SiteForce Site Redesign
Apologies to our faithful readers for the long web design blog hiatus. We’ve revamped our website design business site with a new look, new affordable web design packages and web marketing services.
With that behind us, we’ve got more time for blogging so be on the lookout for new articles about web design, search engine marketing and search engine optimization all summer long!
Turn Your Downtime Into Uptime
Many web designers and website design companies have periods of downtime. When you’re between projects or awaiting responses from your existing clients, make your time productive by working on your own web design projects.
Anyone who spends as much time on the Internet as a web designer is bound to come up with new Internet business ideas. The great thing about being a web designer is that you can bring many of your ideas to life without outside assistance. It’s difficult to know which ideas will fly and which won’t, but testing the waters during your downtime could potentially lead to additional sources of income for you or for your company.
So give it a try. We did! Here are two examples of sites we just launched and developed between web design projects for our clients.
iTotallyRecommend.com - An online recommendation community.
Log jump - A free service that allows you to create your own web portal for personal everyday use.
Web Design Blog Topics for 2007
We’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off from blogging to celebrate the holiday season. I’m sure many of you readers are doing the same. And although we’ll be absent in body, we won’t be absent in mind.
We’re currently looking for web design blog topics for 2007 to make our second year of Web Design & Toast better than ever! So if you have questions or ideas about anything related to web design, web programming, scripting, SEM, or SEO, send them our way and we’ll try to address them in the new year.
Happy Holidays from Web Design & Toast!
Part 4: Tips for Running a Successful Web Design Business
A month has gone by since we started our series, “Tips for Running a Successful Web Design Business”. This fourth installment discusses how to turn a potential customer into a paying client.
Tip 4: "Close the Deal"
As you likely know from personal experience, potential customers, especially “busy” potential customers, are experts at procrastinating. They have good intentions about starting projects but often need strong motivation to complete them in a timely manner.
You might say that sales leads are a lot like fish. If you let them linger too long without reeling them in, you’re likely to lose them. Here are a few tips for reeling in the fish that’s nibbling at your bait.
- Respond quickly to any questions or requests you receive from a sales lead. If your potential client worked up enough motivation to seek you out, you want to bring them onboard before they lose their momentum or find a hook with better bait.
- Give them a quote or estimate and request a non-refundable deposit. You’ll be far less likely to lose a lead if they already have money invested in the project. You may also find that a deposit is a surprisingly powerful source of motivation for your client to finish the project because it gets them thinking about a return on their investment.
- Help your client get “over the hump”. Clients can become overwhelmed with a project related to design or technology if they have little or no experience in the field. So assign your customer a very simple task, like showing you designs or web sites they like. The feeling of accomplishment might be all they need to get moving to their desired end.
These tips will not only help get you to the payday your looking for, but should also help your customers achieve their business goals. And we all know, that happy customers are the best kind.
