Web Design Business Guide
Updated 19 March 2021
- 150 Tips And Techniques You Can Use Right Now
- Tips To To Nail It, Build A Thriving Business And Not Go Mad In The Process
Web Design is about the toughest service business you can choose to enter into. After 4 years, we're happy. Very happy. Happy because we've hired managers to run the day to day business using documented processes, systems and scripts that work time and again. And as we've done this, we've seen leads and sales conversion spike as our procedures become more efficient.
This page is 150 straight-shooting tips of real, proven help. Not vague bullcrap tips like "create a good team, and see the results" etc. Just real tips you can implement TODAY.
If you want a business (and not just a web design agency) that turns over a million dollars, read on.
We're talking having done it. The hard way. Lessons learned from the School of Life. We have consolidated everything we know to cover specific things you need to know to develop your MARKETING, STAFFING, PROCEDURES and BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.
Why should you listen to us? Read on.
Our Stats:
This page is 150 straight-shooting tips of real, proven help. Not vague bullcrap tips like "create a good team, and see the results" etc. Just real tips you can implement TODAY.
If you want a business (and not just a web design agency) that turns over a million dollars, read on.
We're talking having done it. The hard way. Lessons learned from the School of Life. We have consolidated everything we know to cover specific things you need to know to develop your MARKETING, STAFFING, PROCEDURES and BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.
Why should you listen to us? Read on.
Our Stats:
- We have over 1,000+ clients in Australia, with Sydney as our focus city.
- We have over 1,000+ clients in New Zealand, with Auckland as our focus city.
- We receive approx 2,000 Google searches directing to our two websites every week (through the power of SEO)
- We receive over 100+ new leads per week between our Australian and New Zealand businesses.
- A handpicked team of 7 staff who are highly organised, reliable and proactive
- Two business owner directors (friends, having met at Ernst & Young!)
- A "can do" approach to every client, with a limitations and additional scope policy to protect us.
The Basics - What To Do First, Before anything else...
- Get a Partner. Do not go into this business alone. Ever. You need to balance attention to detail/design and big picture/marketing/infrastructure. If you can do it all, great, but it's unlikely. Very unlikely. Look for someone who has the skills you don't have, and see if it works.
- Pick a name that is short and clients can remember it. Our business name, in hindsight, is too long, but the branding and optimisation is established so it's tricky to change it. Something like "Zyba" or "LittleGorilla" or "MagicWeb" or "WebMad" are examples of catchy names.
- Pick a domain that pertains to your target country. If you're American, get a .com. If British, a .co.uk. This helps search engines localize you.
- Get a Google My Business listing. Again, critical to get you on the Google Map when people want to see you exist (web design clients are the most anxious).
- Get Business Email. This is critical. Don't use Hotmail or GMAIL. Don't want to spend money but have grand plans of growth? Use Zoho (free).
- Advertise a Phone Number, but NEVER your cellular! A freephone is best, but an answer service is even better where you have a gatekeeper to take messages and screen the leads. This will save your hours (see Sales below).
- AVOID SEO Providers. The number of cowboys in this "industry" is laughable. Don't hire ANYONE to do your SEO, and be prepared to learn it yourself.
- Build your own website to your highest standard, but don't overcomplicate it. Promote your services, ensure you have clear writing, direct calls to action and testimonials. Don't have any clients? Build some mock websites to show your skills.
- Support and Accounts. These are the MOST important departments of your business if you plan to have long standing client relationships (and billing!). Create a dedicated email account i.e. accounts@ and support@ to track everything that your clients ask. Prepare scripts to answer common questions to save ongoing time.
Once you have all of the above setup or in motion, you're ready to take on sales and delivery projects to your clients. We outline hundreds of tips below, in a number of areas, to make it seamless and cash-producing.
The "Departments" of a Digital Agency
Our business is structured around the following departments, and it works seamlessly:
- Sales - the most critical part of your business. Patience and quick decision making is vital here - bad leads DRAIN your time.
- Product/Work in Progress - this is where your project manager(s) work, getting clients over the line. You'll need driven, proactive people who bring an essential trait - attention to detail.
- Accounts/Support - answering all ongoing questions from your loyal and valued clients. Your team member needs to be laterally thinking as questions will come from ALL ANGLES and often have nothing to do with your business.
