Today I present another written interview with George Gkouvousis of 8web.gr
George is an 26-years old web developer and SEO expert, based out of Athens, Europe-Greece.
At 8web they design amazing websites for their customers using some of the latest web standards. His company has helped many websites reach the top rankings of Greek Google (Google.gr). George works with customers all over the world to help them both with design and rankings.
Check out the interview:
1. What got you interested in web design? Share your story.
When I started surfing online from my earlier years I was always curious how every single website was built.
Things were a bit different than nowadays. Developers were thinking inside a box, 4-8 or 16 available colors and HTML was the only popular choice that you could go with. Some years later, websites got really trendy! New programming languages were born and awesome frameworks came around. So we started our brand, 8web. We chose the right guys and built a small team that would deliver awesome websites. There was an obvious lack of such an agency in our country, so we took the chance.
2. In terms of working with clients, what do you find are some of the most common design elements people look for when
having a website designed for them?
People like clean, responsive and user-friendly websites. We like to deliver eye-catchy websites that surprise our customers.
3. There are lots of companies that offer web design, what do you do differently to stay ahead of the competition?
At this time, we mostly work with combinations of HTML5, CSS3 and Bootstrap Framework. Web design has become a popular job in our country, but only 5% of the web agencies deliver EXACTLY a customer wants. Its important for us to follow the latest web standards and deploy them. This makes us a unique agency and the winner against the competition.
4. What are some of the biggest challenges you face when working with clients to help them create a website for their business?
People usually put a limit on their budget. Now a days, it happens more often because of the financial situation in Europe.
60% of our clients are EU based, 20% of them are Greek-based and 20% US/Others. Financial crysis is a phenomenon we all experience, but if you really understand your business needs, you can easily adjust your budget in such a way that it will be spent right. We believe that people shouldn’t set budget limits on web design because it is undoubtedly a key to success for online marketing and online presence.
5. What are your future plans for 2014 and beyond?
In the very first months of 2014, we announced two co-operations with a small creative agency and a small development team, both based in Greece.
Another co-operation is on its way, scheduled for the end of February with a Berlin-based creative agency.
We love to grow and focus on delivering better services day by day. Since we experienced a very heavy workload in the 3rd quarter of 2013, we plan to extend our team by having new members join us. We look forward to extend our services so featured clients can purchase a “complete” web solution from us. Due to this, we may add some dedicated servers in a European datacenter by the end of the year, providing managed hosting services with LIII Engineers too.
