Top 100 Top Web Studios 2007

Research and method of rating construction
Disclaimer
The final rating of TOP-100 leading web studios Runet
Comments and analysis
General trends
Regions
Countries
Russia by district
Comments by experts and representatives of TOP-10 a-posteriori


As part of our project, a large-scale study of the market for developing sites in Runet was conducted. In addition to our own data from our expert group Tagline, we offered to take part in a survey of representatives of web studios and a number of independent authoritative experts. More than 300 studios passed the preliminary registration stage in the project, more than 250 questionnaires with answers to market questions were processed as part of the preparation of the research results and the rating.

If the general overview of the market, trends in its development and analysis of quantitative indicators is based on both survey data and own research work, the rating was formed solely on the results of the expert survey.

All experts were asked to name 10 leaders in the market of website development by turnover of companies (market share) and rank them with rating points from 1 to 5. Summarizing the points scored by each company on all questionnaires, the final rating was formed.

After counting all votes, an automatic and manual check was carried out to cheat the rating, according to the results of which more than 100 rating points were withdrawn from various companies caught in a mutual intentional increase in positions (with the total amount of points scored by the first hundred studios - more than 5000).

I would like to emphasize separately that our rating is expert. This means that it is based on the opinions of studio representatives and independent experts about what the distribution of market leaders looks like. It is worth remembering that this method does not provide a 100% guarantee that its result will coincide with the real rotation distribution. This happens for a number of reasons, which should be taken into account when analyzing the rating:

Overestimation of the position of companies conducting active PR-activities, the brand and projects of which are “on hearing”. Thus, a company that actively promotes its activities can get into the rating on a higher position than a less advertised “gray cardinal” with a large turnover. Overstating the positions of companies with which respondents most often intersect in the framework of their activities - general projects, tenders, etc. For example, it is not strange that representatives of regional studios often put top ten studios in their regions (although their turnover may be obviously lower than Moscow companies) – they just overlap with them more often in their work. The practice of the ranking this year showed that many studios are guided by the positions of their competitors in search results, believing (partly quite justified) that the business of companies that are in the first place for key queries is developing more actively than others (other things being equal, this is true). It should also be noted that within the framework of the rating it was more convenient to vote for the studios that fell into the general list (these are studios that have passed pre-registration + last year’s TOP-10), the rest of the companies should be indicated in the category “other”. Unfortunately, the low transparency of the market does not allow you to calculate the turnover of companies directly to make a real picture of turnover, which is why we resort to expert assessment. The information provided by us is reliable, you just need to clearly understand what it reflects - and it reflects the opinion of representatives of the professional community about the distribution of leaders by market share of website creation.

Nevertheless, we would like to note positive developments in terms of increasing market transparency. We hope that next year, having deepened the analytical aspect of our work, as well as using (and trying to influence it) a favorable change in the market situation, we will be able to give objective real estimates of the turnover of leading companies.

The final rating of TOP-100 leading web studios Runet # Studio URL Site Rating Score Change of Position for the Year 1st Artemy Lebedev Studio www.design.ru 658. 0 2. Actis Systems www.actis.ru 552 0 3 RBC-Soft internet.rbc.ru 401 + 1 4. Defa gruppe www.defa.ru 393 1 5 ADV/web-engineering www.adv.ru 282 0 X-Project www.x-project.ru 156 + 4 7 Dot www.dot.ru 135 - 1 8 Promo Interactive www.promo.ru 113 + 6 Dominion www.dominion.ru 108 + 14 10 PRIOR.ru www.prit.ru 103 + 12 Articul Media www.ardivid.ru www.newcom newcommunion.ru www.newcomcom www.newcomcomcomcomcom www.newbiz.comcomcom.com.rurubinet.com www.org.org.org.org.org.ru.com.com.uk.ru.uk.ru.uk.uk.ru.uk.ru.uk.uk.ru.uk.ru.ru.uk.uk.ru.uk.uk.ru.uk.uk.ru.uk.uk.uk.ru.ru.uk.ru.ru.uk.ru.ru.ru.151515151212121212121212121212121212121212121212.com.com.com.com.com.com.com
Studio Artemy Lebedev did not give the lead to any of the closest competitors, gaining 658 points. This is logical - ALG remains the most popular brand in the market of website creation, a company with one of the highest budgets in the market and consistently high, with rare exceptions, the quality of work. At the same time, it is worth noting that a subsidiary of ALG, Teletype studio (16 points), which does not show much activity in the market, lost 34 positions in the rating and took a modest 52nd place.

The top five remained unchanged, but one reshuffle occurred in it - RBC Soft (401 points) was able to bypass Defa gruppe (391 points), although the difference is so small that the two companies almost shared 3rd and 4th places.