- Business Development, Human Resources and Infrastructure - the core element of a growing business, where you can consolidate your entrepreneurial goals with real action points. This MUST be the business owner, who can set things up and
In this industry, no one person can do every aspect effectively. It's too demanding, and you will spread yourself too thin. Think big. At the minimum, hire a project manager who can assist you with accounts and support. This leaves you to focus on sales and business development.
Staff Requirements and Roles
- Project Manager - this role interacts with the client, designs the website, makes the revisions, issues the final invoice and publishes the website. As you grow, you will need MORE Project Managers. And your existing Project Managers need to be equipped and experienced to train the new.
- Website Developer - this role is not client facing, but instead designs the website, makes the revisions and assists the client's Project Manager. This role works well for a Project Manager-in-waiting or a technical expert.
- Sales Manager - the sales manager makes the call on all leads, talking with potential clients and providing quotes.
- Sales Associate - the sales associate will follow up the leads, and process sales (invoicing). The role can be combined with the Sales Manager when the associate is experienced enough.
- Accounts Expert - an expert to keep money flowing. Often clients will ask "please re-send this invoice" - this role demands fast action!
- Support Expert - web design is not a field with any scope, and 50%+ of your support queries won't even relate to web design. Having a lateral thinker to handle all of this in a timely manner is essential.
- Social Media Manager - this role sits separate to almost everything, requiring social posting, audience engagement and interaction in a number of social media profiles.
- Content Writer - an expert in content, because with every websites needs professional, engaging content.
- Graphic Designer - clients will request logos and specific design features are all part of web design, so an experienced graphic designer will be near to essential.
- Office Manager - probably the most critical person, who often works invisibly. Think of the office manager as everyone's PA.
Still think a web design agency is a one person business after reading that?
Organisation Structure
- If you're going to set your goals on running sizeable business (say 10+ employees), having an organisational structure is CRITICAL.
- Who sits where depends on how involved you want to be, but you MUST segregate Sales and WIP/Project Management and Accounts/Support. This ensures your business can run efficiently without "cross-contamination" where numerous sets of eyes end up looking over the same issue.
- We suggest having a Back Office Manager (covering your legacy clients needing support), a Front Office Manager (reviewing WIP on a weekly basis to push things along if needed while supervising and assisting Project Managers) and finally, a Sales Manager to handle all of your leads and processing sales.
- If you make it clear who works where and is responsible for what tasks and areas of responsibility, your team members will take more ownership, grow their confidence and learn at a faster pace.
Generating Leads
- "Have website, can build websites" - how can I let everyone know I'm available to take on work?
- Before you even worry about sales, you need to generate a sufficient level of leads. About 10/week is perfect for a new business finding its feet. But just how (the hell) do you get them? That is indeed the million dollar question.
- Let's evaluate some lead generating options:
Adwords
- Be very cautious before launching PPC advertising - the costs may outweigh your revenue.
- Take an example: the CPC for keywords such as "web design <city>" is likely to be around $20. If you want 100 visitors to your website, that's going to take a budget of $2,000
- Apply a conversion rate of 5% (we receive 2,000 views a week to our website, and approx 100 leads are generated), meaning you will get 5 leads who will contact you (phone, contact form or email) requesting a quote.
- Out of these five people, assume you'll turn 20% of all leads into a customer. This means from 5, you're down to 1 "won" customer.
- The acquisition cost for this sale is $2,000. Enough said.
- Our Advice: AVOID
Local Directory Listings
- Local directories, including YellowPages, are largely dead. Don't be fooled promises of "priority displays" and "top listing". No one is looking as these directories in any significant volume, so don't bother listing in any of them. A total waste of money.
- Our Advice: AVOID
Printed Advertising
- A tough one - will the right audience see the advert? This is a roll of the dice. Print media is dying, but the rates are still high.
- Print is a one-day event, blink and it's gone. Your advert needs to have buzz and branding to get calls. A one-off print advert won't deliver that.
- Our Advice: AVOID
Radio Advertising
- We haven't done it, but if you have the budget, it can be effective. Radio gets into your client's headspace and makes you seem approachable.
- Our Advice: TRY IT IF YOU'RE COMFORTABLE AND GET ATTRACTIVE RATES
Social Media Marketing
- So much hype is in social media that you may worry you're missing out if you're not connecting with potential clients.
- Let's be clear - social media is great if you're flogging clothing, merchandise and other tat - these are visual products and people love to see stuff they want to buy, but it's another story when it comes to B2B.
