“Positioning your brand is crucial in web design and e-commerce. Many brands do not use the full potential of their website or webshop. The key lies in the customer experience. There is a huge growth potential here: by binding customers to your brand, you not only create loyalty, but you lay the foundation for scalable growth”
Smart guy
"As a student of Business Administration, I was interested in computers, games and IT. A good friend, who had his own website agency early on, knew about my computer skills and asked if I wanted to help build websites - they had more work than they could handle at the time. With the help of a solid course that cost more than my entire study, I started. The first customer was a good learning experience right away.
The friend's hairdresser wanted a website and accepted the requested price. Unfortunately, after approval and execution of most of the work, a booking system suddenly had to be added. You don't just build that and that costs extra money. This resulted in an unpaid invoice. Eventually I sent an email from 'Chompy - Incasso & Debiteuren' signed by my then girlfriend, who studied law. Within five minutes I received a call from him: he apologized and promised to pay the amount due immediately. More assignments followed, including via the aforementioned friend and via my parents and my own network. I was soon allowed to create the website for my old school, the Amsterdams Lyceum. That was my first serious project and the ball started rolling.”
How our Learning by doing method works
“My first ‘office’ was a desk that I could rent in a building on the Herengracht. Suddenly I had a company in the canal belt! And in all communication I always referred to ‘we’, which made the company seem more than it was. At that time, the first major assignments started to flow in. One client addressed me about the name of my company: ‘Chompy, don’t you think that’s a bit childish?’ After months of thinking, it became Webfluencer. The name covers it all: leading the way by building influential websites. Additional desks were rented because more ‘hands’ were needed to properly execute the growing number of assignments. I am grateful for the many smart, thoughtful people around me.
One of them advised me to focus on SEO, Search Engine Optimization. 'If you rank high in Google, you will get so many customers.' I started to look into it and saw great opportunities for offering 'branding', which at least has some similarities with what we were already doing. There were hardly any companies that focused on that within SEO. I created a page 'branding agency Amsterdam' and was at the top of Google. Requests for all kinds of branding jobs followed: creating house styles, logos, you name it. By learning by doing we successfully completed many branding assignments. In addition to building websites and webshops, we also specialized in this. Now, five years later, we are still organically in the top 3 of Google when you search for keywords such as 'website creation in Amsterdam', 'web design agency in Amsterdam' and 'branding agency Amsterdam'. This has resulted in fantastic jobs for years. SEO has therefore become one of our core services. We are allowed to help fantastic international companies with this, such as the well-known TV tower in Berlin, where we have attracted millions of people to the website. In the meantime, our SEO services have gotten so out of hand that we now have a dedicated team from Webfluencer a separate SEO agency are setting up, called LASEO.”
“The name says it all: leading the way by building influential websites”
Customer experience
“Webfluencer is an online strategy agency. What we emphasize in our pitches to potential plants is: Your online success is our mission. We help companies position themselves online: Who are we, what do we do and what do we stand for as a company? How is that translated to our online channels (website, webshop)? And how does that contribute to the optimal customer journey? The digital landscape is so extremely competitive that you have to distinguish yourself. For companies that are going to expand their services, the brand may have to be adjusted accordingly. From local companies to large multinationals come to us with the request to, for example, (re)build their website. In recent years, we have also increasingly focused on webshops. The successes there are directly measurable. For example, the increase in turnover in percentage after the new webshop has been put into use. Building, designing and setting up websites and webshops is something we excel in. As an expert in Shopify, the world's leading e-commerce software, we work with giants such as Intersport and Philips. These are our showpieces. But secretly I like working with smaller companies more, because your impact is much greater there.
Companies choose us because we have a special approach. We know exactly which tools to use to ensure that you maximize conversion, that the customer is taken from one step to the next and ultimately commits to your brand. There is enormous growth potential there, because the chance that you will get an existing customer to buy something again is many times greater than that you will attract a new customer. When building a webshop, we focus on four variables: How do we get someone to the checkout as quickly as possible? How do we ensure that someone pays as much as possible? Returns as few products as possible? And how do we ensure that the customer comes back? The great thing about Shopify is personalization. I dare say that we are very good at that. What we want to achieve for our customers: show the right up-sell and cross-sell products with the right products, at the right times. This personalization is optimized in such a way that we can ensure that, for example, a dark-skinned woman does not see light foundation, but only products for her skin type. This is how we realize the best personal shopping experience in every webshop. We can even personalize to someone's taste, and then use that again within a loyalty program. That's when you really make an impact."
Focus on excellence
“At Webfluencer, we are a full-service website agency with a strong focus on branding, e-commerce, conversion optimization and SEO (from our other label, LASEO). Our strength lies in helping companies with big ambitions to scale successfully, whether it is expanding into Europe, the US or becoming a market leader in the Netherlands. We understand the unique dynamics of different markets and ensure that websites and e-commerce experiences perform optimally. We create seamless, personalized customer journeys that lead to growth, both locally and globally. Whether you want to sell your product internationally or optimize your website for a larger audience, we offer strategic support from A to Z. For companies that want to grow further and really make an impact online, Webfluencer is the ideal partner. My personal ambition? To expand Webfluencer into an internationally leading agency that works with the most influential brands in the world. With our team of 25 professionals, we continue to grow by focusing on excellence. I don't need to become much bigger in terms of team; my focus is on getting better, continuously improving and growing deeper in expertise and impact.”
Also read: “In conversation with Rob Voordendag from Zero Tax Consultants”