The Money Issue

Jim McCauley speaks to agency heads and web experts and discovers how, in an uncertain world, it’s not only possible to survive, but to positively thrive

- Jim McCauley

Whatever your political leaning may be, it’s hard to argue right now that we’re living in anything other than interesting times. The year 2016 served up two enormous helpings of the unthinkable; firstly in the form of the referendum, which saw the UK vote by the narrowest of margins to leave the EU, and then later in the year when Americans chose Donald Trump as their president.

Spin forward to now and Trump is already teetering on the verge of impeachment, while in the UK we’ve had a snap general election that’s blown up right in the government’s face, leaving us with a hung parliament and Brexit talks starting for real. The only certainty now – death and taxes aside – is uncertainty, and it’s perfectly natural to feel nervous in such a volatile world. And if you’re running your own web business or trying to get by as a freelancer, this feeling is only magnified. Prospects might look bleak, but are things really that bad?

We’ve been speaking to web professionals and studio heads to get a feeling for how the web industries are coping in these uncertain times, and here’s the good news: they’re broadly optimistic that things will work out. It might be a rough ride, but as players in a business where rapid evolution is the order of the day, they’re sure that they can adapt to whatever’s thrown at them in the coming years.

The negatives…

Which isn’t to say that everything’s fine. “The referendum itself and the election were hugely disruptive for a lot of our UK local government customers,” says Suraj Kika, CEO at Jadu (jadu.net). Fortunately this didn’t result in any cancelled projects; however it did result in delays that play out over months afterwards. “No one enjoys that kind of disruption,” says Kika.