Cloud infrastructure only matters if it helps people to make things happen. This is why Web professionals and eCommerce enablement organizations form a vital link in the cloud-services demand chain. Web Professionals are the people who build internet experiences for the end user. Cloud Service Providers offer the uptime, stability, and back-end features that help individuals and small businesses create and maintain online identities and businesses. You can be an expert in one or the other, but realistically not both.
In 2018, the global Website Builders market size was $1.48 billion and it is expected to reach $2.47 Billion by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of 6.7% during 2019-2025. The numbers don’t lie: by helping others build their dreams, you’re building your own dream.
As you reach for the sky, though, you inevitably hit the ceiling. This is because elements of the market in which you work just can’t seem to find each other. Did you know that a recent Sitejet survey found that 46% of web designers say that their biggest challenge is finding new customers?
That isn’t surprising, since 66% of web professionals say that the creative process is their favorite part of their job. Only 14% preferred growing their customer base. 34% of web designers say that growing and acquiring new customers is their least favourite part of the job – they don’t like doing it at all. Nearly a quarter don’t like managing the business side of their work in a broader sense. This is to be expected: nobody does a design degree to study sales funnels.
Do What You Do Best
As WebPros, you need time as a team to work your creative magic, but in the world of customer acquisition, time is money. You want more clients, but you can only wear so many hats – and the jaunty fedora of the salesperson is far from your favorite. Word of mouth remains by far the most popular method for new customer acquisition among Web Professionals: your clients love your work, and then they tell their friends. It’s personal and reliable (and free), but it just doesn’t scale.
And scale it must, as the market for DIFM websites and web services explodes.
Where Scale Meets Creativity
Web hosters build long-lasting relationships with their customers, but they struggle to offer services with a wow-factor. A DIFM website-building service delivers just that: DIFM is the next logical step in service after DIY, which SMBs don’t have the capacity or appetite to tackle. Offering this would achieve a significantly higher ARPU than DIY, but here the hoster faces a problem: CSPs are not, at their core, creatives. Very few cloud service providers offer a DIFM website solution, and even fewer offer such a service to SMBs.
Wouldn’t it be great if they could team up with WebPros who live and breathe the creative process? It would massively enlarge the web design and hosting market by getting more businesses online. There’s a lot of upside here, of course – but we see three main opportunities:
Opportunity in Profit
Partnerships between WebPros and large-scale channels allow both of you to win revenue from different parts of the demand and value chains that you could not access on your own.
Opportunity in Development Tools
When it comes to efficiency and feature creation, web professionals have the most developers—you’ll always outpace other industry players on feature richness, so it makes sense to leverage that in seeking your channel partners.
Opportunity in Trust
The Cloud, by its very nature, is all about outsourcing. It’s easy to trust a web professional on implementation, while continuing to trust a channel partner on management and systems design. Between you and your channel partner, your customer knows that their most valuable work is in safe hands. When you earn your customer’s trust, you make them a partner as well.
The cloud service provider wins as well: through systematic up- and cross-selling of SMBs with increasing online affinity over time (SEA, SEO, listing, booking, e-commerce, and so on.); a DIFM website offering can foster deeper and more profitable customer relationships. Additionally, the provider’s SMB customer gets a website built by a team who focuses solely on building websites – that’s a win-win-win.
Building the Bridge
CloudFest is the world’s largest gathering of decision-makers representing cloud infrastructure providers, web hosting providers, ISVs and MSPs. These companies either are, or have the opportunity to be, the partners that WebPros need to drive sales. The numbers suggest you should be here: 37% of web designers say they’ve used events such as conferences to win new customers – and 74% of the ones who did were successful in doing so. If you have a hand in hosting decisions for your clients, there’s no substitute for joining us at CloudFest.
When the power of infrastructure and scale meets the passion of creativity and problem-solving, anything is possible. To facilitate this matchmaking exercise, we’re lining up sessions specific to WebPro’s needs, as well as a dedicated coworking space so you don’t miss any of your deadlines. You can also join us for the pre-conference Hackathon, which has a history of bringing industry-ready tools into the real world. CloudFest isn’t just a conference, it’s a festival – and we’d love to see you there.
At CloudFest, make the right partnerships and take your dreams to scale.
