The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Web Design Business

web design business startup tips guides

Are you tired of spending long hours in the office? Or, maybe you are no longer satisfied with your current job and wish to explore a new niche. If so, you might be interested in starting a web design business. However, you’ll need to invest much effort, time and money to make it thrive.

There are so many nuances to consider here that you may feel confused or unsure about your skills. Don’t be – take your time to look around, weigh all the pros of this challenging prospect and analyze your actual skills. A bit of diligence, patience, and a strong focus on your objective will help you go through this process conveniently and eventually reach the desired result. Let’s discuss the main aspects you should not forget about if you wish to make your business a success.

It’s no secret that starting a web design business is quite a risky challenge, but if you are goal-driven, straightforward and not afraid to experiment, your chances to succeed are relatively high. Today, we will get acquainted with Howard Steele, who will share the nuances of starting a web design business.

Howard is a web designer with over 15 years of niche experience and the author of a popular blog https://superbwebsitebuilders.com/ about website development via website builders. Multiple advantages of cloud web-building tools have led Howard to become a professional web designer who has completed dozens of client projects in the shortest time possible. His tips and recommendations will undoubtedly come in handy to beginners who are just thinking of starting their web design career and those who have decided to make this occupation their primary specialization. Here they go!

Know Your Market

There are different web design niches you may specialize in, and there are also diverse market segments to focus on. Define your priorities and develop a strategy that meets the needs of your target audience. What’s more, you should not forget about current industry trends. With so many web design tendencies that hit the market every year, it is a must to stay aware of them to offer a quality product. It may take time to explore the web design trends and define potential clients’ expectations. As you manage to do that, it will be much easier to develop the right strategy and find the winning approach to your audience.

Make the Analysis of Competitors

Like any other industry, the web design market has many renowned representatives who enjoy popularity just because they know what their clients need and are ready to offer professional products/services. If this is your first web design experience, you should devote much time to analysing competitors to discover they are crucial to success. If you are not a newbie already, you will also benefit from exploring the offers of competitors to be able to withstand the competition afterwards.

Do Skills Matter?

To offer unique and top-rated services, you should realize your actual web design skills and expertise level. For example, it would be weird to assume that potential clients won’t wish to browse your portfolio. Thus, you should be ready to answer their questions and meet their expectations. Professionalism is what most customers value above all. So, don’t hesitate to provide proof of your professionalism and improve your skills, if necessary.

What About the Business Strategy?

If you still cannot decide whether you need a business strategy or not, the answer is obvious: you do! Moreover, a proper and deliberate strategy is necessary if you have long-term goals and wish your business to succeed. Having explored the target audience and analyzed your competitors, you will be ready to prepare a decent business development plan encompassing your goals, methods of achieving them, products/services you will offer, pricing policy and other important nuances.

Decide on the Suitable Web Building Tool

Choosing the right web-building tool is one of the most crucial steps to success. There are lots of web design software solutions you may come across on the web, but not all of them are worth the attention. Website builders are the top choice for users who value their time and effort. These systems differ in their complexity level, objectives, parameters, pricing and sphere of application. Here is a review of two popular website builders – IM Creator and uKit – that may cover the needs of newbies and professionals.

White Label from IM Creator

https://www.imcreator.com/whitelabel

white label im creator

 

Overview

IM Creator is a website builder with much to offer to web designers. The system stands out from the crowd due to the exceptional feature set, comparative ease of use, diverse degree of website customization, affordable rates and special offers for proficient web developers.

The system is free for users who choose it for non-commercial purposes as well as for students, artists and entrepreneurs. At the same time, IM Creator offers paid subscriptions varying in their parameters. Let’s look closer at the White Label plan the platform boasts.

White Label

IM Creator White Label is an excellent solution for web design agencies and professional website developers who have an idea to start or develop their business but don’t wish to fight with all the hassle the process implies. The website builder offers a unique opportunity to use its feature set under your brand name to provide exceptional web design services with a decent tool set.

Having upgraded to the plan, you can develop your brand using your domain name, support and website templates without third-party interaction. What’s more, you will get an unlimited number of licenses to be able to build and connect as many projects as you intend. No extra charges, hidden fees or restrictions – all IM Creator features will be available with the White Label tool.

Setting up the tool does not take much effort and time. Due to the detailed and informative IM Creator step-by-step wizard, you will launch your White Label business in just a few steps. Websites built with the tool are fully responsive, customizable and great for further SEO optimization.

They will be integrated with your brand style and identity (including color scheme, logo, fonts, etc.) to make your business recognizable to new and returning clients. 24/7 customer assistance will help you resolve all your web-design-related problems, while the secure SSL Certificate provided by default will ensure maximum protection of your client’s data.