ADV/web-engineering, like last year, confidently closes the top five, but with a decent lag behind its closest competitors.

The Top 10 of our ranking, on the contrary, there have been very significant changes compared to last year.

The most significant events can be called the growth of X-project from 10th to 6th place (156 points), as well as the rapid rise in the top ten of Samara Dominion studio to 9th place (108 points), which was able to bypass a number of large Moscow and all St. Petersburg studios in the ranking. It is worth saying that the growth of the Dominion is a significant merit of its PR-activity in the market, since, according to our estimates, the real turnover of the studio is still lower than most of the companies in the top twenty.

The DOT agency lost one position, taking a worthy 7th place (135 points).

Promo Interactive entered the top ten in 8th place (113 points), rising 6 positions compared to last year.

The only representative of large network RA is PRIOR. RU showed a good growth indicator, taking 10th place (103 points), rising by as much as 12 positions compared to last year.

TOP-20Articul (102 points) lost two positions, taking a rather high 11th place with a gap from RA PRIOR by only 1 point.

Individ (97 points) retained 12th place. Stability, as they say, is a sign of skill.

Tekart (90 points), a company traditionally strong in search engine optimization, but almost not announcing new sites, naturally fell by 6 positions, taking 13th place.

Matik (73 points), rose 10 positions up, occupying the 14th line in the ranking. A fairly young company, which we noted last year, shows a good growth rate and will soon be able to seriously compete with the old-timers of the market.

In 15th place is Redkeds studio (70 points), the first representative of companies that were not included in last year’s ranking. This impressive start is due to the high quality of the company’s work, which is usually created with a large abundance of multi-media elements, animation and 3D.

16th place – Demis Group (68 points), increased its indicator by 26 positions. According to our estimates, such significant growth is largely due to good positions in the search results for key queries related to the creation of sites.

17th place – ADT (66 points). The company lost two positions, however, amid a period of some stagnation, this is a pretty decent figure. It’s also worth noting that ADT has been able to release several strong projects recently, boosting its reputation among colleagues.

18th place – Red Graphics System (63 points). Record growth of 31 positions and the first studio in the rating, which started its business not in Russia, but in Belarus. The company now has an office in Moscow.

19th place - AIST (62 points). Rapid growth of 11 positions up from last year. And the first company in the ranking is the manufacturer of alienated boxed CMS (NetCat).

20th place – QSOFT (61 points). A new company is also closing the twenty. A quick start, according to our estimates, is due to the high status of the studio among the Bitrix partner community, which is confirmed by a number of victories at large tenders for creating sites on this CMS system.

In the middle of the ranking, a number of companies also showed good growth indicators: an increase of 29 positions of UMI-Studio (another manufacturer of boxed CMS), and a 16 position rise of Ingate. There were also a number of newcomers to the rating (but not the market), who immediately took quite high positions among the first half of the rating - Web Otdel, Mahaon Group, KSAN Internet Laboratory, Biplan, etc.

I would also like to note that a number of companies that entered last year’s TOP-50 in high positions, this year could not keep them.

A record drop of 39 points suffered creative studio Bolotov (19 points and 47th place). This is due to the fact that the company is no longer engaged in the development of sites to order, to which the market responded.

It is also worth noting the fall of 20 positions of AIC Media Solution, 31 positions of Artus, 24 lines of the studio “6 floor” and 26 positions of RealWeb.

In general, several studios from last year’s twenty did not get into the 2007 rating: City-Info, Sema, Metric, Traffic. This is due to the low (or no) activity of these companies in the market.

Observation of the voting process, its dynamics can tell a lot about the situation in the market. The first 30% of the completed questionnaires belonged to the most active part of the representatives of web studios, and the situation that developed at the first stage was significantly different from the final results, when the questionnaires were filled out by all respondents (more than 50% of the questionnaires were filled out only after sending reminders about the close completion of the voting stage).

After processing the first 30% of the questionnaires Actis Systems and Studio Lebedev went almost level, the difference was less than 10 points. Given that the most active and informed respondents voted first, the day is not far off when the leader can change in our rankings. It is also worth noting that according to our own data, the turnovers of Actis Systems and Lebedev Studio for creating websites are almost equal.

Defa gruppe almost throughout the voting was on par with RBC-Soft, but at the first stage still ahead of its closest competitor by several points.

ADV/web-engineering consistently held fifth place throughout the voting, but from 6th to 10th place there were significant reshuffles.

Analyzing the obtained rating, we can draw a number of general conclusions about the state of the market. On the one hand, the stability of the top five shows that the market knows its leaders, and they have quite stable positions. On the other hand, it can be seen that within the rating there are significant changes in the middle of the list, which are most likely due not to the lack of any activity (or vice versa, its surge) of certain players, but rather to the PR component of their activities.

