You are currently viewing “Don’t be afraid of scaling.” — A chat with company founder Oleg Davydov

“Don’t be afraid of scaling.” — A chat with company founder Oleg Davydov

  • Post published:December 24, 2022
  • Post category:HOW TO

This text is a part of the Wix Associate Awards collection recognizing the distinctive work of Wix Companions. As we speak, meet the founding father of the London-based company Davydov Consulting, and get ideas that will help you scale your inventive enterprise confidently. Due to our mates at Wix for sponsoring this weblog publish! ✏️

When company assets are restricted, each rent represents a significant determination level. Much more so when it’s your first recruit.

It raises a number of questions. Will a brand new workforce member possess the appropriate abilities to hit the bottom operating? Can they be trusted to work instantly with shoppers? How will you handle them?

And when precisely is the appropriate time to rent? In case your company strikes too early, you possibly can face cashflow issues and have a brand new workforce member with not sufficient to do. If you happen to rent too late, you would possibly end up swamped with shopper work you can’t ship.

I used to be very protecting of my work and enterprise, but it surely was blocking my company’s development.

These have been questions going through London-based Oleg Davydov three years into operating his internet design enterprise. It was early 2020, and the world was coming to phrases with a worldwide pandemic. Strict lockdowns and the rise of distant work skyrocketed the necessity for internet design companies. That coupled with an growing variety of leads coming via the Wix Associate Program, Oleg quickly discovered himself burning the candle at each ends to maintain up with demand, working 14-hour days, seven days per week, as a one-person firm.

He knew one thing needed to give.

“Wanting again, I used to be so mistaken. I ought to have employed a very long time earlier than. I used to be very protecting of my work and enterprise, but it surely was blocking my company’s development.” — Oleg Davydov

Oleg Davydov, Founding father of Davydov Consulting.

Oleg bit the bullet and commenced recruiting distant staff from his homeland Ukraine and commenced to scale.

His leap of religion paid off. As we speak, Davydov Consulting has a workforce of 16 unfold throughout Europe, many having relocated from Ukraine after the conflict broke out. Its turnover has elevated tenfold inside two years, with a 200+ shopper web site portfolio.

The company covers the complete digital suite – from model design and web site growth to website positioning, cellular apps, content material, social media and advertising and marketing campaigns. The workforce creates on Wix Editor and Editor X however works primarily with Wix’s full stack growth platform Velo to ship personalized and technically demanding initiatives. Davydov Consulting serves SMBs, startups and influencers throughout all industries and makes use of natural website positioning and Wix Market to win enterprise primarily within the UK, US, Europe, Canada and Australia.

Being an adaptable company strengthens your portfolio

One thing placing about Davydov Consulting’s work whenever you flick through its shopper web sites is the breadth of various types and approaches it takes, exhibiting its inventive and technical adaptability to its shoppers’ wants.

“I like rising our portfolio. The explanation for that isn’t the numbers, however really, what number of completely different concepts are carried out and the variations between them. A shopper is a really fascinating creature. Some like luxurious, some like minimal, some like old-school. All of them are appropriate. The gratifying half for me is to extract their information and imaginative and prescient, translate it for my workforce and ensure it’s realized.”

One shopper for whom Davydov Consulting realized its imaginative and prescient this 12 months is international coaching platform firm Studying Advisers. It required a newly branded hub to match trainers with employers for a variety of on-line programs – all the pieces from beginning your personal YouTube channel to mastering Microsoft Powerpoint. Created on Editor X, the web site earned Davydov Consulting this month’s Wix Associate Award for superior performance.

Oleg managed the undertaking and assigned a designer, coder, and tester to work alongside him. The web site went via three rounds of iteration, and the construct concerned implementing a variety of options together with animation results and member pages for coach profiles. With lots of of programs listed on the positioning, making them easy to navigate was one in all Davydov Consulting’s largest challenges, however incorporating the appropriate filtering and sorting features has made it a seamless looking expertise for guests. The result’s a contemporary, informative, and user-friendly web site with a startup feel and look, totally responsive on desktop and cellular.

“We’re more than happy with the ultimate model. It turned out to be a worthy undertaking that’s scalable and will be additional developed in accordance with the shopper’s wants.”

