Shifting Tides Reveal Opportunity

Having been in the web design industry since 1995, Matt Certo, co-founder of WebSolvers (a 12 person Orlando web design firm), has seen the technology landscape evolve dramatically. Back in the early days of his company, most Websites were built from scratch using Notepad. If a WebSolvers client wanted a website, it was built in pure HTML and content update requests were sent via Fax machine.

As time went on, content management systems, dynamic Web applications, and API feeds broadened the landscape dramatically.  Clients wanted it faster, cheaper, and more powerful than ever.  As Certo explains it, “we began to see a portion of our prospects asking for the functionality of a $25,000 Website with only a $2,500 budget.  They needed the time of our best folks, but were turning to less expensive alternatives and settling for a lesser result.”  As it turned out, that was both a problem and an opportunity.

Conceiving a Product

Among all of those shifts, Certo and the team at WebSolvers saw an opportunity to build a product.  “We wanted to figure out a way to meet that client need in a way that made financial sense for them and us,” he explains.  They crafted Consulto, a Web design platform for professional firms (i.e. law firms, accounting firms, and general consultants), the segment of clients with which they had experienced this common set of demands.