Today, more than one in four small businesses does not have a website. However, many of those small businesses that do not currently have a website plan to create a site in the future.
With startups launching every day, the web design business is in high demand. However, if you want to make your own startup succeed when 75 percent fail, you need to make your web design business shine. Below are four crucial elements of a successful web design business.
1. A Killer Website of Your Own
If you have a web design business, you better have an amazing website. But you would be surprised at how many web designers fail to treat their own websites the same way as they treat clients' sites.While your team may be busy enough with clients that it seems you have no time to design your own site, ignoring your home front can prove to be a grave mistake.
While you may have an amazing portfolio, your work is not going to be the first object prospects see when they land on your site. Your own design is the first sample they see, and they're going to judge your talent based on that impression.
Put the work into making your website one of your best portfolio pieces.
2. Talented Team Members
Designing websites — and managing your team and marketing strategy — takes a required skill set that not every person has. The right team members can make all the difference.As Matt Ehrlichman, founder and CEO of Porch.com, says on Entrepreneur, "You need to have the right people in the right roles at the right time. For a developing company, where success and failure hangs in a delicate balance of being able to execute efficiently, nothing can slow you down like having the wrong people along for the ride."
3. Effective Team Collaboration
Even if you have the right team members aboard, your business can suffer severely if your team doesn't work well together.You not only need to recruit people who together create a cohesive team, but you also need to deliver the tools that make effective team collaboration possible. The more people you have, the more you need to be proactive about how you work together.
Collaboration tools like Redbooth for example, can be invaluable to your team's productivity if you have 10 or more people on your team. This value is especially true if you're working with freelancers or remote employees, as it’s great for organizing messages and staying up-to-date while you and your team members are working remotely.
Collaboration tools can also deliver team performance reports, allowing you to see where your team needs to improve.
4. A Drive Toward Innovation
While some fields of business can get by with practices used years ago, web design is an ever-changing field. Not only do elements such as search engine rankings affect how websites are designed, since faster web pages and mobile-friendly designs count, but new research is also constantly emerging showing how users interact with Web design.For example, you may default to a right sidebar. However, new studies and experiments show
Staying on top of the latest web design news and striving to keep up with — or even ahead of — these new ideas will propel your web design business forward.
Web design is an important part of practically every modern business. And when this area is the core of your business, careful planning, quality leadership, and an amazing team will make your web design business more successful.
About the Author
Alicia Rades (@aliciarades) is a professional blogger who specializes in blogging, freelancing, and lifestyle topics. Learn more about her at aliciarades.com, where you can download her free blogging guide, 20 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Hitting Publish.
