How Foreignerds Grows 200% YoY: Q/A with CTO Vivek Raina

Website Planet had the opportunity to speak with Vivek Raina, VP & Chief Technical Officer Foreignerds, a US-based digital agency specializing in web design, app development, and online marketing.

Aspiring agency owners should read this interview to learn how a proficient web design agency structures its pricing, how they keep growing at a 200% yearly rate, and what their web design process looks like.

How did Foreignerds start, and what services are you offering right now?

Our team consists of highly skilled professionals who work together to deliver top notch solutions to businesses around the globe. We focus on providing innovative strategies and unique ideas to ensure success in today’s competitive market place. Our goal is to stay ahead of trends and anticipate changes before they happen. By doing so, we aim to build long lasting relationships with each client and exceed expectations at every turn.

I am proud to say that my company has grown over time to become one of the largest eCommerce companies in India. Our team consists of highly skilled professionals having expertise in various fields including marketing, finance, operations, human resources etc. We believe in providing excellent service to our customers through innovative ideas and solutions.

We work with some of the biggest agencies in North America and the UK as their white label partner and ghost agency partners. We predominantly work in virtual resourcing engagements with most of our clients, but for some of them we make the exception and work on time and materials basis sometimes.

How do you stand out from the competition?

Our goal is to provide excellent service and support to our customers. We believe that being competitive means competing against yourself. Our team strives to continuously learn new skills and implement those into our processes. By focusing on improving our own performance, we hope to become a leader within the industry. People often compare us to others in the marketplace; however, they should really only be comparing us to ourselves.

We offer 40%-50% lower prices than hiring employees directly and are almost as cost effective as freelance workers. We’re legally guaranteed agencies though, unlike independent contractors.

We offer excellent service along with efficient project managers and well trained staff members. We believe in delivering high quality work within time constraints. How many times did you hear “I don’t like change” before reading this article? What industry do you typically work within? Do you find yourself catering mostly to repeat clients? How much time do they take to return to your services?

Our goal is to provide a wide range of services to businesses across many industry verticals. We believe that no matter what kind of company you run, there is something we can do for you.

Our team consists of highly skilled professionals who work together to ensure each client receives exceptional service at affordable rates. At the same time, we strive to maintain high levels of customer satisfaction through repeat clients and referrals. To accomplish these goals, we focus on providing excellent value, personalized attention, and outstanding results.

What are the first steps you take into designing a website?

Our system has a defined set of parameters and processes.

We gather requirements from clients and try to understand what they’re trying to achieve with the overall design.

We begin by researching the target audience thoroughly. After that, we do extensive market analysis to understand the competition and learn what works well for them. Then we work closely with clients to determine the brand identity and visual language that suits their needs. Our process involves creating several designs until we find something that resonates with both us and the client.

We work closely together with each individual project team to ensure they understand exactly what they’re getting into before starting any projects. We take time to learn about the clients’ needs and goals, and build solutions accordingly. Our goal is to deliver high performing web applications that meet our customers expectations.

When considering frameworks, there are pros and cons to each option. There are various ways to look at these options including performance metrics, eCommerce enabling, inventory sizes (for eCommerce), SEO/Marketing friendliness, backend simplicity, design aesthetics, and custom functionality. We’ll discuss those here.

Which Framework Do You Suggest On Working With To Develop A Web Design?

I generally recommend using WordPress for any new site unless there is a specific requirement for another CMS like Drupal or Joomla. About 40% of sites on the web run on WordPress. That means almost half of all websites could potentially benefit from having a better user experience. And that’s why I created WPBeginner – to provide free tutorials and resources to help beginners build amazing websites.

Bootstrap, Foundation and Semantic UI are used in almost all projects. They are combined with custom CSS and JavaScript.

How does your pricing work?

We generally try to keep things simple. We estimate the number of hours that we think the project would take and multiply it by our hourly rates and add any overhead costs, plus any additional support required from the PMO/QA team and come up with appropriate figures.

Virtual Resource Engagements usually involve working remotely via phone/video conferencing, email, etc., but there are times when physical meetings occur. Usually these engagements include hourly rates, milestone payments, and contingency fees. Sometimes they’re billed per project instead of month-by-month.

We accept clients with budgets ranging anywhere from $1,500 – $50,000 per project. However, we do NOT work with clients whose total budget is lower than $5,000 USD. For example, we would never take on a job with a budget of $2,000 USD. Our lowest accepted budget was around $3,000 USD.

We do work ranging from $4,000 USD to over $200,000 USD per project. Our average annual revenue was around $3 million USD during the 2018 fiscal year.