It is always a challenge to justify the price of web design and development when clients want special features. Today’s climate is one of an aggressive buyer’s mid-market, where prospective clients who ask for estimates for website builds will often negotiate project prices with interactive agencies down to the bare minimum of profitability with the threat of using low cost templated offerings or individual contractors with limited experience instead. When digital agencies possessing experience in producing high quality work are successful in winning deals with clients for fair prices, more often than not the clients expect the agencies — even when a very clear scope of work is produced — to design and build every customization, every toolset, every other feature “in their heads” because they have “given them so much money” to design their website, and provide post-support (often very complex post-support) for free.

We at Mitra Creative, like all agencies, have experienced similar circumstances. We are truly grateful to win the business, and support the needs, of our clients, but we often work very hard to educate them on how sometimes even their smallest perceived requests for custom features are not “so small.” In that light, related to something very different yet very much the same, check out this article from today’s edition of “The Wall Street Journal” (via “Yahoo! Real Estate”), entitled “A Dream House’s Difficult Birth,” by Nancy Keates, of WSJ.com. It tells of a couple’s pursuit to have their dream house built their way, and the impact of custom requirements on the budget of a project. Though people frequently perceive interactive projects differently, websites of true uniqueness, that differentiate brand and function not only properly but with tools, visuals and language that help to reduce the time of sales cycles, speed delivery of information/data to users and to the company that hires the agency (e.g. performance data), show up higher in placement in general and local search on Google, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines, and are secure and stable, come at a higher cost than often useless templates, and with measurably skilled labor. If new features are to be built, or if ongoing support is required, they too require, time, skill and attention, and agencies should be remunerated for their efforts.

Mark Feldberg and Emilyn Page’s Carmel home. (Photo from the Wall Street Journal by Mark Feldberg.)

We at Mitra Creative are proud to announce our latest achievement–the creation of a new brand and progressive new website for NURTURE MARKETING (Nurturemarketing.com). Nurture Marketing (formerly the Nurture Institute), is a full-service marketing agency that offers a broad spectrum of traditional and non-traditional services (lead generation, communications, direct mail, e-mail campaigns, assessments and planning, branding, training and meeting facilitation), as well as a highly-developed platform of channel marketing services (they have built comprehensive programs for Microsoft, Nokia, and others).

The concept of Nurture Marketing was originated more than 20 years ago by the company’s co-founder and one of its senior partners, Jim Cecil. It focuses on combining good marketing principles with the nurturing of prospects and customers to dramatically increase sales revenues. Today, Nurture Marketing is not only a set of best practices, but also the name of a powerhouse of a company, led by Jim, and the company’s other partners, Eric Rabinowitz (Jim’s co-author on the successful books, “Nurturing Customer Relationships,” and “101 Business Love Letters“), Barbara Pfeiffer, and Jennifer Herold-Garcia. They believe in, and now ARE, Nurture Marketing.

We were invited to bring our business expertise, award-winning design acumen, and our technical expertise to the task of taking an objective look at the former Nurture Institute, and now (with the new branding), Nurture Marketing’s visual brand and web presence and uplift and modernize it–in keeping with Nurture’s progressive offerings and recent, significant growth. We took the company’s now-previous brand assets and revitalized them with a fresh, forward-looking visual sensibility. We also built a new website for Nurture from scratch — approach, design, development — utilizing a modernized, easy-to-use content management system framework, powerful, provocative 21st Century aesthetics, and a true Web 2.0/3.0-and-beyond information architecture. For example, we put Nurture’s Blog at the center of the site’s Homepage, enabling a “living dialogue” with prospects, clients, and business partners, and tying together follower and consumer communities.

Nurture Marketing’s management team is thrilled with the results. According to Eric Rabinowitz, “Thanks to the design, creative, and implementation team at Mitra Creative, we now have a magnificent new brand and website that reflect the quality of our work, and our service to our customers.” We are thrilled to have been given the opportunity to serve this wonderful company and team!

Mitra Creative is proud to announce our 2010 update of RickyLizalde.com, the website that we produced to showcase the fashion lingerie line of designer, Ricky Lizalde (of “Project Runway” Season 4). The revised design highlights Ricky’s exciting new 2010 collection.

We want to thank Ricky for his continued work with us!

An article entitled, “Why Do Websites Cost So Much Money?“, by Christine Anderssen (Tailormade4you), which appeared on January 10, on GOARTICLES.com(1), very succinctly summarizes the reasons why reputable web design and development firms charge more for their work, even to their smaller business clients/emerging enterprises.

Anderssen makes clear, simple and effective statements about the value of using professional interactive agencies: “Frankly, building a website so that it works in all browsers, has a good design and presents all the information about the company in a pleasing, eye-catching and user-friendly fashion takes proficiency, and this costs money.” More importantly, she adds that when you utilize a good firm, you are “paying for the advice, the support and the long term relationship.” We at MITRA CREATIVE agree—-these are some of the key factors in deciding to engage an experienced agency. There is value added through working with professionals who can see your brand from an external perspective and can translate your business requirements, messages and calls-to-action into engaging, highly web-usable designs instead of “just” designing websites. It is equally critical to work with visionary design agencies that continue to innovate within their discipline, but that also know your business and its culture well enough, and stay with it long enough, to maintain the consistency of, and to grow, your brand.

Most critical is brand. Simply put, design firms that truly understand business in addition to art and technology elevate brands by giving them credibility and respect and by making the appearance of companies forward-thinking. They do so using today’s most impactful, powerful and pervasive medium: namely, visuals on the web. A picture is now worth a billion words… everywhere.

(Article Copyright © 2010 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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