We decided this post needed an impressive title, so we settled on ^^^ that. But really, we’re just talking about finding the right contractor.
THE PROBLEM
Finding someone to work on your website sucks.
Anyone who’s used a freelancer marketplace knows how painful the process can be. Anyone who’s ever sent out an RFP for a website project really knows it.
Even with the best available tools like UpWork, it’s still a tedious and time consuming process.
Beyond all the pitfalls of searching for the right person, once you’ve made your choice you may find your contractor doesn’t communicate well, or can’t do what they said they could. They might be delays if they spend more time on another project that’s paying them more. You might end up spending more than you expected. You might not get the project completed, and instead have to go find another contractor.
The old world of website service is insanely inefficient, where service providers prey on people’s lack of technical and practical knowledge about websites. (Frankly, this is true for most tech and IT-related services – but for now, we’re focused on websites).
The end-user experience of getting a website – or getting something done to an existing website – is absolutely abysmal. From buying a domain to launching a site, we’d be hard pressed to figure out how the experience could possibly be any worse.
This is why we all love referrals. We love them because another person, someone we know and trust, has gone through the painful and often expensive process of finding and vetting a given contractor. The contractor comes to us already-tested, both as a professional and as a human being. The contractor still might not be the perfect person for the job, but at least there’s an element of trust and a track record of positive results.
As our team began to face the many challenges of creating a two-way marketplace for WordPress service, we knew that the agent vetting process needed to be done on our end. Website owners shouldn’t vet their own service providers, for many reasons (lack of technical knowledge, lack of time, lack of negotiating skills, etc.).
Instead, our software completely eliminates the need to look for a contractor.
DYNAMIC SKILL MATCHING
Agents on HubRunner are WordPress professionals with only the best work experience and service quality. We constantly improve the experience of using HubRunner by tracking their work and the ratings that you, the users, give them.
But our software goes one step beyond this.
We not only vet agents on their work history, we vet them on very specific types of work, on granular capabilities. Then, we work hard to ensure that agents only see requests that fit their HubRunner capabilities profile. This means that an SEO-related request will only be offered to agents with an expert knowledge of SEO. A request about slow page-load times can only be claimed by an agent with expertise in that area.
It’s kind of like online dating, but without the smiling vacation photos – and without the dates.