- To date, we've invested a LOT into our social channels - our returns? Positive SEO signals (see below), and nothing else. Any leads have fallen away like the fourth last cat video you watched. It's also attracted a fair share of pests who want to "network" with us, leading to spam. Pesky.
- Our Advice: AVOID in the sense of lead generating, but have a passive effort for SEO.
PR Firms/Media
- To have a successful PR campaign, you need to have a hell of an edge. Web design in media is about as sexy as a tuna cannery, and readers don't care.
- PR firms may tell you that your branding is "exciting" and promise coverage, but your audience won't convert.
- Our Advice: AVOID
Right, so with all the paid digital and traditional marketing channels eliminated above, is there any hope?
YES THERE IS.
Close your eyes and imagine FREE ADVERTISING. FREE LEADS...
The Million Dollar Solution: FANTASTIC OPTIMISATION
- Google is your friend - If you're selling websites, the constant question will be "where do you rank sites in Google...number 1?". As uneducated as this question is, to be a better web designer, you need to OWN your SEO and know exactly what you do, so you can advise clients when they ask. If you have a proven formula, you'll be better able to communicate.
- SEO is key - why pay for adverts when you can get free advertising. Target your location (i.e. search for "web design (city)") and see the results. Set your goal on being #1 or #2. Your drive must be in achieving this.
- Expand this
Sales
- You will be FLOODED by tire kickers - it's too easy for the public to contact you and ask "how much for a website for.....". 75% are idealists and no-hope individuals looking to "reach out" and be entrepreneurial. Within those 75%, <1% will ever go ahead. Learn to delete such enquiries and not drain your sales resources attending to them.
- Be approachable - With good leads, sales still don't come easy to web design agencies. Be under no expectation that it is easy money. Make sure your emails are friendly, you includes lines like "if you have any questions, please let me know" and prompt replies are essential. Whatever your leads are asking, make sure you can answer it.
- Cold Calling - it DOES work. It's a game of numbers, but as you're targeting established businesses, you can pick the industries you want to work with.
- Use Contact forms - potential clients LOVE contact forms on your website - they're easy to fill in and send.
Procedures
Procedures! Where would you be without them? The delivery of every website to your client is conditional on two things: great staff and set procedures. These two factors can push through stubborn clients.
We see the structure of such a business as Steps > Procedures > Scripts
STEPS
To simplify things, let's outline the steps in the web design process:
PROCEDURES
SCRIPTS
We see the structure of such a business as Steps > Procedures > Scripts
STEPS
To simplify things, let's outline the steps in the web design process:
- Receive Client Deposit and Acknowledge
- Prompt Client for Information
- Confirm receipt of information, and advise on estimated draft delivery date
- Present first draft to client, requesting revisions
- Follow up client for revisions
- Receive revisions, acknowledge receipt and processing time estimate
- Present second draft, request revisions.
- Receive revisions, acknowledge receipt and processing time estimate
- Present final version of website.
- Issue final invoice.
- Follow up final invoice for payment.
- Receive final payment, and publish website.
- Handover website with self-management guidance.
PROCEDURES
- It is these steps above that form the basis of every procedure your web design company must create, perfect and execute, and repeat again for every client. Creating scripts (see below) to include in these procedures is essential to help your team keep everything flowing.
SCRIPTS
- Scripts make or break your business efficiency - polished scripts are the golden ticket to spending time making new money from new clients, not being bogged down in the existing clients.
- Scripts are addressed in their own section below.
Client Services (AKA How to Make Money from the General Public)
- The person who said "the customer is always right" is an idiot. In web design, the client can often be misinformed, misguided or generally mistrusting. Your clients will end up owning you unless you're strict and consistent in your approach.
- DO NOT OVERSERVICE. Overservicing means instant replies to emails (creates a reliance, and the risk of ongoing flurries of non-revenue earning emails). It also means attending to every customer request, change of mind etc without advising of charges to curb this behaviour. When an email comes in, take your considered time when replying.
- Out of Scope Fees. Clients will all too quickly ditch their "must haves" if an additional fee (for the additional work required!) is quoted. Do not be afraid to have a list of "Additional Scope Services" and present it to clients.
- Your business needs resources (see below). Resources that deal with clients who bring questions about SEO, Adwords, Social Media marketing and everything else. It's no good answering this with some Google results. You need pages on your business website that covers and answers these questions.
