A Story From The Agency Life

A Story From

The Agency Life

Let us tell you a story today. We had a client recently who came to us asking to redesign his website and copy their competitor's site. Interestingly, their website had a better design than an old-looking competitor's site from the 2000th. The competitor did have 25k more organic traffic monthly, so it is understandable that the client wanted to copy it and get the same results.

But the question for us was: should we agree to do what the client wanted?

This question might seem easy to some freelancers - just do what the client asks and collect the money. But the core values of our agency protest this solution. Our goal is to solve the actual problem for the client, not simply perform the list of tasks. Since the real pain, in this case, was a website that didn't attract customers, we advised the client against website redesign.

Instead, we offered a list of actions that would solve the client's pain and bring clients to his business:

SEO analysis & research
Optimizing the website copy & design to improve the ranking
Implementing design & development improvements to increase conversion
Approaching other marketing channels for lead generation (since SEO does take some time to kick in)

Did this approach mean for us that we wouldn't close a big website redesign job immediately? Yes! Would we make more money in the short term if we agreed to do what the client asked in the first place? Definitely.

But copying the competitor's website would not have solved the client's problem and would not automatically bring him clients. It would contradict the nature of Etcetera to do something pointless like this.

So, why did we tell you this story? We believe it is an excellent example of how our values work in real-life situations. Because we can write here every day about our integrity, honesty, or responsibility, but what really matters is the value we bring to our clients every day. Every step of our process aims to solve their problems as a true partner, not just a one-time freelance contractor.

What would you do in such a situation?

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