What does it take to be a successful web designer? Great design skills, creativity, technical abilities, experience...but are these enough? In reality, it takes a little more than that, good communication skills and collaborative approach are some of the most underrated yet crucial skills you need in order to excel in this field, or for that matter, any field.
In this article, we are talking about the 5 essential things that you can discuss with your client to not just have a smooth workflow but also provide additional value. It not only helps the client understand better but they will also help you stand out from the rest, giving your career the ultimate fuel!
1. You Need to Talk to Your Clients About Privacy
Yep, this is one thing most web designers DON'T realize and DON'T do.
It's is incredibly important that you not only protect your own business by informing your clients on what they need to know about privacy policies, it's also incredibly important their business is protected as well.
The way you protect them is by offering to add a privacy policy to their website.
The way you protect you is by having them sign that they have been informed.
And yes, this is where you can make some sweet recurring revenue.
Grab a free Termageddon account which is an auto-updating privacy policy generator so you can sell this service to your clients with ease even if you don't know anything about privacy policies now. Click here to get a free privacy policy for your agency.
2. You Can Incorporate SEO
A beautiful, functional website with no visitors is bound to upset your client. They probably won't know why their new shiny website is not getting the desired traffic they had expected?
So it's best to discuss the best SEO practices with your client before designing the website.
As the designer, even if you're not the one providing full SEO services, you can still incorporate some SEO elements in your work.
By incorporating the best SEO practices you will set the client's site up for long term success! And a client who gets a clean, well-optimized website is going to bring in that next referral!
Read Now: Top 10 Free SEO Tools for Web Designers
3. Talk Traffic, Leads & Sales
Your clients are already thinking about lead generation while both before and after you design the website. They're business owners after all! So why not give them a few pointers about how web design can actually help them to create new leads, customers and sales?
A few ways to find easy ways to do this is looking at Google Analytics to see where their site is not performing well, doing the same for the site's Google Search Console account and setting up A/B testing to see how the site best performs.
The benefits of testing a website are multi-fold, and if your client is convinced the end result will help them achieve their business goals, they'll hire you.
11 Ways to Test Your Website to Maximize Results
Download a FREE Checklist for Website Testing Checklist & List of Website Testing Tools
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4. Prepare the Site for Website Security
Whether you secure a website, outsource the work or don't provide the service at all, it's important to inform your client's how important it is and help them make a plan to secure the website.
Here are a few tips on how to do this:
- Keep all plugins and themes updated (and remove any unwanted/unused plugins and themes from the dashboard)
- Invest in a website security software such as Sucuri
- Opt-in for a Website Firewall
- Keep the website secured by having an SSL certificate installed
- Take frequent backups of the website
- Host the website on a Managed WordPress Hosting platform
This guide walks you through how to sell website security services to clients.
5. You Can Get Clients Interested in Website Maintenance
Most clients yawn and change the subject when you bring up website maintenance. Nobody wants to pay for that....so it seems.
The problem is it is unbelievably important to do.
Here's a great way I came across to get clients to see the importance of signing up and actually sign-up:
This is also a great way for web designers to earn recurring revenue from a website.
Tasks like:
- Content addition
- Uptime monitoring
- Small site changes
- Website migration
- Reporting
And more, all comes under website maintenance.
Ok, just one more...
6. You MUST Know Conversion Rate Optimization
As a web designer, conversion rate optimization is extremely important. After all, knowing this is how you help business owners make money with their website.
So if you're not familiar with conversion rate optimization (CRO), it's time to start learning more. Some handful of examples of this are:
- A/B Testing - comparing two versions (A and B) of a web page to know which one converts better
- CTA placement - well defined and well placed call to actions on a landing page
- Optimized images - that load faster and have been compressed so it doesn't slow down the website
- Typography - choosing the right font combinations
- Color - colors have meaning, they reflect a website's intention
We hope that some of these suggestions got you thinking about how to add more value to your web design clients.
