Starting a website design business is a fantastic opportunity. The industry is scaling rapidly. But because it’s a highly competitive industry, you should know how to lay out the foundation carefully.
Starting your own web design company requires a lot of time and hard work.
Follow these tips so that you can make more informed decisions to grow your business:
1. Create Your Own Portfolio Website
As soon as you pick a niche, it’s time that you start building your website. Creating a site is no more a sole developer task. You can easily create a site from scratch. WordPress lets you do this with relative ease:
Here are some tips to keep in mind when developing a portfolio site:
- Keep it simple yet engaging.
- Use high-quality images and videos. These should make up at least 70-80% of your content.
- Make your site mobile responsive. Since most web traffic now comes from mobile, ensure that your site is highly responsive to all devices.
- Speed is everything. Make sure that you compress site images without sacrificing quality. Ensure you don’t add too many plug-ins, as this can bloat your site.
- Seamless checkout process. Payment gateway should seamlessly work across all platforms, no matter what kind of payment getaway you’re using.
2. Decide Who Will Be Your Target Client
It isn’t enough that you add that vague “web developer” title on your LinkedIn profile. For you to gain traction, you need to specialize.
At Sytian Productions, (website design Philippines) we always tell clients that once you’ve established your niche, then make sure that you communicate this on your portfolio site and other online mediums.
As part of the process, ensure you create that ideal customer persona.
3. Sharpen Your Skills, Pick Your Tools, Specialize
Web development is a pretty broad field to specialize in. While being a jack-of-all-trades can be looked at positively, focusing on specific areas is much more practical. Not only is this easier for you to market yourself, but it also positions you as an expert in your field.
When you start a web design company, think about how you will build a specialization. When choosing a niche, you also need to understand the ins and outs of the web design of your clients. That way, you can focus on their needs more thoroughly. This helps you save time (and energy!) on creating impressive results.
Let’s say you want to focus on a specific type of web design like ecommerce or photography websites. You can also easily convert built sites on a site builder to another platform. Similarly, you can also offer clients additional services such as website maintenance.
4. Set Your Business Goals
Before you start building everything, you must have a roadmap for your business. Without one, it’s much harder to steer yourself in the right direction.
To help set yourself on the right track, make sure to answer the following questions:
What’s your company’s mission?
Try to sum up everything that you do, who you want to serve, and why you want to do it in the first place. Then, come back to this every once in a while to remind yourself why you started your business.
How do you want people to look at you?
Do you want to be seen as a freelance designer? An agency? A digital specialist? Make sure you choose a name that strongly represents your role in your clients’ lives.
How many clients do you want to work with every month?
There’s a difference between maximizing yourself to running yourself to the ground to the point of being burned out. You can take on a reasonable number of clients to continually give them the best service. Try to limit how many clients you can take on every month.
Where do you see yourself a year from now? How about in 5 years?
This could involve how much money your business is generating and how many clients you can handle.
5. Build Your Design Business Website
One of the nice things about being a web designer or developer is that you don’t need to think too much about this part of the startup process.
Here are some tips:
- Create a website that your clients would pay for. Make sure you build a site they’d be willing to buy. That way, it’s so much easier to gain their trust. In a way, it’s like unconsciously telling them, “See what we did here? We can also do that for you!”
- Make sure it’s error-free. The second you make errors, prospects will question every decision you make. Making the first impression is vital.
- Include testimonials. Showcasing testimonials from your site clears any doubts your clients might have in taking the next step in filling up a form or giving you a call.
- Optimize it for SEO. Ensure your site ranks for the right search terms to rank higher on search engines.
6. Scale Up and Provide More Value
Once you’ve established your site, you must consider ways to build more value for your offerings.
You can do this by signing up as an affiliate for your favorite products on WordPress. It could be hosting, plug-ins or themes, and then recommend them to your customers for a commission.
Also, never stop learning new things! Complete courses, attend conferences, and think of other ways to grow!
Over to You
So there you have it. Following these tips, starting a web design business doesn’t have to be overwhelming.
