Running a web design business is not the same as being a web designer, and it comes with a lot more challenges that have nothing to do with web design. Completing all of the accompanying tasks that come with running a business can make it difficult to find the time to finish your projects and dedicate as much attention to each of them as you would like.
But you can be a web designer who only accepts projects with achievable deadlines, from the perfect clients, who can truly bring you profit. If you scale your business, this is possible. Here are some of the measures you can take to finally turn your business into your dream job. The purpose of each of them is to help you increase your profit, without increasing your expenses, and even without increasing your workload.
#1. Save Time on Repetitive Tasks
Imagine not having to spend as much time preparing proposals for your clients, looking for projects, dealing with your finances, etc. The time you would save, you could spend working on your projects, accepting more work, becoming better at your job, furthering your education, and learning new skills. Finding ways to minimize the time you spend on tasks that take a lot of time is a great way to do this.
For instance, preparing the proposal is one of the lengthiest processes during negotiations with your prospects. To make this step more efficient and provide the ideal proposal every time, you can use software that will help you create a web design proposal template. This way you will be able to finish your proposal faster and spend more time focusing on the project itself, than on the other aspects such as the introduction, the pricing, the terms, and conditions.
You could also use business software that can help you take care of tedious tasks. There are both free and paid tools for tasks such as managing your finances better and more efficiently, project management to stay more organized, building a good relationship with your clients, accounting, time-tracking, and so on.
#2. Outsource
You may already be outsourcing some aspects of your web designer work, but, to scale your business, you should hire external businesses or freelancers to help you take care of other aspects of your business. Minimizing your work that has nothing to do with your area of expertise, will help you improve your reputation, gain more clients, retain clients and increase your profit.
You can outsource services such as bookkeeping, taxes, updating your website or social media, creating content, SEO, data entry, or any other task you don’t have time for or don’t like doing.
#3. Specialize Your Services
When you first started your web design business, you might have been forced to accept all kinds of projects. Web design is such a broad term, and it doesn’t tell prospects what it is you can offer them. Instead, you should focus on an area that you feel most comfortable in, enjoy doing, and can realistically excel at.
Choosing a niche and offering specific services, will help them understand if you are the web designer they are looking for. It will help you become an expert in your area, and provide better results. You will also have to compete only with others providing the same services, instead of every web designer out there. For your business, this means improved customer satisfaction and more clients.
#4. Establish Clear Processes for Important Tasks
To scale your business, it’s crucial to define your processes, or in other words the steps you need to take to finish something. This will help you improve efficiency, get better results and improve customer satisfaction. For a web design business, you can define an onboarding process, a sales process, a project management process, a hiring process, a billing process, and so on.
#5. Offer Superb Customer Experience
Treat your clients with respect, build a relationship with them, listen to them, learn their needs, be transparent, follow a clear timeline, and complete projects on time. Good customer service is crucial for any business, especially when you are offering services.
Conclusion
As an independent web designer, you know how hard it is to keep up with the demand. Anyone selling something wants to have a website, so there is a lot of work to be found. And even though there are many web designers out there, it’s not easy to find good ones.
But the day only has 24 hours, and you want to make the most of each one of them. Scaling your web design business requires some changes in your routine, getting rid of bad habits, and forming new ones. But the result is fewer mistakes, more free time, better projects, and better outcomes.