- Prompting in essential. Clients need weekly, periodic reminders that you are waiting for their information/edits/revisions/logo/final payment etc. Ensure you have processes that push your clients along to publication.
- Your Clients are Your Everything. Without them, your business is over. Treat them with respect and never take advantage of them. Ever. We see so many amateurs in the business creating disasters, and we wonder how they can keep their businesses going. The answer seems to be extortionate pricing for their victims. Be fair and be real.
CRM
- Having a CRM is essential. A lot of web designers and digital agencies work on shared documents and spreadsheets. As you grow your clients, tracking each client becomes a nightmare unless it's clear how you are going to monitor your work-in-progress. Having hokey pokey spreadsheets and shared files isn't going to cut it when you need to see the status of anything at any time from anywhere.
- Examples of popular CRMs include Basecamp, ASANA and Salesforce with pricing ranging from free (ASANA) to $200+/user/month. You need to pick a solution that does
The essential features of a CRM are:
- Ease of adding team members - this is actually the most important. Salesforce will require you to work with your account manager, add a licence, review the contact and several days later, your team member will be added, so you can then start the process again with every app the team member needs! ASANA on the other hand requires you to send them an invite....so about 5 seconds vs 5-10 days.
- Logical to use - sounds obvious, but so many CRMs are illogical and horrible to use. Take a free trial before you commit. Compare 2-3 as use them all on trials if you have the time - it's very important.
- Ongoing costs/contacts - you need to know how much the service will cost per month, year and how you will be billed. ASANA is free for up to 15 users (plenty for a startup) where as the same team using Salesforce would be looking at approx $20,000 a year on basic licences. BIG difference.
- Speed of communication/elimination of latency - your CRM must NEVER hang or act "gluggy" when you use it - this will lead to distractions and downtime. Make sure it's fast.
- Phone/iPad integration - a CRM which has an app that installs on your mobile devices (to get a 360 degree review of your business on-the-go) is essential.
- No limitations in Projects - making sure you can add as MANY projects as you like without a cap is essential. Would you want to limit your business because your CRM is limited?!
Digital Storage
- Let's embrace that everything is in the cloud, and let's get your business there efficiently with a perfectly suited provider. By being on the cloud, you can have access to your business files anywhere and some services also allow you to control which team members see/access what files - this is critical to your business growth, as well as security.
- There are plenty of providers. GoogleDrive, Dropbox, Microsoft Cloud. We're suggesting your business adopts Dropbox - while the support levels is sub-par, it's perfectly affordable and fast to implement.
- Dropbox is the big player, and it's free. You can get 1TB (1TB!) for around $10/month which is all you'll need allowing you to control access to suit your organisation structure. The problem comes when adding team members - do you want to pay $10/month for each of them to have 1TB too? Probably not. Usually 10GB will be plenty.
Website CMS
As web developers, it's obvious what backend to use, right? Well not always. After (what feels like a) lifetime we should know the best place, and we're confident with in suggesting Weebly for basic websites and BigCommerce for eCommerce. If you're going to offer web design as a business, having providers with proven CMS and trusted support is absolutely essential. These guys are the best to deal with.
Our Winner Roundup:
Our Winner Roundup:
- Need a Basic Website? - Wordpress is a hassle if you're wanting quick wins and seamless backend, Joomla takes a special person, WIX isn't as good as it could be, and our experience has led us to attest to Weebly - a flying-the-radar tech star which believes in solutions for everyday business.
- Need eCommerce? - Shopify is good, their eCommerce blog is even better, but we totally recommend BigCommerce - if you're starting an eCommerce and want to turnover millions, go with a partner who works with companies that achieve that sales level (think Toyota, Camelbak and Martha Stewart Cafes).
Collecting Your Money
- Sending invoices is easy. Getting payments...not as easy. You need to be as accessible in collecting money as you are when responding to leads.
- It's totally worth the investment in a SaaS accounting system, such as Xero where for $20/month you can send your invoices with a "Pay Now Online" link, which encourages instant (or more immediate) payment.
- SaaS services allow you send statements and reminders, making cash management very easy. If you have 50+ live projects and 500+ existing clients, it is essential to have your invoicing system organised.
- If you're smaller, so save money you may want to use PayPal to send invoices; that's a cheaper option ongoing.
- Whatever you decide, don't be afraid to send reminders - it's standard practice is business, and as a B2B business, your clients will expect to be reminded.
