Mixed bag for web firms

With belt-tightening occurring across a range of industries, Western Australian web developers say clients are being more careful about where they put their marketing spend.

Web developer Sumo general manager Chris Baine said marketers were shifting even more of their advertising budget online

"We're still picking up more business and the maintenance side is picking up compared to the new business side," Mr Baine said.

"So when you've got good client relationships, it helps so we can just do smaller things rather than bigger things."

Vivid Group general manager Damian Cook believes marketing is becoming more targeted.

"I think the advertising industry at large is heading away from broad-based advertising to more retail or transactional return on investment," Mr Cook said.

"The big trend I'm seeing is, a general rule of thumb, people are looking for a lot more accountable advertising spend and value for dollar."

Bam Creative managing director Miles Burke said despite the expected downturn, demand for website development remained strong.

"I've been sitting here nervously waiting for enquires to drop off but it's been a fantastic month and a half, with December and all of January being quite high on the amount of enquiries we're getting in," Mr Burke said.

"And as much as it is to fear a downturn in business, and as small as website design is, it's still an important part of the marketing mix. If anything it's going to become more competitive against traditional media with the cost of a website versus a TV campaign or something of that nature."

But Ajilon's general manager WA Chris Benthien said some companies were looking at their discretionary spend to cut costs.

"The message we're getting from our clients, and what we're seeing around town, is if there are any projects that don't have a very clear business case around the client's growth or very tightly linked to their business strategy, it's up for grabs," Mr Benthien said.

"The business leaders want to determine things that they absolutely needed and if there's anything that's vaguely discretionary around IT, I think, it will be under review in 2009 as the market continues to contract."

Businesses are also reviewing their long-term IT projects, according to Ross Consulting Division general manager, Alison Trpveski, the only female senior executive on the WA Business News' Book of Lists (see page 15).

"We're in a really tricky situation at the moment where a lot of those [long term] projects are starting to wind down because they've been large software development projects and are now into the maintenance and enhancement mode," Ms Trpveski said.

"So where I've had four people full time on site, come June that is likely to drop down to one, maybe two."