WRate.net: a meeting place for customers and performers

Many habr residents are familiar with the problem of choosing an artist to create and promote a site. Clients and studios solved problems in their own way: the first often had to overpay the first best studio, the second to work hard on SEO. Far from the capitals, where web construction is less developed, the problem is more acute. In recent years, I had to visit both skins and as a result, there was a desire to implement a service that would be useful to both parties. The catalog of web-studios and advertising agencies WRate.net came out of this .

It was decided that the service will start life as a catalog, where customers can choose a suitable contractor. The main selection criteria in our opinion are: site price, examples of work, customer reviews, region and a full list of services. This is all presented in four main sections:

• “Catalog” - sorting companies by alphabet, rating (more on that below), region or comments. The main tool is the choice of type of service and price;
• “Works” - the page presents all the works from the portfolio of studios;
• “Prices” - the section will help at the preparatory stage, when the site is already wanted, but we still do not know how much it costs. The section contains prices for each type of work and a list of services that can be obtained in this region;
• “Applications” is a section for customers. You can publish your application and collect offers. For executing companies, this is all available via RSS.

An interesting innovation was the rating and its calculation method. We came to the conclusion that the rating of each studio or agency will depend on several indicators, each of which characterizes the participant from a certain side:

• number of jobs in the portfolio. This is a quantitative indicator;
• implementation rate index, i.e. the number of new works in recent years. Indicates the activity of the participant;
• duration of participation in the catalog. Something like the experience of a studio or agency;
• variety of services provided. The more services the contractor provides, the greater the likelihood that the customer will receive a package of services from one source and that he will not have to take layout from one, the design from the second, and the engine from the third studio;
• TIC and PR of the main page of the catalog participant. These indicators allow you to assess the weight of the participant on the Internet and the ability to promote yourself;
• the number of clicks by visitors from the participant’s portfolio to the sites he created. It characterizes the quality and interest in the developed sites;
• Evaluation of the studio or agency by users. It is an analogue of public opinion.

We assigned the role of rating components to these seven indicators. Considering the fact that they are all very heterogeneous and should influence the rating to different degrees, we summarize them with different weighting factors, and on the indicator “duration of participation in the catalog” we also established a logarithmic dependence instead of a direct one, so that newcomers to studios and agencies can compete on equal terms with old-timers. We plan to further optimize the formula and upon completion of work on the formula, it will be published with all the coefficients and explanations. At the moment, we cannot do this because the formula is still vulnerable to "cheating". If you have any suggestions for the formula, be sure to write to us by mail, on the site, on Twitter , or to me personally through the hub-mail.

The main goal of creating a rating is to help the client decide on the choice of artist, all other things being equal. Counting all the developers and determining who the "dad" is, of course, is interesting, but for most clients this is not something that would not help, but simply "can not afford."

We have already collected in the catalog more than a hundred companies from countries such as Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Participants added about 300 works and indicated their prices for web services. For example, the following work will cost you approximately the same amount:

• creation of a corporate website - $ 1025;
• creation of an online store - $ 1185;
• layout - $ 135;
• typesetting (W3C) - $ 195;
• website design - $ 480;
• development of advertising concepts - $ 985;
• media planning - $ 295.

We deliberately divided the usual “layout” and “layout (W3C)”. Unfortunately, there are still more companies that do the usual layout.

I would like to finish on the positive. Reviews appear on the resource that customers find companies. The same reviews come to us in the mail. We are glad that the resource is already helping someone. The project is still young and we would like to hear your opinions and suggestions.