Additional Services to Sell
- As a web development agency, you're not limited to just selling websites. Your clients will ask you about 100 other potential products and services - why not sell them?
- You can start with easy add-ons, such as Google Analytics setup, a Google+/Google My Business page, business email hosting and Mailchimp setup. All of these setups are very formulaic and you can create a procedure to delivery each one consistently.
- If you want to get creative, and have the skillset, or the team to deliver, you can look at logo design, business cards, graphic design and even SEO services. These one-off services can hike your margin and also build a better relationship with your client.
Scripts
- Investing in scripts in ALL aspects of your business is essential. Scripts save time, ingrain procedures and make your life as a business owner much easier.
- Scripts cover everything in your business, not 95%, but EVERYTHING. If you don't have a script, it falls on the business owner to either empower the team member or write the script ad-hoc, the latter of which is a growth killer.
- The best way to start is to compose a script for each element of your process - a sales script, a review your draft script and a publication script. By making everything consistent, you fix your business processes and make your operations far more efficient. Just leave room to tailor responses for any questions in the opening section and you're sorted. Your staff will thank you, and your clients will appreciate all-encompassing emails that pre-empt questions.
- Train and empower your staff to suggest improvements or additions to the scripts when needed; this ensures everyone is involved in the continuous improvement of the business.
Resources
- There is NO LIMIT to the questions you will be asked. A web design or creative agency is like no other - it offers services that aren't limited, and you WILL be questioned about anything and everything.
- Take an example - on any day, you may receive emails pertaining to your clients and their:
- expired domain
- bogus/scam domain invoice
- the inability to change the registrant email on their domain
- the renewal date on their domain
- changing a domain to another domain
- Buying the .com equivilent on their existing domain
- Adding email to a domain
- Focus your resources on three key areas: SEO, Technical (Domains/Hosting etc) and Invoicing/Accounts. If you can consolidate a FAQ page for each, as well as preparing email scripts, then you're 95% of the way to a much smoother operations.
- Client Questions get repetitive. If you don't have pre-set answers, you're not resourcing your business well enough.
Our 9 BEST TIPS - Proven to Make You $1m+
1. Eliminate Repetitive Tasks with Video Procedures for your Team
- Tasks can get repetitive quickly. Rather than type up intensive training manuals that require a user to closely read your instructions, why not record a video and show them what you do, and narrate the process as you record it?
- Recording software such as Bandicam is a steal at $39
2. Pre-Screen all Job Applications on ONE Factor - Responsiveness
- Web design and responsiveness go hand-in-hand - while emails don't need (and shouldn't be) attended to obsessively, having same-day replies is essential to keeping projects moving and communicating with clients that there is traction. Letting emails sit there for 1-2 days means delays, angry or confused clients and creates a risk of distrust.
- When we hire, we look for responsiveness - the ability to respond, action, resolve and take ownership for any client interaction. Most enquiries are routine, but having team members who keep the engine running are vastly superior to ones who can't seem to find time or self-manage themselves to send replies.
- The BEST way to test this is to set a trial task, such as replicating an existing website - those applicants who do this in a timely manner and communicate with you their status are infinitely better than those who let the trial task sit there and don't show any signs of completing the task. While this may be obvious, a trial task is ultimately the best metric to use before making any hiring decisions. You can cut out of a lot of wasted interview time by initiating a trial task before proceeding further.
3. Hire a Business Manager within 1 Month of Launching
- If your aim is a big business as quickly as possible, then hiring a business manager is ESSENTIAL in the delivery.
- A business manager is going to let you focus on growing your business while they take care of the day-to-day issues (aka fires) that need resolving.
- Your business manager needs to be involved from as close to day 1 as possible, almost acting as your business partner (but taking a salary) and tackling the issues that come up with clients, staff, accounts, support etc that other employees get stuck on.
- A business manager needs to be empowered, giving autonomy and control to properly function - avoid "managing the business manager" and let them be your saviour. Give your business manager business development work - challenge them to make improvements and see another brain make advancements in your business that you never thought would be achieved.
4. Have a TO-DO List that is 75%+ Money Making Tasks
- It's all too easy to have a TO-DO list full of tasks that are "easy", "safe" and "distracting". It's likely that tasks are zero revenue earning.
- Monitor your to-do list. You MUST eliminate/re-assign 75% of tasks that aren't money making. There's no way to progress UNLESS you actively do this on a DAILY basis.