The TOP-100 included 35 companies that were listed in last year’s TOP-50, which indirectly indicates an increase in market awareness of their condition. On the other hand, the emergence of a large number of new studios, as well as significant permutations within the twenty indicate that the market is quite unstable, and easily lends itself to external influence. Many studios respond to media pressure rather than relying on their own data.

The gap of the first place from the end of the twenty more than 10 times (and almost two orders of magnitude from the end of the list) also suggests that the level of fame of medium-sized companies is still low, and many focus on only a few flagships of the market. This is also evidenced by the fact that not all studio representatives were able to indicate the full top ten leaders, limiting themselves to indicating the first 5-6 positions.

As we expected, most of the studios in the TOP-100 are from Moscow. However, the trend of regional studio growth that we mentioned last year is paying off. The first non-Moscow studio included in the rating is not from St. Petersburg (Dominion, 9th place, Samara). In 18th place is Red Graphics System, originally a Belarusian company, now has a representative office in Moscow. The first St. Petersburg company in the ranking is UMI Studio (21st place).

In general, among the first 50 studios of the rating there are quite a few studios not from Moscow, and almost all of them are also not from St. Petersburg: Jetstyle (39th place, Yekaterinburg), Interno (44th place, Rostov-on-Don), Made (45th place, St. Petersburg), Media Site (50th place, Yekaterinburg).

Recall the general statistics on the regional distribution of the studios that took part in the project (and filled the field “region”):



Countries

• Russia - 174
• Ukraine – 5 (+1 branch)
• Belarus – 2 (+ 1 branch)

Russia by district

• Moscow - 91 + 5 branches of non-Moscow studios
• St. Petersburg - 12 + 2 branches
• Central District (excluding Moscow) – 6
• Southern District - 5
• Northwest (without Peter) - 2
• Uralsky - 14
• Siberian - 6
• Volga - 21
• Far Eastern - 2

We asked independent experts of our project, as well as representatives of studios from the top ten to comment on the rating. (This section may be updated as further comments are received.)

Sergei Ryzhikov, Independent expert, director Bitrix "Yes, really, curious got the rating." Taking into account the method of testing, we actually got the opportunity to look at the market through the eyes of professionals in the market. In my opinion, the distribution of shares and the rating look different. But this is my subjective opinion, which, although based on a large amount of information, is still incomplete. I will refrain from commenting directly on who is in the wrong place, who is undervalued and why. I am sure that each company will draw its own conclusions from this rating of recognition of colleagues in the workshop. It seems to me that next year we should try to build a similar consumer rating and a rating of real balance sheet turnover. I think three of these rankings will give an insight into who professionals think is best, who consumers prefer, and who they actually give their money to.

Maria Govorun, The first thing that draws attention in the current rating is the retention of leadership by Artemy Lebedev Studio. This happens from the beginning of the appearance of web design in Russia to the present day. Leadership is largely justified because the site of the studio remains the most convenient and spectacular of the rating. At the same time, in recent years, the Studio is increasingly migrating to the offline side, and web design is increasingly moving to the periphery of its interests. The same can be said for most of its neighbors.

Retaining the top position of RBC-Soft is significant. In my opinion, large companies that started their activities on the Internet and in IT should be represented in the ranking in much larger numbers. And the only reason they didn't make it to the final list is that most of the community doesn't know what they're doing.

As for the entry of regional studios into the market, we can talk about quantitative rather than qualitative growth. I think now most large customers, regardless of geographical location, prefer to seek services from the popular Moscow brands. And regional studios in the near future will be satisfied with low-budget clients. The number of them and others will certainly increase. Traditionally, the exception will be St. Petersburg. However, one can count on the fact that as the number of connections in the province grows, there will be strong design groups in the cities-millionaires, which will take over the orders of local enterprises, including large ones.

Mikhail Kozlov, Independent Expert, Director of Internet Marketing at Ashmanov & Partners The list of leaders was quite predictable. These are companies that everyone hears, and their first place is the merit of not only designers, programmers and sales, but also PR specialists.

Much more interesting is the second or third ten. Along with paint developers there are companies known to us more as optimization (Tekart, Mathik, Demis and some others). We can expect that in the future their positions will be strengthened by medium-sized customers, who are much more convenient to work with one performer for the development and promotion of sites.

Anna Sverdlova, Managing Director, Actis Systems We are undoubtedly pleased that our colleagues once again appreciated the share of Actis Systems in the core business of our company. Last year, we know that this rating is used by many analysts and potential customers to gain a more objective understanding of our rather opaque market. It is really not surprising that the top 5 were studios that work mainly with Russian blue chips and international companies.

