlarged version). Source data is here.

So what’s going on? Let’s add Klouchebag’s score descriptions to find out (and again click on the picture to see a larger version):

The left hand side, at the top, is the place to be – showing huge Klout and no douchebaggery. And right up there sits @rww, the twitter identity of ReadWriteWeb, started by Kiwi Richard  McManus. Richard’s own score is also high on Klout, but he is in the “A bit of a prat” Klouchebag ratings. He’s not at all like that, and this serves as a reminder that deeply analysing these scores, as I am doing,  is both meaningless and dangerous, although it is fun and can be insightful. @rww  is a broadcaster, spitting out tweets referring to ReadWriteWeb articles, while Richard’s tweets are more of a mixed bag – and more interesting for it. However that pushes him up the Klouchebag rankings.

Also on the far left side of the chart, though in territory accessible to mortals with only a NZ audience, are @theNBR, VodafoneNZ, @TelecomNZ, @BNZBank and @AsbBank. The NBR only tweets articles, and is a broadcaster for a website, just like @rww. Chris Keall, the man behind most NBR twitter action, is almost in the center of the chart – with a little  more Klout than @theNBR, but “a bit of a prat” along with Richard.

The four major corporations are all doing very well, delivering service without annoying people. Well done. TelecomNZ has more Klout, but is up in the “mostly alright” category. That should serve as a gentle warning that they may want to think about changing their approach. In general we see individuals associated with the big broadcasters and companies take a Douchebag hit, along with, one assumes, a Klout benefit from being associated with the big company.

But the best of the bunch are @barnaclebarnes, @robyngallagher, @jadetang123, @toxaq, @nikz, @gnat, @davidfarrier, @ri and @szechuan. It’s very hard to not be a star or broadcaster, and still manage the trick of influence and non-douchieness. I follow all these fine folks, and so should you. Their scores (and yes – this is all based on rubbish analysis I know) show that they are insightful and influential without being painful, and I concur.

Actually you should look to hire @Robyngallagher or @ri, engage @szechuan (Sacha from Buddle Findlay) as your legal advisor for technology, start-up and M&A work, use @gnat as your advisor on all things tech, give @barnaclebarnes money to keep growing  mytours, use @nikz’s 200square to sell your house, start something with @toxaq as your tech co-founder, try to keep up with @jadetang123, starting with Creative Mornings, and, well I don’t know @davidfarrier, but I suppose you should watch him on the news, if that’s your thing.

In short the K vs K chart has managed to filter some pretty awesome people out on the left hand side, which shows that something is working. Well done to everyone.

The mass in the middle are normal humans, and while we should take a little warning from the Klouchebag scores (I’m a “bit of a prat”), I would suggest that being under 40 is fine, and that between 40 and 50 is generally acceptable but one should think about moderating behavior.

Above 50 and things start getting interesting. @benkepes is up there, high in Klout and Klouchebag scores alike. Ben does tweet a lot, and a good chunk of it on stuff I am not that interested in. Perhaps the answer is to do as RWW and the corporations do, and separate the personal and professional accounts.

Twitter allows us to have lists, and while I generally follow NZ based humans back, I do have a private list of people who I more closely follow, while dipping into the firehouse now and then.  On that right hand side I was surprised to see that two or three (including Ben) on my private list. However a score above 50 could be considered as a hearty shot across the bows and taken as a warning. Or not – it’s all hogwash as I said.

So there you have it. The point of Twitter and these other social media tools is to have fun, to learn, to be part of a community, to help customers and each other and to not be a douchebag while doing it. Any help we can get to avoid douchebaggery is good, and we have all seen people change, to the benefit of the community. So if you feel you are drifting to the right, then perhaps lighten up a little. And if you are way over on the left hand side; stop gloating, these scores are all rubbish remember.

Not so excellent is the price, and that when I opened the link somehow both the SD and HD versions of the movie started automatically downloading. I have no idea why – but these sorts of things tend to happen to me.

The other issue is that Boy is still not yet available on the US iTunes store, which is where the real market resides.

Not this year. Apple seems to have a very strange perspective on Mothers’ day.

King Penguins Eternally entertaining.

Elephant Seals The noises, oh the noises.

Sea Ice Thankfully not strong enough for the ship.

Southern Ocean and Antarctica Te Radar manages to upstage the actual Southern Ocean expert.

