Is Your Website a Bust? Learn How to Choose the Best Web Developer

When it comes to efficient web development services, everything that glitters is certainly not gold. You can find a wide array of options to choose from when looking for a reliable web development company.

One has to be wary, though, about the different options. The best way to cut all the clutter to find the perfect match for your business to keep some fundamental aspects in mind. The process can be quite a fun and curiosity-quenching journey. In this article today, we have pooled all our expertise and knowledge so that we can help you arrive at the appropriate outcome and increase your chances of finding a company that is a compatible match for your brand, budget and working methods.

1. Choosing A Web Development Agency Need Not Be Rocket Science

Having a ton of companies to choose from can turn out to be a boon as well as a bane. SMBs and large businesses can be equally baffled and overwhelmed with so many options. Often, web development agencies specialise in a particular business industry or gather their experience working with a specific platform. All such companies are different, provide different services of crying quality.

So how do you choose the best agency? For that, it is essential to know what kind of services and solutions your business needs. Such introspection will help you streamline your process and better your chances of finding the best technology partner.

2. Understand The Various Service You Can Avail

To work out what kind of website you want and how much support you will need, you have to be aware of the different types of website. Based on your business goals and budget, you can choose one of these three types of websites. These features are just the basics, and there are many layers to ponder upon with your web developer.

Template-Based Website Custom-Built Website eCommerce Website
Swift And Pocket Friendly Higher functionality SSL
Little To Zero Customisation Saves time Fast Performance
Lacks Originality Easy To Upgrade Multiple Payment Options

You Have To Ask Questions Like:

  • Whether you need an eCommerce website to sell directly to customers, or will the site be used purely for information?
  • Whether You Need A Contact Form Or Chatbot Service?
  • If You Need A Site With Responsive Design, And Do You Require Web Hosting?
  • Is It Just A Site Design You Need, Or Do You Require A Much More Intensive Level Of Support Like Ongoing Web Hosting?
  • Will You Need Assistance To Set Up Websites, Chat Portals And More?
  • Do You Need Ongoing Maintenance Or Content Creation?

3. Shortlist Through Portfolios, Testimonials, And Social Presence

Once you have an outline in mind about the type of website you need, you should start looking at various prospects you’re considering collaborating with. An easy way to sort out the companies can be step by step sifting through their portfolios, case studies, and the company’s website itself.

Shortlist Through Portfolios, Testimonials, And Social Presence

Once you have an outline in mind about the type of website you need, you should start looking at various prospects you’re considering collaborating with. An easy way to sort out the companies can be step by step sifting through their portfolios, case studies, and the company’s website itself.

Portfolio

Portfolio

Portfolios can give you a detailed insight into the work that a particular web development company has done. A solid portfolio can be a good start towards building a reliable rapport. If they don’t have one but seem like a trustworthy company, ask them to do a test for you.

Testimonials And Case Studies

Testimonials And Case Studies

You can ask the web developers about the types of websites they have worked upon. You should check for examples that belong to organisations in your niche. Visit such websites and survey the interface and experience first-hand.

Visit The Web Development Company’s Website

Visit The Web Development Company’s Website

You should have a look at their digital presence. Check their official website and its mobile version, social media profiles and the content in their blog. Check for reviews or feedback on their platforms, as it should also give you more of an idea of the kind of company they are, how they operate and whether they will be a good fit for your business.

4. Compare The Costs Thoroughly

Compare The Costs Thoroughly

The costs can fluctuate from one web development company to another based on the features and functionality. Some aspects that might affect the development cost include the number of website pages and their complexity, the functionality of all added features, responsiveness and integrity of the design, whether you choose a local company or outsource the task. Enquire about costs for services like SSL Certificate, domain name and website hosting, integration with third-party applications, such as payment and shipment gateways, database integration, CRM, accounting packages, ERP, and routine maintenance.

A cheaper development cost should not be the deal-breaking factor in determining a web development company. You would find companies with meagre prices, but the outcomes might disappoint you. Compare different companies and choose the one that offers a good bargain.

5. Communication And Professionalism

Communication And Professionalism

A fruitful outcome for your website can only be achieved through a two-way communication street. Clear communication can help web developers understand your vision and execute their ideas accordingly. Apart from comprehending your point of view, you should also keep an eye out for prompt responses. In case they slack or respond slowly, there are high chances that you will face some communication gaps. How the agency behaves is a direct reflection of its performance. Always build a rapport and relationship that aids in the holistic growth of the business. Therefore, ensure that you associate with a company that believes in sincerity and professionalism to their core.

