Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the organization.
We design, build and optimize eCommerce stores. With over a decade of experience, LanternSol has proudly helped companies do over $100,000,000 in sales with their online businesses. I founded the company in 2015.
What is the story behind starting this company?
It happened very organically! I started off building websites and eCommerce funnels for myself based on my wants and needs. This involved a lot of trial and error, and basically picking up every self-starter mistake you can learn along the way. Over the course of doing this, more and more people and companies started becoming aware of my work— which led to a more continuous pipeline of contacts reaching out who also needed help with their digital marketing presence.
What are your company’s business model–in-house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We do as much as we can in-house and then have some reliable partners we lean on for more complex projects, such as with video animation. The team has slowly grown to include 6 full-time members.
How does your company differentiate itself from the competition?
By caring more about the customer's needs! As simple and trite as it may sound, we plain flat just work our butt off for our clients. We look to first really hone in and understand the unique positioning and stories that surround our favorite brands and partners, and then we utilize that to capture a compelling selling point both on their website and advertising campaigns.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
Generally D2C, but not exclusively. In total, we’ve built 500+ custom sites across a variety of domains: New York real estate, fitness products, food delivery, coffee, chocolate, pet toothpaste & treats, cleaning supplies, custom inflatable obstacle courses and blow up mascots, b2b packaging materials— you name it!
Please share some of the services that you offer for which clients approach you the most for?
About 50% of our work is app and web development, then the other 50% is split between SEO and PPC (Google, Facebook, & Amazon ads).
What is your customer satisfaction rate according to you? What steps do you take to cater to your customer’s needs and requirements?
Our reviews and comments from our customers speak for themselves! We’ve helped companies do over $100,000,000 in online sales and are proud to boast a 98% 5 star and approval rating.
What kind of support system do you offer to your clients for catering to their queries and issues?
It comes down to just being really personable. “Support system” seems to imply software, but really I find answering and catering to client queries just comes down to being really personable, accessible via phone calls and text/email, etc.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)
It depends on the project scope, but typically we do project-based pricing. Web development is generally fixed project costs, while SEO/PPC has ongoing mgmt fees associated.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?
For designing and developing a website, these days we generally don't take on projects less than $5k. Our SEO packages start at $2k/month and increase up to $5k depending on the level of aggression. Our PPC is based on overall ad spending.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2020?
Where do you see your company in the next 10 years?
I can say assuredly we’ll be working on the next web3.0 platforms that are in their nascent stages. Whatever we do (life can be unpredictable!), we’ll bring our full passion, attention, and energy into ensuring to continually assist clients in reaching their goals.
