We have experience of many agencies who supposedly ‘deliver added value’, when in fact all they do is take someone else’s work and put a markup on it. They may have invested more in their marketing to won contracts and clients BUT they do not actually add value to the website or digital communications product itself. There are, naturally, exceptions to this, where larger creative or technial agencies are bringing brilliant creative direction or unique technical insight & guidance … but not often, in my experience.

For this reason, smaller, more cost-effective agencies are seeing a boom – and we are seeing that across design and digitial agencies in Dorset. I can say that rather un-PC statement in the current credit crunch market because in addition to running a digital design agency, around a third of my good friends run small (under 10 employees) creative & website design agencies.

I genuinely believe that the credit crunch is an amazing opportunity for the smaller website design or creative agency.

It’s hard to get the truth from people these days. Phrases like “ticking over”, “keepin the head down” are flying about but in actual fact many businesses are really struggling. We have seen over 30 businesses close in our small town of Gorey in Wexford and that’s just the ones we know about cause we did their websites. We have seen a greater push in rural Ireland to returning to traditional guerilla marketing campaigns with flyer drops and more rubbish being pushed through our letter boxes.

People are still starting new businesses and setting websites, many are updating their existing ones, but of course they all want the “special offer” and we tell them well pay and you won’t get cut off!

General hits on sites took a down turn from the 15th Dec to the 15th January but now nearly all are back on track to their normal rate depending on the website topic etc