6. Finally, Focus On The Bigger Picture

Finally, Focus On The Bigger Picture

Undoubtedly, the main aim of your project is to establish or renew your online presence. Nevertheless, you should also visualise this as part of grander marketing practices. The website shall be the face of the company online and is a vital tool for marketing, but it is also just one of the several pieces of the jigsaw of your marketing plan. It is eminent to focus on the look and functionality of your site and ask questions about other marketing features simultaneously. Lastly, to achieve an impactful online presence, seek appropriate search engine optimisation, blog outreach, interaction, communication and more.

Mind-blowingly eCommerce Hacks To Double Your Conversions

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the central aspect of generating exponential revenue for any eCommerce store. An average online store generally observes that its conversion rate hovers around the 2-3% mark. The company’s entire growth funnel, right from getting the targeted traffic to generate sales, will be enhanced if you focus on your conversion rate as your north star metric. If you wish to compete and succeed in the vast sea or eCommerce store on the internet, you will have to implement some powerful conversion hacks that shall give the much-needed bump to your conversion rates.

The Significance Of The Significance Of

Every eCommerce business’s conversion rate differs depending on industry, target demographics, price point, etc. Let’s consider an example, online stores offering low-cost products like food and clothing observe high conversion rates as customers don’t hesitate to spend less. At the same time, high-cost goods and services like home decor, electrical appliances, and travel have lower conversion rates. The above-average conversion rate in your eCommerce platform provides the following advantages:

Revenue

Revenue

Elevated Conversion Rate Is The Proper And Beneficial, Cost-Effective Way That Plays A Crucial Role In Creating Income For Your Ecommerce Shop. Hence Instead Of Spending A Mind-Numbing Amount On Advertising, Which Ultimately Diminishes Website Traffic Quality, Investing In Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Is A Trusted And Tested Formula To Generate Adequate Sales. .

Revenue

Value

Refining Conversion Rate Stands For Optimizing The Website That Provides More Actionable Value To The Customer. Fixate On Giving Appropriate Attention To UI And UX, Decrease Ambiguity, Reassuring Your Customers, Or Including Persuasive Content To Your Website And Social Media Platforms, Culminating Value To The Products.

Revenue

Remarketing

Every marketer can guarantee, the perfect and most suitable audiences for the upcoming sales campaign are past customers. Remarketing is an integral part of an efficient marketing strategy, but you cannot use this data till you have a satisfactory past conversion rate.

Use The Following Tips To Achieve Remarkable Outcomes

There Are A Few Tried And Tested Tricks And Hacks That Ascertain The Enhanced Number Of Conversions And Take Your Conversion Rate Optimization Strategy To The Next Level. We Have A List Of The Most Effective Ones For You.

A Straightforward Layout And Navigation

Straightforward Layout And Navigation

One goal any campaign manager needs to focus on: to sell products. This matter of fact sometimes gets lost amidst the decisions revolving around intricate design and other fancy elements. The best way to increase conversions is to design the navigation to be as simple and straightforward as possible. Approximately 30% of e-commerce site visitors prefer to use the site’s search and navigation functionality. When your customers are unable to find what they are looking for, it won’t take them much time to take their business elsewhere. Dedicate ample time to design and structure your website correctly to get a considerable edge over the competitor

Hero Your Product As Much As You Can

Hero Your Product As Much As You Can

To convince the utility, value and necessity of your product or service for any eCommerce platform is an uphill task in itself. The product images and how you portray the service can make or break your business. Using the right product images can definitely factor in increasing the number of conversions you’re gaining for your store. When it comes to ideas, the usual scenario suggests the more high-quality and compelling images your use, the merrier the outcomes shall be. Having the right image and perfectly coherent copy alongside the same. These add legitimacy and encourage the potential client to engage and understand your services and products. Another potent option to make your product stand out is to try featuring it in some form of video content. Short-form video content is trending on all kinds of platforms these days. It is a lot better in comparison and can result in a large increase in conversion rates for your business. This results in more conversions for your brand and improved legitimacy.

FOMO Is Your Best Friend

FOMO Is Your Best Friend

There are multiple facets to this hack. You have got to be mindful of the hassle that the consumer has to go through while checking out. First, you should lower the steps involved in the checkout process as you don’t want your customer to be interested in the product or service but leave halfway because of the lengthy purchasing activity. Offer a guest checkout option to streamline the process further as more than half of your consumers leave the product in the cart as they have to create an account while checking out. Next, offer multiple payment options, painless return policies, and free deliveries as much as you can. The consumer loves to gauge their options while checking out.