Whereas Davydov Consulting picked up the Wix Associate Award for superior performance, the company isn’t afraid to flex its code growth muscle too. The workforce is presently engaged on an internet site for a intelligent London startup known as Pin To Be In. Aimed toward influencers, it’s a web based map highlighting probably the most Instagrammable locations in London. Then there’s a monetary advisory web site for a Florida-based shopper known as Center Level – basically Twitter for monetary advisors the place individuals pay a subscription to entry their feed – with different thrilling shopper initiatives within the pipeline.

Safety in your pitch offers shoppers peace of thoughts

Having grown his workforce, Oleg has taken a step again from the day-to-day design work to deal with main operations, managing shoppers, and bringing in enterprise. He features a deep perception into what’s entrance of thoughts for shoppers when selecting an company.

“Each time I communicate with shoppers I get requested about safety. Particularly in Europe, they’re obsessive about GDPR and knowledge safety and are afraid to not be compliant. They need peace of thoughts, and it’s not at all times sufficient for somebody like us to offer it.”

Oleg says he covers safety in each shopper pitch, explaining how it isn’t solely his company that gives assist, however that Wix supplies the inspiration. He shares his analogy that typically will get shoppers over the road.

“Wix is the artwork store, someplace you don’t purchase the image however the instruments; like paper, brushes, and paints. We’re the artists who can draw it for you. Nevertheless, as soon as we do, it will get transferred into the Wix artwork gallery, the place they’re liable for the safety of the images… Then they get it. It offers them peace of thoughts and so they put their belief in us.”

Relating to traits, Oleg is seeing extra demand for touchdown pages as a substitute of multi-page web sites.

“I can see a number of sense to it, and I’m an enormous supporter of an extended web page, clearly structured reasonably than a multi-page web site.”

In line with Oleg, it’s a part of a better understanding of the psychology of messaging – how you place data right into a customer’s thoughts to create an ideal image of the enterprise.

“When individuals land on an internet site for the primary time, they know nothing about you. You could inform them a narrative. The web site tells the story, however a touchdown web page tells the perfect story as a result of you may drive the journey. With a multi-page web site, you’ve got much less management.”

Oleg tells shoppers they’ve roughly 5 seconds to let a web site customer know what their enterprise is about so don’t waste time utilizing an ambiguous quote or text-heavy content material. Get straight to the purpose as a result of your prospect will most likely have visited 20 competitor websites earlier than yours. Oleg sees video as an effective way to inform that story, and it’s one thing that options on a lot of his shopper websites, in addition to his personal.

“For the primary display, we choose to make use of video. Fairly often, we produce the media for shoppers. So perhaps we use 5 inventory movies, take three seconds from every and produce a 15-second clip. It seems to be fashionable and it retains individuals on the web site. It means you may inform the story in regards to the enterprise with out studying. That’s fairly highly effective.”

Oleg factors to Apple as a model that does web site navigation brilliantly however is bemused at how some main corporations nonetheless get it incorrect, like Tesla, which he says fails to contemplate the person journey. Nothing a tweet to Elon Musk can’t clear up.

Protectionism hampers enterprise development

Reflecting on 5 demanding however profitable years in enterprise, Oleg ’s recommendation to different companies isn’t a surprise given his journey.

“Don’t be afraid of scaling. Don’t be afraid to rent a developer or a designer and construct your company. Some individuals maintain all the pieces to themselves. I used to be like that, but it surely solely restricts you. I imply, have a look at us now, we’re persevering with our development trajectory and are very assured that’s not stopping any time quickly.”

For the award win, Oleg is eager to provide a shoutout to his Associate Success Supervisor who he says is “stuffed with concepts, nice at capturing data from inside Wix, and offering recommendation on find out how to run my company.”

He expresses pleasure in his workforce and the way it continues to excel in difficult circumstances, some working whereas air raid sirens go off within the background. “I’m making an attempt to be as versatile as I can. They recognize it and pay it again with nice work.”

And recognition for the superior performance of its shopper websites? “Genuinely, I’m thrilled, he says. “We’re doing a number of issues with Wix that not all companies can do. And we’re very, more than happy to be acknowledged for that.”

Discover this text helpful? Uncover extra trade insights, company greatest practices, and inspirational tales whenever you be part of the Wix Associate Program.


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