A Guide To Starting A Web Design Business
You’ve thought about starting a business and decided on starting a web design business. Well, right now is as good a time as any other to do just that.
It has never been easier to start a web design business and with pretty much every business needing a website, there are many opportunities to have customers.
Of course it’s not just traditional businesses that need or want websites. Pretty much every person, associations, organizations, and others with an online presence online needs or wants a website.
A lot of the information and tips are readily available and the tools and resources for a web design business are either free or can be had for a relatively low cost, which makes starting a website design business easier than ever.
With video platforms like YouTube and Udemy and being able to search on search engines like Google and Brave, everything that you need is right at your fingertips.
Learning Web Design
In today’s age of the internet, you can learn almost anything from the internet. With time and experience, you of course can get better, but you can learn more than enough to get started doing whatever you want in life. Learning web design and how to run a web design business is no exception.
Learning web design lends itself better to video format better than other ways of trying to learn web design. YouTube is a great resource for getting access to free videos that teach you web design that cover the full range of web design topics, from website design, photo editing, creating logos, and more. The quality can range from not so good to professional-level courses.
Another great resource for web design tutorials in video format is Udemy. Udemy does offer some free courses, but most of them are paid courses and generally speaking, the quality of the courses is usually good to great. The cost can range from free, to around ten dollars to around one hundred dollars, so they are either free or relatively inexpensive.
There are other video platforms as well, but these are two of the biggest and best at the moment.
If you are looking for text-based tutorials and/or references, then you will probably use a search engine like Google or Brave to look for tutorials and other resources.
There are a lot of things to learn in web design, but it is pretty easy to learn and get started doing web design and website design.
Picking A Web Design Niche
One of the first things that you will want to do is to pick a niche. Picking the “right” can make it easier for your web design business to succeed.
You will want to look at your situation and ask yourself some questions to help you decide what niche to get into. Your location will probably matter because when you start a web design business, all or most of the clients that you get will be from your area.
You will have to look at your current skill set and decide what you need to learn next based on the niche that you pick because you will not want to waste your time on things that are not helping you work towards helping you succeed. Picking a niche will help you focus on a few things instead of spreading yourself thin.
Picking the right niche can help you take advantage of the opportunities that might be right in front of you. For example, if the area that you are in has a lot of musicians and artists, you can cater to them.
Choose A Name For Your Web Design Business
There is no “right” name for your web design business, but there are some things that you might want to consider.
You probably want to choose a business name that is congruent with your web design business. For example, you probably wouldn’t want to have “Bob’s Lawn Service” as your business name if your business is web design.
You may not want to include your business name. Including your personal name in your business name can make it hard to sell your website design business if you want to in the future.
Having a business that makes it easy to remember can help you get clients. For example, if your name is easy to remember, they can see it advertised somewhere and can easily look it up later. Having a business name that stands out is also helpful.
Having The Necessary Tools
Every business has its set of industry tools that are required to run their business, or at least to make it easier or to save you time. Web design businesses are no different.
You will obviously need to have a computer or laptop and an internet connection. You will also need a domain name and web hosting for your website and a great place to look for cheap web hosting is websitehostingcouponcodes .com.
I assume that you are not going to be making websites from scratch, as in you’re going to be using WordPress or some CMS to make your websites. Although you can make websites strictly using HTML, CSS, and Javascript and whatever backend programming language that you use, that is usually much more time-consuming compared to using a software like WordPress.
WordPress is always offer free with your web hosting and is either installed by you using a 1-click Install App like Softaculous or it comes preinstalled, depending on your web hosting package.
On top of WordPress, you can use software like Element Pro to more easily build and design websites. Elementor is a software that is install as a WordPress Plugin and helps you more easily build websites by letting you drag and drop elements onto the screen.
Elementor offers a free version and a paid version. You are going to want to go with the paid version if you really intend to make websites for clients.
You will also want some kind of photo editing software and image making software at least. The most popular of these is the Adobe Suite software. The Adobe Suite includes several different software applications as part of their package.
Some of this software lets you create and edit images and photos, some of it let’s you create vector illustrations, another application let’s you create visual effects and motion graphics and there is a lot more that is part of the suite of software.
The Adobe Suite is a paid subscription service and there are other software applications out there as well, including both paid and free ones.
There is some other software that you will want to look into getting at least once you get a few clients, including some kind of accounting software.
Getting Clients When You’re Starting Out
Getting clients when you are starting out can be challenging. One tactic that is effective but can take a lot of work is to go to actual businesses in your area and offer your business or at the least leave a business card. You can also try calling businesses in your area that either need a website or can maybe use a redesign of their website.
Another good method is to go to events in your area and to meet people from the community and try to make connections with people from local businesses. Both of these methods can take time, but you probably don’t have the same resources compared to when you are more established.
Conclusion
Starting a web design business is possible. Many people have done it, and you can too. Hopefully, this guide can help you along your journey of starting and running a successful web design company.