Next Stop: Antarctica Earlier in the journey

Then we have some very pretty presentations – lots of photos and coverage of the key issues we discussed. We were very lucky to have some superb scientists along for the voyage.
First up is Su Yin Khoo’s journey in pictures (none of these is really suitably small for dial-up or slow ADSL):
The journey in pictures

Next we have the key message slide packs by Geoff Simmons, with an assist from Su Yin and myself and some more stunning pictures.
OFS Summary Messages Introduction.pptx
OFS Summary Messages Climate Change.pptx
OFS Summary Messages Race for Resources.pptx
OFS Summary Messages Conservation & Wrap up.pptx

Finally we have some specialist presentations for schools, thanks to Judith McKendrey, John McCrystal, Sarah Wilcox and the second hardest working person on the trip – Rhian Salmon. The hardest working was Gareth Morgan – who of course put the whole trip together.

OFS_schools_presentation_generic.pptx
OFS Schools presentation.pptx
Notes for School Visits.docx

This scratches the surface of the lectures and work that we got through – if you would like to dive deeper into any of these topics then get in touch.

That won’t happen (the $millions bit), but I am interested in how this feature is implemented and what sort of advertisements are coming through. So if you see any ads – positive or negative -please let me know. I can’t see them yet myself.

trade me jobs, originally uploaded by LanceWiggs.

It’s pretty amazing looking at the Seek and Trade Me Jobs unique browsers stats. Neither site has managed to eke out an advantage.

I guess that means everyone is checking both sites, but also that advertisers would be wise to place ads on both sites as well. Each site will be trying to capture all of the market for job placements, and it’s clear that Seek is the defender here. At some stage Trade Me, as happened with real estate, will be clearly superior in listing quantity, and Seek’s relative market share will decline.

It’s somewhat astonishing that Seek’s site design looks like it hasn’t changed in 10 years.

However the checkout counters are expensive, take up valuable space and only work when there are staff present. That makes it difficult to ramp up or down for demand, and, queues are generally required to make the costs economic.

Enter the supermarket self-checkout system. These take up a lot less space, but allow the shopper to avoid the queues and check out at a speed that they can control.

However it’s not so simple. The systems bought into lace, at least in NZ, are appallingly complex. From my experience the process is something like this:

The clearest demonstration of failure is at beginning, with the queue. An efficient checkout system would be able to take up all of the demand and remove the need for queues, as the Air New Zealand check-in kiosks do at local airports.

The experience of self-check out is vastly inferior to the traditional approach, especially given that almost all checkout operators I encounter are interesting, efficient and genuine. I generally prefer to avoid human interactions when making purchases, but the current state of play is just woeful.

The answer lies in trust. The supermarkets clearly don’t trust their customers, and the asinine scanning and weighing procedures slow the entire process to a crawl. The answer is to turn the tables, and place the onus of getting he checkout right on the customer, rather than trying to solve a potential issue with technology. Almost everyone is honest, especially in New Zealand, and a few tricks can increase compliance to essentially 100%.

Firstly, install cameras and discrete signs on the checkouts noting their use, and noting that failing to check something out is deemed as theft. Make the design of the kiosks open enough so that the customers can be observed from several directions by other shoppers and staff.

Secondly bring in a system of random audits, picking one in every 100, say, and doing so using the checkout itself rather than human selection. The audit will involve a team of two nearby who will check he contents of the bag against the receipt after checkout, and then give a coupon, discount or other small gift to everyone for their compliance. Treat non compliance as a mistake, unless obvious for high value items, but flag their credit card for future increased audits or potential banning from self-checkout.

Finally remove cash as an option for self checkout, which will remove the complex and breakable cash-acceptance equipment, and encourage the continuous transition to debit and credit cards. Accepting only plastic will also give the ability to retain more control, as well as offering the ability to link credit cards to loyalty cards and provide benefits.

Other options

Why not for now allow us to scan items as we shop, using an iPhone application or a portable scanner attached to the trolley. That we we can arrive at the checkout with the items already in a list, and perhaps we can even pay for them with our phone or with a credit card acceptor attached to the trolley.

Ultimately we should be able to lose the checkout process entirely, as each product can have an RFID tag, and your phone or wallet can contain a remote payment mechanism which is activated as you leave.