- A money making task is something that directly leads to more sales/revenue/leads/conversions. It's all very easy to develop tasks for "business development" but unless it's money, it's most likely not worthy of your time. In the opening months of your business, revenue is everything - investing time in anything beyond revenue and production is best avoided.
- Trust your instincts - if you could only do 3 tasks a day, which ones would you do? Eliminate those that wouldn't ever make it - they're only there to hold you back.
5. Integrate "Pay Now" into Your Invoice for Faster Money
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6. Invest in Your Optimisation (and Don't Blow $$$ on "Marketing")
- DO NOT HIRE A PUBLIC RELATIONS AGENCY in your first year of operations. A creative agency needs to be SEEN online on a REGULAR basis, not read about in the local paper for a fleeting moment in the business section.
- INVEST in optimisation resources that give you a framework for results - we recommend Brian Dean and his excellent SEO That Works program, which is excellent value when compared to a corporate SEO provider.
- DO NOT HIRE AN SEO PROVIDER - you invariably will be spammed from India (and the world) with offers from the likes of "Pinky Sharma" who offer you the world for only $99/month. To be a growth business, you MUST learn how to optimize your own website. If you take a local agency, you'll pay $1,000+ per month. And you'll have no awareness or oversight of what exactly is being done, and no ability to suggest anything other than "keywords". SEO Providers a BEST AVOIDED - the most valuable part of a business is its staff, the next is an optimised website.
- SEE OPTIMISATION AS AN INVESTMENT - if you can obtain, for example, 20 leads a week from your website, this is probably worth about $10,000 in marketing spend. Investing to get such a return is essential - why be like other companies spending money and time on advertising when you can bring customers through the door for free. Optimisation is our #1 takeaway from this entire page.
7. Pay Bonuses Regularly and Use Incentive Plan(s)
- Your team members will appreciate being rewarded for making your business money. For example, beyond a standard web design fee, it's easy to offer a range of add-ons once your business has built trust with the client. Your staff will respond better to clients if they can earn a bonus on their final bill.
- A suggested incentive is 10% of the additional add-ons agreed to during the website build process NOT originally invoiced - often a client will decide during the build to add extra pages, a Google My Business page, business email etc. Your project manager will facilitate this setup with extra love given they receive a cut when the account is finalized.
- This doesn't mean you should pay your staff any less - just see the 10% expense as 90% additional revenue for your bottom line, bettering your business, the client and the team member who handles it. Trust us, it works really well!
8. Get PROPER Website Analytics from Day ONE.
Recommended Provider(s)
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9. SAY "NO": Crazy clients come at ALL prices, cheap, high end.
- Crazy is EVERYWHERE. When you least expect it, a client will go crazy. Warning signs of crazy include five "urgent" emails received within 15 minutes, an avalanche of over-prescriptive guidance which goes beyond the highest degree of detail, panic attack correspondence with nonsensical wording, arrogance with a tone that talks down to your team member(s) etc. There are many more.
- Crazy (or "cray cray") is VERY difficult to deal with unless you're experienced and equipped. The most IMPORTANT thing is this - do not respond with any urgency. In fact, let crazy have its moment, or moments, and then respond with a clear email addressing the comments raised in a neutral tone. NEVER respond negatively to crazy - crazy isn't rationale to start with, so antagonising crazy just leads to hyper-crazy and an invariable meltdown.
- Crazy clients invariably need to be told NO to most of their (unreasonable) requests; if you're able and willing to entertain them, you must outline charges and explain in 2-3 sentences why the charge. Crazy often doesn't like extra costs, so is likely to recede knowing that it's better to save money upfront than have the website or creative work in keeping with their unique ideas.
Roundup - Reducing the Exposure to Crazy for a Healthy Business in the Short and Long Term
- Never take a client that's time sensitive - any stated urgency will lead to problems if and when the client stalls, and working under this fictitious urgency gives a client the upper hand. It's not recommended.
- Never take on a client who appears to talk down to you - it's not a nice trait, and will invariably lead to difficulties.
- Avoid any client without a clear business idea - anyone who will "work it out as we go along" is likely to be unable to complete their website, leading to wasted time and unbilled final accounts.
- Do not take a client you have a bad feeling about them even if you're low on sales and are desperate for the feeling of money coming - crazy can latch on to weakness and inexperience and kill your spirit, thus sucking up resources for making quality sales in the short term.
