Interview with Michael Mehen, Co-Founder - SmartSites

Michael Mehen  

Co-Founder, SmartSites

Give us a quick overview on SmartSites. When and how did you begin this journey and what were your motives to be successful in web design and development?

SmartSites was founded in 2011, but I started working with websites much earlier. I went to university for Hotel Administration but quickly realized that my passion was with digital. I started BacklinkBuild, SmartSites’ predecessor, between classes. By the time it came to graduate, I had a few full-time employees and nearly 100 clients. I called up my brother who was working for Publicis marketing group at the time. He quit his job and we opened up our office the day after my graduation.


What is your role in the management and development of SmartSites?

My brother and I share CEO responsibilities. He does the finance, HR, and office management. I do the fun stuff.


Tell us about your biggest achievement in the industry.

Our biggest achievement has to be our reputation online. It was easy to control quality when I was able to touch every deliverable and client we worked with. As we expanded to hundreds of clients and nearly 100 employees, I had to rely on my team, training, and processes to maintain quality. We now have over 150 5-star reviews and not a single bad review from a client. From what I know, no other web design company even comes close. We are also a 3-time fastest growing company (Inc5000) and one of New Jersey’s top 250 private companies (NJBiz.)


How do you schedule the development phases of the web design and development projects to promise the timeline to your clients?

Generally speaking, our website projects have the following milestones:

A.    Discovery
B.    Project Kickoff
C.    Strategy & Planning
D.    Design
E.    Frontend Development
F.    Backend Development
G.    QA
H.    Site Launch
I.    Project Wrap-up


Which framework, programming or scripting languages do you prefer for web development? How do you convince your clients for the same?

We are experts with LAMP and MEAN stacks. In terms of CMS, we prefer WordPress for static sites and Magento for ecommerce.


What would you suggest for a successful and profitable business progression, when it comes to web design and development? How do you define the factors that influenced you make this choice?

Every business needs a website. Other than that, any web design and development project can be evaluated based on basic business value principles.


How do you scheme your pricing model? How do you fix your budget?

We have a few engagement models for web design & development:

A.    Fixed Project – if a project has a well-defined scope, we work under a fixed fee.
B.    Dedicated Development – If needs are ongoing and sizable, we assign developers.
C.    Hourly – when the scope is not defined or for small ongoing needs, we work with an hourly fee.


How helpful are the web design and development made by SmartSitesfor your clients in enhancing their business?

Extremely. We not only do web design/development, but also combine it with search marketing. Many of our clients attribute their success to our work, thus our reputation.


What according to you are the best practices to attain client satisfaction for web development?

It again comes down to basic business principles: people, product, and price.

People: All my team leaders have followed me from my previous startup and have stayed with me for over 10 years. We do right by our people and in turn, they do right by our clients.

Product: We are lucky to be in the right industry at the right time. Most businesses need web design and development to succeed in today’s world. We don’t do much “selling,” businesses come to us and we explore what we can do together.

Price: We are a small business, just like our clients. We are meticulous in cutting out waste and keep our prices low. At the end, this makes us the most money too because web design & development needs are ongoing so our margins are low but we retain clients for many years.


How do you update your business system to be in pace with the technological advancements?

We do many things to make sure we are always ahead of the curve. For one, we give every employee an annual budget to attend conferences and continual education. They bring what they back into the company and we make sure we are always improving.


What are your thoughts about material design, progressive web app and Internet of Things (IoT)?

We do not focus in these areas.


What do you think will be the future of web design and development technology?

Three things to look for:

a.    Automation: Everything from user communication to marketing ROAS will be more and more powered by AI.

b.    Personalization: Homepages will stop being static and start adapting to the user. This technology is already being widely used by enterprise but will soon be mainstream for small businesses too.

c.    No-Screen Experience: Voice and chat bots is the better user experience for a lot of what we currently use websites for. Adoption of these technologies have been relatively slow but will eventually reach a tipping point and be more available for both businesses and users.