Looking For Mr. Site

Here's how two CEOs located great Web designers among a vast pool of unworthy contenders.

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Techniques: Shop Talk

Two CEOs search for Web-design wheat amid a heap of chaff

People say the customer is always right. "Don't believe 'em," warns Jim Campbell.

Campbell is president of P.W. Campbell Inc., a $35-million Pittsburgh company that designs and constructs buildings for financial institutions such as banks and credit unions. He listens to his clients' ideas--for a fountain in the middle of the lobby, say--and then determines whether or not they're good ideas. "Even if we can do it, if we know it's not right or economically feasible, we'll tell them," says Campbell matter-of-factly. "Otherwise, everyone has wasted their time."

Campbell's search for a Web-development firm reflects that philosophy--only in reverse. Knowing next to nothing about Web-site creation, the president went looking for someone who wouldn't do his bidding as much as explain to him what that bidding ought to be.

Campbell first considered launching his 88-year-old family business onto the Web back in 1996. An America Online member, he had spent enough time fishing around the Internet to conclude that a presence there would send the right message to his technologically savvy clients. He also liked the idea of being out front: while plenty of national construction companies had sites, none of his regional competitors did.

Campbell had a general idea of what he wanted: the prestige of a URL on his company's letterhead, a place to post his quarterly newsletter, a way of offering information on building trends in the financial-services industry, and a total price tag not exceeding $15,000. Beyond that he needed guidance. So he spent the early part of 1997 hitting up colleagues, business associates, friends, and relatives. "Whether people had a site, were considering getting one, or knew nothing about it, it was my target topic of conversation," he recalls.

Most of those consulted were as inexperienced as Campbell was. But he did pick up the names of 10 development companies, which he passed on to an employee for an initial round of screening. He then established three hard-and-fast criteria for choosing among the Web designers. First, serious candidates had to be able to handle all aspects of the project, from designing and programming the site to registering a domain name to hosting. The last thing Campbell wanted was to bounce around among vendors. "Even if we paid for it, it was going to be worth it," he says.

Second, contenders had to be focused on the customer, not on themselves. Providers that launched into a spiel about what they could do as opposed to what they should do specifically for P.W. Campbell were out. "Some didn't even ask what our business was," says Campbell. Others kept pitching their advertising services even after Campbell had assured them that all his marketing needs were covered.

And third, prospective vendors had to be willing to travel to Pittsburgh for face-to-face meetings. Although he knew Web sites could be created virtually, Campbell wanted to work closely with the provider. In addition, he was not in the habit of doing business with someone whose hand he couldn't shake.

Those criteria winnowed the list to three contenders. Then Campbell popped the trick question. The president asked all three companies to provide a proposal. Two declined, requesting a sit-down meeting instead. They stayed in the running. The third sent a proposal. It flunked. Campbell suspects that a meeting with that vendor would not have been productive anyway. "All they asked were questions like 'How many pages do you want? How many links do you want?'" he says. "They were looking to take a cookie-cutter order: Tell me what you want, I'll add it all up, and here's what you get."

Sitting down with the first of the two survivors, Campbell launched into a lengthy explanation of his business and his goals for an on-line presence. The feedback was negligible. "Everything we asked, no matter how big or how small, we were 'yes'-ed to death," he recalls. In addition, the vendor's marketing materials didn't inspire confidence. "We'd never let something that messy and unprofessional go out of our office," Campbell says. "And they were supposed to be a design firm?"

But things were different when Campbell met with Bruce Colgan, the CEO of Interteq, a three-employee firm based in Pittsburgh. "We asked him all the same questions," says Campbell. "But instead of just saying yes to what we wanted, he would say, 'Yes, you can do that, but I don't recommend it, and here's why.'" For example, Campbell was hot to use 3-D panoramic images on the site, but Colgan warned him off them because their creation would delay the launch. Colgan was also comfortable talking money up front--a subject the other company had avoided. "Somewhere along the line they needed to say, 'Define expensive for us,'" Campbell remembers thinking when he met with the other firm.

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