Blue Plate

Why Choose Blue Plate

Most small businesses have bad websites. While they have fairly simple needs, they just never found the right agency to help out. And most don’t know where to look. 

We’ve written more about why this problem persists in our companion blog, though the core issue is pretty simple:

• Most website agencies prefer larger contracts, and can’t afford to give full attention to small projects
  
• Most agencies are inefficient in how they manage clients and the development process, leaving them needing to recover their time by charging more fees

This is why our model is based around getting it all done in a week. That’s the sweet spot. Any longer and we’d need to charge more, for not much extra actual value.

The key to this is the assessment stage.

We start every project with a 23-question interview that we playfully call a Business Colonoscopy. While it only takes 2-3 hours, we walk away with far more context around you, your business, your competition, and what you really need. 

Sometimes the outcome is that we’ll determine that we aren’t really the right partners. Maybe you do need a custom site from a larger agency. By starting here at least we’ll both know.

One thing we believe strongly: if either party determines after the initial assessment that it’s not a good fit, you’ll never get an invoice from us.

If we do move forward, here’s what you’ll end up with at the end of the week:

• A modern website built around your real business needs, which will look good on any device or browser
  
• Website content written by a crack copywriter (no AI), designed around your specific customer base and what’s likely to drive sales
  
• A helpful website owner’s guide to making small changes (like to operating hours or staff lists), so that you don’t need to pay anyone ongoing support fees

(Note: You will need to pay separate invoices for your domain and hosting. This is typically $20-40 a month, depending on your specific needs. We don’t take a cut.)

Why NOT to choose Blue Plate

As always, there are catches.

The first is that we won’t be around in a year. We’re starting an unrelated tech company and are only building these sites as a summer(ish) 2025 interim project.

What this means practically:

• Lots of upside. We’re selling ourselves cheap, offering an exceptional deal on talent access.
  
• Some tradeoffs. While we’ll leave you with a full website owner’s guide and a 90 day warranty, we won’t be offering long-term support.

We’re thus only a fit for those who want a terrific deal on something that both looks great and has thoughtful content, but who won’t need to change it much for a few years. This excludes online stores with live inventory, and any business that need to actively manage listings and events etc.

The second catch is that we’re only going to work with clients who respect our insight.

This industry is a graveyard of failed projects, often due to sharp disagreements between clients and agencies. While sometimes this was just poor communication, there are also plenty of cases where it came down to trust.

This doesn’t mean we think we know best about everything, and we certainly want your input all along the way. But part of being a professional worth their fee is spending many, many hours looking at the data. We know an awful lot about how one version of wording is likely to perform against a second version that may sound better in theory. We also know a lot about why putting a button in one place will lead to more clicks and sales than putting it somewhere else. 

We’re happy to explain ourselves, and to really listen. But part of the assessment stage is also a feeling out process. We want to show by our questions and our recommendations that we really do know our stuff, and in doing so to earn enough trust to do what we need to do. Because without trust it won’t work.