Seamless Checkout Process

Seamless Checkout Process

Consumers want to devour all the opportunities as it is a basic human tendency to fear for loss more than gain, so they are always looking for an eCommerce platform that can offer them a good deal. This is where you can utilise the fear of missing out in the most suitable manner. There are a number of ways like running a flash sale or distributing special discount codes that are valid for a limited period of time. You can spread the information about the sale or the limited time offers via emails as well as publish on all your social media platforms. You can make use of the holiday season or events like the Black Friday sale or Cyber Monday to shoot your conversion rates to the moon. Such opportunities drive urgency among shoppers, and they are more likely to go through with the purchase without getting distracted. If you are an eCommerce owner, you can easily take advantage of this psychology by offering a limited period coupon code in a popup or an email.

Conclusion

Upon Thorough Execution Of The Hacks As Mentioned Earlier, You Are Guaranteed To Observe A Significant Change In Your Conversion Rates. Gradually Make These Changes To Appropriately Identify And Address The Change That Drives The Most Impact On The Conversions, Which Will Help You Strategize Similar Campaigns In The Future

10 Tips on Growing Your Revenue as a Freelancer Designer

Earning more and Becoming a Famous Graphic Designer can be challenging. In most cases, to grow your revenue, you need to show a more impressive portfolio and to make a better portfolio, you need more clients. This is a vicious circle many beginning freelance designers find hard to deal with.

As a Chinese proverb says “A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step”. You can’t expect to turn into a six-figure professional overnight. To become one, you need to put in a lot of time and effort. In some cases, some designers can do it faster and with less effort. That’s exactly the way we want to show you in this article.

Today, we will share with you some strategies to help you navigate the journey to the top of 5% best freelancers in the world.

10 Tips to Growing Client Base & Revenue

Most of the tips we are mentioning here require some routine to become effective. If you stick to them consistently, you will notice a big positive change in your cash flow and will get your clients to value your work more. So let’s see what routines you can start implementing today.

Focus On Your Portfolio

Focus on your Portfolio

Design is one of the fields where visual matters more than anything else – years of experience, attitude to work, or rates. The more interesting and beautiful your portfolio is, the more leads you will get.

That’s why it is so important to focus on the right projects when you want to build an impressive portfolio. Take up the projects that you can use in your portfolio – some clients can be against this practise as they don’t want others to learn what freelancer they are using.

While such projects can be lucrative, they won’t fuel your lead generation machine. So why not focus on those that would help you achieve your goals as a freelance designer?

Presenting your portfolio in the right way is another step forward to getting more clients. Get inspired by checking out portfolios of other designers on Behance or Dribble and Create Your Presentation to catch the eye.

Be Where Your Clients are

Once you have prepared a great portfolio, it’s time to show it to the world and get the attention of your potential clients. Depending on who your client persona is, you might want to do a small research to find where those people hang out.

Join their Facebook Groups, add them on LinkedIn. Become active on those channels and provide answers to design-related questions. This will help prove your expertise and build trust among your target audience. So once your potential clients start looking for a designer, they know where to find you.

Focus on your Portfolio

Reverse engineering your projects is another way to attract attention. You can explain how to achieve certain results with a project by describing your way of thinking and strategy.

Consider recording some YouTube videos or go for Professional Video Hosting to later share your educational videos on groups. Later, you can also repurpose your video content and prepare an audio version to share experience on design projects with a bigger audience. Check out these YouTube To MP3 Converters that can help with repurposing video content into audio in a few minutes.

Pro Tip – Once you continue growing content around your brand, focus on competitive research to get ideas from your competitors which is a part of content Optimization Strategy.

Maintain Good Relations

Focus on your Portfolio

Get more recurring projects by building good relations with your present clients. Put in the effort in impressing clients so they come back with more projects in the future. Getting more projects from returning customers is brought down to simply doing your work extremely well.

To build healthy relations with clients, have regular calls with them and make sure communication between you is seamless. This will also help you understand their project goals better and, ultimately, present them with better results.

Freelance designers should not only focus on better performance, but also keep their clients in the loop when it comes to project stages.

Also, creating a tailored newsletter for your clients can be a good idea to consider if you have spare time to write content. By sharing some useful tips with your current clients and leads can be a good way to be remembered. You can choose among these Email Newsletter Templates and try one!

Incentivize Clients to Refer You

Getting referrals from current and past clients is another way to get more work. However, unless you do an extremely good job with their project, they won’t refer you. That is why you have to incentivize your clients to put in a bit of effort and their time in recommending you to their colleagues and friends.