This year, as in the past, the positioning of companies is somewhat surprising, especially after the first 5: there is a feeling that even market professionals focus more on the “promotion” of the brand than on the real positions of some studios in the market (which consist not only of the number of projects, but also of their average cost). Also surprising are the low positions of studios that work mainly not with end customers, but with various advertising and BTL-agencies - after all, this segment also accounts for a fairly significant share of our market - most likely also because for such studios it is important to be "promoted" not for the general public and the community of site builders, but for a narrow circle of advertisers. And once again, it is surprising (albeit less than last year) that some studios have so far been judged on their past merits in site building, rather than their current position in the market.

Andrey Anishchenko, Director of the Department of Internet projects RBC SOFT Rating as a whole reflects the current picture. Members of the top three are really the leading players in the market. Due to the peculiarities of the composition, there are a number of inconsistencies, for example, X-project with two project managers does not pull at all on the 6th place. Web sites do not make it, it should not be on this list. Xan, for example, is more focused on presentations and promo cards, and his fame in this niche affects the ranking.

In general, with a number of exceptions, if we consider the ranking by groups, say 1-3, 4-10, etc., it resembles the real distribution.

In fact, these figures should be one of the components of this ranking, if you add such parameters as the number of employees, including the number of certified and recognized in the community, the number of projects in the last year.

Alexey Persianov, Director, ADV/web-engineering There is a suitable parable from Daniel Harms on this topic:

An amazing thing happened to me: I suddenly forgot what came first - 7 or 8. I went to the neighbors and asked them what they thought.
What was their surprise and my surprise when they suddenly discovered that they could not remember the order of the account either. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are remembered and then forgotten.
We all went to the commercial store “Gastronom”, which is on the corner of Znamenskaya and Posseyna Street, and asked the cashier about our bewilderment. The cashier smiled sadly, took out a small hammer from her mouth and, slightly moving her nose, said:
- I think seven goes after eight when eight goes after seven.
We thanked the cashier and rushed out of the store. But then, reflecting on the words of the cashier, we again became dull, since her words seemed to us devoid of any meaning. What were we supposed to do? We went to the summer garden and counted the trees. But when we reached 6, we stopped and began to argue: according to some, 7 followed, according to others - 8. We would argue for a very long time, but fortunately, a child fell off the bench and broke both his jaws. It distracted us from our argument. And then we went home.

In addition to the above, I want to enjoy the abundance of familiar and quality names in the top twenty. Hey. :

Gleb Ivanyushkin, Executive Director, Dot I consider this rating quite objective. First of all, this is due to the good awareness of market representatives about the study. A sample of more than three hundred studios can be considered fully representative. The rating will help end customers, as well as specialists in the field of offline advertising, choose a worthy contractor. As for the results of the rating, we can note the emergence of a large number of interesting studios that were included in the rating thanks to 3-5 bright works. As a rule, the positive image of these companies is predetermined by the talent of an art director or a leading designer. It is too early to talk about the financial turnover of these prodigies, but as they say, “actions are leading in the right direction.” Speaking of market leaders, their success can be regarded as expected. At the heart of the victory are: ten years of experience with leading companies, the complexity of the services provided, and of course, the right lobby from the media and the Internet community.

Alexey Goreslavsky, Independent expert, chief editor of the newspaper "Vzglyad" The list turned out to be very representative. Lebedev’s victory is quite natural, but rather based on the subjective perception of the brand, which in turn is based on excellent and long-term PR work. I was pleased with the relatively small gap in points in the top five, although the gap of 100 points for each place is very large. Surprisingly, the strong fall of the studio bolotov.ru, which made last year a great project drive.ru. Also surprised by the large number of newcomers in the first thirty.

Alexander Kushpel, Customers are interested, first of all, in the quality of the product and the development and operation process, the turnover is practically not interested in them. At the same time, it is difficult for us and our colleagues to assess the turnover of the company, but we can more accurately assess the quality of the studios. The rating on the quality level of studios will make the market more transparent for customers. In our opinion, the distribution by turnover is only relevant for the top five. To form a rating by turnover, radically different approaches to the study are required.

Philip Gurov, Independent expert, chief editor of "RASO" The concerns of the authors of the rating are fully confirmed. Companies engaged in (at least in a minimal amount) own promotion, received a significant advantage over no less successful, but more "closed" web-studios. On the other hand, the rating itself motivates the studios for more serious PR work and greater openness, which will certainly have a very positive impact on the development of the market as a whole.

The top ten leaders raise little doubt. As for the companies of the second half of the ranking, which scored less than 20 points, to a certain extent, places were distributed randomly. Most of these companies are almost unknown to the professional community. . .