IM Creator has three White Label Plans, each with its feature set, parameters and special offers. The most affordable pricing solution will cost you $350 per year, but the price may reach $25000 for the most advanced plan. The 14-day money-back feature lets you cancel the subscription at any time in case of necessity.

Features

The benefits of the White Label tool speak for themselves, but IM Creator also has many other distinct features that will appeal to users. The most crucial of them are listed below:

  • Powerful Integrations. IM Creator offers lots of integration options that contribute to website performance. These include links to popular social media resources, numerous widgets, Google Analytics, and Google Maps.
  • eCommerce. The website builder has powerful eCommerce functionality that lets you build custom-made small-to-mid web stores for your clients. Due to the system’s simplicity, your customers can independently customize their online stores, upload products, integrate media files, adjust shipping, payment and tax parameters, and add other required content. They won’t need coding knowledge or skills to do that.
  • Blogging Platform. IM Creator allows adding a full-featured blog to a website. There are multiple blog templates, styles, news feeds and other parameters clients may choose from depending on their needs.
  • Responsive Templates. The system has a set of responsive templates to fit various niches. Additionally, clients may pick lots of functional customization tools to create their own unique website designs, either under your supervision or without it.
  • Multilingual Support. For clients intending to target the international market, there is an opportunity to launch several language variations of the same website. Just discuss this idea with your clients to pick the languages they prefer.
  • SEO Advantages. IM Creator-based websites are truly functional when it comes to SEO. It’s not quite difficult to bring them to the top search engine positions, but you have to know how to fill out meta tags properly, integrate statistics collection tools and make the required settings.

uKit

https://ukit.com/

ukit website builder

Overview

uKit – is a website builder created with the needs, requirements and preferences of entrepreneurs in mind. You can use the system to create websites for small and medium businesses, but it is also a nice choice for developing landing pages, portfolios and online stores. The platform works well for independent web designers, freelancers and design agencies that are at the start of their careers. It’s high time to review the major features of the website builder right away.

Affiliate Program

uKit Affiliate Program is an excellent choice to promote a web design business, using the entire feature set provided by the system. It will be a perfect bet for freelance web developers, bloggers, website owners and communities, and professional webmasters. The program lets you generate profit in two ways – from your websites and your client’s payments.

Among the benefits the Affiliate Program involves, it makes sense to mention the advanced analytics system, beneficial terms of cooperation, quick tech support, shared access to the affiliate control panel of the system, the opportunity to take part in multiple loyalty programs, special offers and rewarding projects uKit offers regularly etc.

The highlight of the Affiliate Program is a way to earn around 30% of the general amount of payments completed by those users you have attracted to the system. Joining the program is impressively simple and time-saving.

Features

The website builder has much to offer to its users. Among the benefits of the system, it makes sense to mention the following:

  • Template Gallery. uKit is great when it comes to template choice. The website builder comes with a stunning collection of responsive themes from the start and can be customized independently by a client. Due to the WYSIWYG website editor that ideally combines with the drag-and-drop feature, even a beginner can customize uKit themes. No coding, programming languages or previous web design experience is needed. Template change option is also enabled here to let users pick another template at any step of the website customization process without losing submitted content.
  • Integration. The website builder provides extensive integration options by letting users use AMO CRM and SendPulse services. The first offers an opportunity to analyze website performance, order and client statistics, while the second makes it possible to collect clients’ contact data directly via the website.
  • eCommerce. uKit works well for the development of online stores. Building a large-scale eCommerce website might be challenging, but starting a small or mid-sized online store is possible. To enable the eCommerce feature, you can choose one of two options: adding a corresponding eCommerce widget available in uKit or integrating the Ecwid plugin to the published website. The latter will automatically convert a website into a web store.
  • Analytics. The website builder allows you to collect and analyze your website statistics by integrating Google Analytics service. What you need to get started is to create your Google account – that’s it!

Conclusion

Starting a web design business is a time-consuming and challenging process. However, it shouldn’t be too complicated for users with firsthand knowledge of the must-have steps to make it a success. You shouldn’t overlook many nuances, but if you choose the right strategy, your effort to launch a profitable web design business will be rewarded.

The best way to reach the goal is to use credible web design software. IM Creator and uKit are among the best representatives of the web design market that work equally well for inexperienced users and web design pros.

IM Creator is a service for those companies and professional web developers who have already won a reputation in the web design industry and need a trusted brand-promoting tool for customer generation.

uKit is a great bet for individual web designers, web agencies and freelancers whose web design expertise is not rich. It’s a decent tool for those whose career is just about to start.

Considering the diverse complexity, implications, audience focus, pricing policy and goal orientation of these website builders, it’s possible to conclude that the final choice should be based on a user’s individual needs and long-term goals.

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