Focus on your Portfolio

Give them some discount on the next project or offer something extra to what you have already done – for example, a free consultation. A smart incentive will give your clients more reasons to write an email or call a potential lead.

Improve on Communication

A lot of reworks and longer time to deliver a project stem from a lack of understanding of your clients’ goal. By learning more about the goals and understanding project details better, you can spend less time on correction rounds, save more time, and, as a result, will free more on new projects.

Consider creating a brief template for your clients. In the brief, you can include the questions which your client can answer to give you more context.

Here Are Just a Few Question You can Consider Adding To Your Creative Brief:
Focus on your Portfolio
  • What Is The Target Persona?
  • What Are The Distribution Channels?
  • What Is The End Result a Client Wants To Achieve?
  • What are the budget constraints?
Check Out This Example Of A Design Brief.

Set The Right Expectations

Focus on your Portfolio

Sometimes, freelance designers can come upon clients who have a limited budget which doesn’t cover a project scope. It happens that a freelance takes up such projects planning to earn at least some money and they end up delivering a worse result than a client expected.

By taking up such projects, you are more likely to underdeliver. By accepting such projects, you signal clients that the budget suggests is sufficient. However, in the end you won’t fully dedicate to the project to meet your client’s expectations.

Also, as your client is not satisfied with the results, they won’t recommend working with you and can even spread bad reviews about your business.

Such projects can result in more stress for you as well and take your focus away from more profitable projects. Instead, focus on the clients who are more realistic and can understand how much time you need to deliver top results.

If you still decide to work with the clients whose budget is not in line with their project requirements, explain why.

If they understand how much work the project involves they will raise the rate. If they don’t it’s always safer to pass on such deals.

Earn On Referrals Yourself

Focus on your Portfolio

As you don’t have a team of designers working for you, it will be tough to deal with work overload. By doing a great job for your current clients, you can expect more projects in the future. While you have a limit on the number of projects you can work on, you should not necessarily say “no” to all offers.

Cooperate with other freelance designers to whom you can refer new clients. You can agree with them on some referral commision. This way, you won’t spend any time on a project, but can still earn more.

Your befriended freelancers can do the same to you if they suddenly get more projects than they can handle.

Calculate Your Rate Effectively

Focus on your Portfolio

Usually clients expect designers to estimate their project and give a flat rate. However, in most cases, it’s hard to be totally accurate – there are just too many unknowns. For example, time to introduce client feedback after you have submitted a project is one of the reasons why you are paid less for the project than you should.

That’s why it is worth defining how many correction rounds you can offer to your clients and the time you can dedicate to each of them. If you exceed a set number of hours you are working on the project, it’s worth charging an additional fee. To make your work more organized and time – easier to track, Choose A Project Management Software that suits a designer’s routine the best.

Invoice Clients The RightWay

Focus on your Portfolio

Proper invoicing is key to growing your business by preventing late payments. By getting clients to pay on time, you can significantly improve your monthly cash flow. There are a few simple routines you have to pursue to stay in the green.

Ask clients to pay an upfront payment before you start a project. Alternatively, break down a bigger project into stages and bill clients after you finish each of them. Sending partial and final invoices could help you do this more effectively.n.

What if your clients forget to pay you? This situation usually leads towards an uncomfortable conversion over money. However, you can avoid it by setting up invoice reminders in your invoicing software. Once a client goes over the deadline, a reminder is sent automatically with a predefined message.

Last but not least, to get paid earlier you have to make it easy for clients to make a payment. Integrate a “Pay now” button on your invoices and connect invoice payments with Stripe or Paypal.

Start Your Own Company

Focus on your Portfolio

Have you already implemented the tips we discussed here? Then, this is time for the next step in your professional life – Forming an LLC to kick off your own design agency and hiring designers.

You always have a limited time to work on projects on your own. At some point, you need to massively scale your business to achieve the next growth milestone.

Good news – you have already learnt a lot about how a company should operate by Running Your Side Hustle. You know a thing about invoicing and accounting, dealing with late payments, and maintaining your cash flow. Acquiring new clients to grow your business is another crucial skill that complements your talent as a designer.

As you have a steady revenue from your loyal clients and can potentially take up more work, that’s time to Source Candidates for design work on a part-time or full-time basis and focus more on business development. You can also consider introducing more Design Automation to finish your projects faster.

WRAP UP

Becoming a well-earning designer takes time. However, by setting up a measurable goal and establishing the right routines to achieve it will help become a better designer much faster. As a result, you will also earn more and continue getting referrals from happy clients. You need to start somewhere, so time to do it right now!