- Crazy has no demographic; we've been burned my a lot of crazy that couldn't be isolated or grouped. The critical factor is raising your guard and enjoying the power of rejecting leads. They may chase you, demand you to work with them - all signs of crazy best avoided.
- Anyone who says "we're looking to spend as little as possible" or "call me within the next hour, it's urgent" are potential clients best avoided.
The FIVE Biggest GROWTH KILLERS
1. Indulging Your Clients - Over-service, instant replies, freebies
- Inconsistent levels of service can't be repeated, and lead to problems with clients. Client interactions need to be carefully managed and providing services for free is almost always fatal; clients feel extra special and demand more service, getting sore when it's later refused.
- Instant replies "feed monsters" and is a behaviour best avoided - it's unsustainable and ugly.
- Case example - early in our business, we processed edits for a client one email at a time - the client would send 10 emails an hour, and we'd reply, with eagerness, to every one. This was crazy and later led to support tickets coming in asking "please call me this afternoon as I want to know about Google Analytics and MailChimp". Because the upstream behaviour was so attentive, the downstream effect was very onerous on our business and team.
2. Not Giving Up Control - preventing your staff from stepping up
- Repetitive tasks are to be immediately codified; if you're doing something that you know inside out, you're holding your business back.
- Create guidance (i.e. video) for your staff members to take over key tasks, and empower them
- If something you do feels inefficient, challenge it and take it to the team - ask for ideas for making it better; encourage working smarter every day.
- Every day, hand things over to your team - don't over-manage tasks, instead let them come to you with issues only when all possible solutions have been exhausted. Being too accessible means your staff become dependent on you, shuffling things to your attention rather than working hard to solve issues that require time investment and lateral thought.
3. Being too Accessible - allowing leads to approach without merit
- Leads are beasts. Before they commit, they expect the world - instant phone backs, education about broad concepts, solutions for their often weird and illogical business ideas, and very low pricing.
- For these reasons, make your clients work for you and delete bad ones. You can quickly tell who bad ones are.
- We're even looking at becoming exclusive, informing potential clients on our homepage copy that we "don't work with every client" to promote some status to eliminate the no-hopers. And there will always be plenty of no-hopers around.
4. Focusing on a Single Market - limiting yourself to national wins
- You may only wish to work locally initially, but this may limit your revenue opportunities from businesses nationwide or on the outer limits of your location.
- Despite localizing in search engines for a certain area, it's normal for leads to come from further afield. You can either burn them off or develop them - the choice is yours, but if you're starting out it's worth working to win work that's suited to your business.
5. Not Hustling for Reviews & Testimonials - the client experience is critical
- Your testimonials are everything, so after a successful website publication with a well behaved client, incentivize your client for a testimonial. You can then quickly upload this on to your website, attaching the client's logo for added authority.
- Potential clients scour over testimonials, so a recent list is critical.
WARNING - UNIQUE Life Long Issues a Web Design Agency will ALWAYS Face...
- On any given day, your business is exposed. Questions are endless and go far beyond website hosting, website CMS and domain renewals. They'll cover EVERYTHING that's online and a client deals with - there's simply too many to create a full list....
- Examples of coverage areas include Outlook, Outlook.com, Google Apps, PayPal, PayPal SSL certificates, PayPal invoices, expired domains, domain extensions, blogging issues, social media accounts, iPhone integration, eCommerce, eBooks, and the list goes on.
- Whatever your client requests assistance for, your support team is the SOLE connector for the sustained retention of the client-service provider relationship.
Concluding Comments
- A web design business is like no other - scope of service doesn't really factor into a client's mind, so you're support team will inherit their legacy and be compelled to field every possible question, many unrelated to web design or any services you've provided in the past.
- Many clients will use your sales team to sound-check their business idea but never go ahead with a website, even after saying they will. Avoiding idealists is critical for sustained sales.
- Strange issues will ALWAYS come up, as domains, nameservers, hosting outages and 100+ other factors interact with your business. AVOID the tendency for urgency and handle everything in a reliable, repeatable manner. Don't involve 3-4 people on a task that could take 1-2. The less sets of eyes on everything, the more profitable you'll be.
- ENJOY your business - clients rely on your service more than they'll ever admit, and web design is a skill and process that's very hard to get right on mass - if you implement the above, you'll find everything so much easier.