UpSites

Peace of mind to sell websites in a recurring pricing model

UpSites partnered with Duda to sell and deliver websites faster and more effectively. Today it has more predictable income and expenses and can sell websites in a Website as a Service (WaaS) model.

• 7
  The website sales cycle has been reduced from 30 days to 7 days
• 20
  Website creation time dropped from 90 to 20 days
• ⅓
  Cost per site dropped to ⅓ of the cost of a WordPress site

Using a sledgehammer to crack a nut

The Brazilian digital agency UpSites was created in 2017 with a mission: to sell professional websites at an affordable price. But soon its founders realized that it would be a challenge to scale their services without scaling costs.

"With WordPress, when we started selling more websites we also had to hire more web professionals and invest in many processes creation and automation. As a consequence, our expenses would also increase," explains João Vicente Farias Santos, co-founder and CEO at UpSites.

In many cases, after the website was delivered, the client would go months without making any updates. The conclusion was that WordPress was offering thousands of features that were simply not necessary. "We were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut," muses João.

The challenges of scaling using WordPress

In an attempt to scale using WordPress, UpSites started working with several different tools. An Australian platform was used to collect the client's brief and information before the website was created. Another visual feedback tool collected customer feedback during and after the website's development phase.

The problem was that these tools weren't connected to WordPress, and they also implied an increase in the agency's expenses, making it impossible to scale and sell websites at an affordable price.

In May 2021, João was invited to a Duda demo meeting. "I saw that with Duda we would have a builder similar to the one we used with WordPress, but it would also allow us to create templates and widgets without having problems with plugins and updates. And the websites would be hosted on AWS. We closed the deal right away," explains João.

Reducing costs with Duda

UpSites CEO says that some people may look at Duda as a high investment at first. But its cost is much lower than WordPress for agencies that want to sell websites at scale or in a Websites as a Service (WaaS) model.

While WordPress costs vary according to the number of websites being developed, with Duda the platform fee remains the same. Additional charges only occur once a new website is published.

Other cost savings UpSites managed to achieve using Duda:

• Creating templates and duplicating websites at no additional cost, while with WordPress the agency needed to have a developer on hand.
• Creating and managing product catalogs in a simple and practical way using Duda's collections and dynamic pages, while in WordPress it was necessary to install heavy and expensive plugins. "Today, our clients can manage their product catalog using spreadsheets; they just add a new product to the spreadsheet and it appears directly on the website," says João.
• Duda costs include website development and design, while WordPress costs only include the development environment.

The right tool for the right customer

"We discovered that the secret to success in this business is to use the right tool for the right client. A lot of people think that WordPress is the right tool for everything, but it's not," states João.

He adds that before starting to use Duda, he was afraid of selling sites on a recurring pricing model. That's because he never knew if the client would change the site too much or demand too much support. "It was like playing the lottery."

What he did know is that if the customer fiddled around with the WordPress site, chances of breaking something were high. That's because many of UpSites' clients are small business owners without specialized marketing teams.

With Duda, UpSites was able to improve its clients' experience in several ways:

• The client has access only to the editor and no access to the website code. "It's a way to protect the client," says João.
• Collecting the client brief and information to be included on the website is done in a Duda form that the client fills out and the information goes directly to the platform.
• The management of customer feedback, comments and change requests during the website creation process is carried out within Duda's own platform.
• It is possible to offer high quality AWS cloud hosting at an affordable price. "I explain to the client that his site will be hosted in the same environment as big players like Netflix and Uber," says João.
• The SSL certificate is already included, providing more security and preventing hacker attacks.
• Every month, the customer receives an automatic report in their email with their website's main metrics.

Selling and delivering websites more quickly

UpSites trained its team using Duda University and changed its pricing model to offer a basic price for websites of up to 5 pages. Other services such as blogging and on-page SEO are billed separately.

The sales cycle has been drastically shortened. Before Duda, the team took 30 to 45 days to close the sale of a website. Now, this is done, on average, in a week.

This is possible because UpSites sales team can show a Duda template or create an instant site while talking to the client, proving that they can deliver a great service in a very short time.

In fact, websites started to be built in 20 days, while in WordPress they took 3 to 4 months to be completed.

"If you own an agency that builds websites on WordPress, you can't have peace of mind or take a vacation. An update can break your client's entire website. With Duda, I can sell websites as a service without fear. I know the platform will always be updated, the websites will continue to perform on Google, will not be hacked and will always be online," concludes João.