TargaWeb, creator of TargaCalc

TargaWeb was founded in early 2021 by me, Daron Harvey.

I began building websites way back in 1996, and have had a 30 year long career in various roles from design, development, web project management, business analysis, corporate, franchise and partner development and much more.

This provided me with many years of experience in coding, website management, and developing the online presence of small and medium size businesses right up to global corporations with turnovers well in excess of $3 billion.

One of my areas of responsibility at Hertz between 2014 and 2021 was pricing clarity and global compliance to meet the requirements of the EU Commission, the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) and other governing bodies around the globe.

In plain English, this meant... among other things... being ultra transparent on price, so that customers know exactly:

• what they would get for their money,
• what was included,
• what was not included,
• the cost of optional add-ons,
• mandatory fees and taxes,
• cancellation options and charges,
• etc.

This essentially meant that customers would be able to make an informed decision, without the fear of any nasty surprises later on.

When I left Hertz in early 2021, post Covid, I decided to return to building websites for small to medium size businesses, just like I did before I was asked to join Hertz 21 years earlier.

However, it quickly became clear that I was now competing against a growing number of newcomers to the industry who relied on no-code website builder tools like WordPress, Wix and SquareSpace to produce basic websites quickly and cheaply.

This consequently led to the growth of commoditised templated websites, undercutting on price, and a lot of corner cutting on quality, reliability and ongoing support.

By intentionally avoiding the constraints and pitfalls of the typical website builder platforms that most newcomers to web design turn to, I aimed to provide greater flexibility for clients, instead of compromising their business requirements by trying to fit them into a pre-built template.

It was this uncompromising approach which gave birth to TargaCalc, and the development of bespoke online cost calculators, which also double up as highly effective lead generators and do far more than just add up numbers!

I needed to apply my technical and business skills to give TargaWeb a unique angle. The solution came in the form of a request from an existing client who sent me a link to a web page and asked Can you build one of these for my website?

That link led to a quote calculator

I knew that I could build him one, because I had already built a far more comprehensive quote calculator on TargaWeb.com to allow potential clients to instantly generate an estimate for their next website.

This web design cost calculator contained multiple options, features, services, etc., as well as advisory information for each option.

It also provided interest free split payment plans, and... very importantly for the customer and TargaWeb, it also allowed the customer to send full details of the quote... including payment options... to their email address at the press of a button, which also sent the email to here, at TargaWeb!

I applied those same skills to create a bespoke calculator for my client, but with more features, greater flexibility and accuracy than the example he had asked me for originally.

Now his potential customers can generate instant quotes for themselves, and his team of service engineers can also produce instant quotes whilst onsite. The customer gets the quote emailed to them, and the boss gets a copy too!

And so TargaCalc was born, and adopted the phrase...

Lead generation tools you can count on… literally!