Seth Pickens
Executive Features Editor
“Empowering trades with tailored web mastery,”
That’s the motto of the student-run website development business, Handy Web’s. Handy Web’s has been co-run by Costa junior Dylan Fenton and Redondo junior Patrick Behan since November.
They use their website to help community service-based businesses better reach and serve customers.
“The story behind [our] company stems from a long entrepreneurial journey stemming 3 years back,” Behan said. “I’ve run around 5 different startups now, [including] a web design company that ultimately closed down due to it taking too much time. Recently with AI I discovered the ability to create websites was easier than ever before so I got back into it.”
Using lessons from past experiences and promising new technology in website building, the duo has been able to create a solid business model, with a focus of building websites for community service-based businesses.
“We create free websites for blue collar businesses,” Fenton said. “After we prove the quality of our product we sell SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which allows our clients to get the first results on google. We also sell AI chatbots, Google ads, calendars, and automated text messages. Basically all the things that come along with a fancy website.”
This extensive list of services has aided them in gaining a healthy customer base. They’ve worked with many South Bay businesses including JB Plumbing, Brian’s Hardwood, and (Matthew’s) Custom Home Remodeling & Roofing.
According to Behan, he and Fenton were determined to discover the perfect way to market their brand. They started off by cold emailing, sending over 5000 and being met with little success. After that they tried cold calling, but found that their school schedule conflicted with potential client schedules.
“We needed to change tactics,” Behan said. “After more research, we discovered paid ads and social media outreach, and [how to utilize] word of mouth. These methods quickly gained traction, and soon enough, we went from having nothing to multiple businesses reaching out to us for our services.”
Fenton and Behan developed their website creation and marketing strategy through online research, watching as many videos as possible to get an idea of how to work with customers. According to Fenton the key to creating the perfect product for a customer was trial and error.
“Once we get in contact with a potential customer, the first thing we do is see if they already have a website,” Fenton said. “If they do it makes it a lot easier. We can go in there, see their color scheme and the information they already have and create a more updated version. We’ll make a completely new website from scratch and if they have some good photos in the old one we’ll try to use them.”
“If they don’t have a website, that’s when we ask them, ‘are there any photos you want, any information you want, what’s your color scheme, what’s your logo; we’ll design a logo for them if they don’t have one. We do a lot of the base work and refine it based on their input, there’s a lot of drafts before we get to the final copy.”
According to Fenton and Behan, they are still exploring the ways they can expand. As Fenton said, they “are still in the process of expanding and getting clients before full monetization.” However, even though they are looking forward to the business’s future they haven’t lost sight of how they originally started it.
“We’re really trying to get into more charity work,” Fenton said. “If there is a charitable organization that doesn’t have a website we’d love to make them one for free, like we do with blue collar businesses. ”
Leave a Reply