Web design flackery can read like a Net-crazed cheerleader's thesaurus.
"Your one-stop shop for sizzlin' sites, from cozy to corporate!"
"Got Java? Let us build your dazzling dream home on the Silicon Highway!"
Trying to be all things to all potential clients, Web-design houses have emphasized versatility, with accommodating phrases like "turn-key solutions" and "all-around Internet expertise." As the online world evolves and diversifies, however, some design firms are succeeding by trumpeting their expertise with particular kinds of clients, aiming to dominate niches narrower than the entire Web.
On the mega end of the scale, BoxTop Interactive has leveraged its emphasis on entertainment-oriented clients like SegaSoft and A&M Records into an approximately US$30-million-a-year Web-design business. Part of what gives BoxTop its street cred on Wilshire Boulevard is the fact that BoxTop principals like Kevin Wall and Lisa Janzen came of age in the entertainment industry.
VP Janzen learned her chops in the firm that managed The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and CEO Wall was the executive producer of such home-screen blockbusters as "Elton John: Live from Verona" and the AIDS Day tribute to Freddie Mercury. His years in the dreamworks of LA, says Wall, "really opened doors" to clients like the Fox Network and CastleRock Entertainment.
"By providing services to a particular client base time after time, you really build word of mouth," Wall told Wired News. "My experience in the music television business gave me an extreme advantage. Because the entertainment industry is a swordfighting business, we've been very aggressive, where some of our competitors - who are first-time business owners - have been more hesitant."
Having proved its savvy within that client pool, BoxTop is now going after even bigger fish, "the Coca-Colas of the world," says CFO Jeff Demma, as well as diversifying into software applications like iVisit, a video teleconferencing tool.
Virtual Melanin has carved out a distinctive client profile by advertising its focus on "urban content" - particularly content of interest to online African American and Latino communities.
"We can't compete with Razorfish or Organic," CEO McLean Greaves admits, "but we've mastered that angle because we have the authenticity. We're straight out of the ghetto."
By "focusing on a niche market," Greaves says, Virtual Melanin has cultivated sizable audiences for original sites like the Café Los Negroes, which, though only infrequently updated, still draws a million hits a month. As the Web becomes "more like grassroots television" in five years, Greaves predicts, Virtual Melanin-designed programming like HBO's CyberSoulCity will appeal to netsurfers who "don't want their ideas and perspectives diluted," as they are in mainstream media.
In the shallower end of the revenue stream, start-ups like Perfect Word and 2Top Web Design are narrowly targeted, pitching their services to clients who benefit from the passions and convictions of the designers themselves.
Perfect Word is unabashedly evangelical, billing itself as a Christian Web "ministry," offering its services to churches and missionary groups in the name of spreading the Gospel in the online world. Founder Kevin Geoffrey says doing Web design for Christian clients "edifies me, because I get to come into contact with church leaders who have the same kind of heart that I do."
2Top founder David Gadd is bringing another kind of gospel to the Net - the good news of cabernet sauvignon and confit de canard. Dedicated solely to building sites for restaurants, wineries, and other food-service organizations, 2Top is raising awareness of Web marketing among San Francisco Bay Area restaurateurs.
A food and wine critic and producer for the Zagat guide to San Francisco restaurants, Gadd says 2Top was conceived with collaborator Owen Bubar over a bottle of wine at Berkeley's acclaimed Chez Panisse - one of many world-famous restaurants that doesn't have a Web presence to advertise its seasonal menus, Gadd observes. (In food-service parlance, a "two-top" is a table for two.)
What distinguishes 2Top from an all-purpose Web design house, says Gadd, is "a matter of love. We're both passionate diners-out, and we really love food. Most of the restaurant professionals I talk to are ignorant of the Web and its potential for promoting their business. They're too busy. And a lot of Web developers don't really love the products they're promoting."
Interestingly, 2Top's homepage has been more successful in pulling in potential clients than brochures sent out via snailmail to San Francisco restaurants. "Though we live in the middle of Web Land and Food Land, it may be like carrying coals to Newcastle to try to promote Web sites here," Gadd quips.
