Dimoteca Digital - E-commerce & Web agency. Keeping it calm since 2015

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Dimoteca Digital – E-commerce & Web agency. Keeping it calm since 2015

Business Name and what it does

Dimoteca was created sometime back in 2014 by a group of digital marketing enthusiasts.

Its purpose was to put together experts, creating an umbrella that would make it easy for customers to subscribe to different digital marketing channels. The advantages of this working model would reinforce the “do what you are best at” idea, creating synergies between each of the experts, and at the same time providing full know-how within the digital marketing sector, making communication fluid between the company and the customer across all the services.

Today the business core idea hasn’t changed, and the group of experts behind Dimoteca has become more robust, efficient and capable.

Our mainstream services are Web development, SEO, Web Hosting… However, we rely on partners with whom we have established a solid relationship throughout the years, such as Designers, Programmers, Paid media specialists, Community managers…

Founder’s/Owner’s story and what motivated them to start the business

As a kid I used to like technology, and I was amazed by video games. As a teenager, as many of you, I didn’t have an idea of what I wanted to do for a living. I chose to study computer science because I have always liked computers, and I thought that they were the future, and for sure I would have opportunities in this evergreen sector.

I started as a Java developer in the Netherlands after finishing my degree there, and then moved to the logistics area of a multinational sports company in Spain and Turkey. Soon I realized that I wanted to get back in touch with technology, and I managed to be transferred to France, where I worked as a Product Owner for the logistics internal platform.

Being close to a user frontend led me to pay attention to the ecommerce branch, and I thought and motivated myself enough to start building sites on my own, using popular CMSs.

This is where Dimoteca began. I accidentally ran into my first client, which was a small shop in Barcelona, and created my first ecommerce site for him, using WordPress and making lots of mistakes… However I realized that there were tons of businesses out there that were in need of selling online. Plus, I noticed that there was a lack of transparency in the sector, and that lots of customers were always kept in the dark in terms of whys and whats.

Being crystal clear to my customers is probably one of our key successes in the company.

This one and being close and friendly, treating our clients as friends, skipping the cold serious barriers, but keeping it professional at all times.

We build a pyramid of trust, which is created little by little, one stone at a time. Not because we’re the suppliers does it mean that we don’t grab a beer every now and then, or go on holidays. We like sharing our lives with our customers, because WE are HUMANS above all.

Things like this have made this first shop owner I mentioned above still work with us.

Perhaps more important than this is the fact that we treat our partners with this same philosophy. We must not forget that without happy partners, you never get happy customers.

The challenges the business/market is facing

In the times we live, several concepts have changed. I’d like to list a few of them

Storytelling:

The product is less relevant, and what really matters is the story surrounding it. To sell our products, we need to create a feeling, a desire, a will. This is the new way to connect to our customers.

Social networks have a huge impact on this… Companies are easier to get to know, easier to reach, and so customers need to think they share the values that the company has in order to purchase a product or a service.

Impatience:

The 24h delivery might be too late. We live in a hectic world, and the concept of waiting for something is forgotten. The challenge here is to fulfill the “I want it, and I want it now” mindset of the customer.

Ads tolerance:

Advertising is invading us. Have you ever discussed a summer trip with some friends at a bar, and later that night you have seen banners of that same destination? Such is the exposure of ads, that our brains have learned to skip them. I think most of the time I ignore the ads listed at the SERP results page. And I do it unconsciously. The challenge for us marketers is to think how we can make Ads profitable, and not invasive.

Competitors everywhere:

Website programming is not what it used to be. In the past, it was done by developers. Throughout those years I have found all different types of profiles selling websites or IT related services, to the point that the quality standards have dropped dramatically.

I see two challenges here, the first is to let everybody do what is best at. Let the experts do what they’re best at. The second is to consider that of course platforms such as WordPress, Prestashop or Shopify can make our lives much easier, but we need to use them wisely.

Your customer is sometimes your competitor:

Let’s take for example the community manager service. It has become extremely difficult to sell. Everybody is using social networks, which means that your customer has certain knowledge, and will debate you on many decisions. It is positive, but can lead to despair.

The same thing happens on websites, where as an anecdote, a few days ago I was having a discussion with a client. She had used a 40MB image as a banner in the homepage. I told her that we had to reduce the image weight, and she said that with a lower weight the image became low quality. She can be right, but what I am certain of is that if she kept the 40 MB image, this amazing quality would only be appreciated by her, because search engines would completely ignore the page.

The challenge here is winning over your clients as if they were competitors

The opportunities the business/market is facing

Speed, content and backlinks are still the kings of SEO: Or, the way I like to call this, COMMON SENSE. I think that above all strategy, we need to get down to the basics, and use our intuition. The answer is still neither black nor white.

Voice Search: When building websites, it is important to structure the content using a voice driven mindset. It is not the same as how we express ourselves when we type, than when we speak. I’ve read that around 40% of the US population used voice search in 2020.

The Metaverse: Perhaps a decade far, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need to start thinking about it. I have been exposed to item rarity as a gamer since forever. It is funny how now that the metaverse is kicking in, people that have never played a video game are using these rarity concepts when talking about NFTs.

The arrival of the Metaverse opens up great possibilities in terms of the shopping experience and the current conception of e-commerce. In the next few years, we will buy a pair of sneakers in the physical world and get our unique copy of NFT that we can use in the Metaverse, or we will try on new clothes through extended reality in a shop of the virtual world. It is certainly something we should consider as a life changing business opportunity.

Advice to others about business

Keep it simple: Why make it terribly complex? Things need to have a strong purpose behind them. Think about an online store. The goal is to showcase the product. The user wants to buy it. Think twice when you’re designing a site, respect your goals.

Focus on what you know: A few weeks ago I attended a webinar. These guys had created a whatsapp widget that placed a floating whatsapp button in the pages. They had developed that widget for the past few years. They could have become experts in CMS, coding, design, paid campaigns… The fact is that there are already so many people doing that. These guys decided to FOCUS on what they love doing. Pick what you’re best at, and concentrate on creating the best product, no matter how small it is, because there is probably a market that needs it.

Treat your suppliers as good as you treat your customers (or even better): This year at Dimoteca part of our main strategy is to create solid bounds with other agencies. For that it is of main importance to create solid relationships, as I have mentioned above. Do not forget that, if your partner is your supplier, the quality of what you deliver to your customers has part of their DNA in it… On the other hand, bear in mind as well that your partner can also become your customer.