A tip to gain Website Re-Design Projects

[ConsortCreative]

A few weeks back I posted a blog. I think these tips may be useful to us small biz owners to gain new clients.

1. It Looks Outdated

Company’s redesign their websites for many reasons, but the main one is that it looks old. Many companies have websites that look like they were designed 10 years ago. Even non-designers can tell they’re outdated. This could hurt the business if clients are choosing between competitors. Clients go with a company’s that have a nice, easy-to-use website as it provides the assurance that the company is growing and relevant.

2. It’s Not Responsive & is Hard to Navigate On Devices

It was simple for companies to maintain their desktop-only sites several years ago when people didn’t use their phone and tablets to shop, order food, research and connect on social media. Not today! Customers may be looking at your site from a desktop, laptop, tablet or phone. They expect a consistent experience from all of these devices. If they put a product in their cart on a phone, it should be there when they go to the site on their laptop. They want to research on their on the go and share later with friends and business partners. You may lose these people as customers if your site isn’t consistent across all devices.

3. It is Hard to Navigate & Hard to Use

Do you check what your competitors are doing? How often? Unfortunately, many don’t pay research their competition until it’s too late. Technology is always updating and changing. A 6-month old website is a 1 year old website in technology timeline. People that are with the latest trends and understand user behavior changes based on the ease-of-use on most websites. Do your research. See what people in your market are doing on their sites. Check out the new features they are using. See what the top company’s are doing and use it in your website to give a nice experience to your potential customers and convert them into actual customers. Build your website so that it can grow with your business and so that it’s ready when you want to add new features.

4. It Does Not Reflect Your Company’s Business Strategy

Business strategies change. New products and services get offered. All of these changes should be reflected online. It’s important that your site reflects your new strategy and services so you don’t lose customers to your competition. Your potential clients go to your website before they contact you as they need to see the current state of your business. If your online presence is not reflecting that, it’s time to redesign.

5. You Can’t Update the Content

I attended the Inbound marketing conference last year and a key point was that content can set you apart from the competition and get the right message to your target market. This is done through text, videos, tutorials, how-to’s, etc. Content marketing has become very important. It plays a large role in your business success and growth. Being able to update and add new content is key, and you should be able to easily do this through a content management system. Also, make sure that your website is optimized for SEO, which will help your marketing…

6. Things On the Site Don’t Work Properly

Design is not only the way things look. It is also the way something functions. It has to look great and function well. Good development is also important. If you have an awesome looking site that doesn’t work properly, users leave because features are not functioning. Then, you will lose business. I have heard people complain that their online shopping cart is not working or is too hard to use, and it still takes the company months before it’s easier to use. Honestly, you could loose more business in the time it takes of fix the problem which would cost you more than a website redesign.

[matt]

An effective method of driving the above home is to show clients what their site could look like. The great thing about using X or Pro is that you can very quickly and easily mockup sites on the fly. Seeing a visual representation of their potential new site can make a big difference.

[dabigcheeze]

IMHO this is NOT a good plan for anyone seeking to succeed as a professional consultant, designer or developer.

1. Offering any significant value based service work for free shows prospects how much you value your own time and energy. TIme is our most valuable commodity and giving it away opens you up for clients to question its value in the future.

2. Any Spec work with no clearly defined business goals, challenges and opportunity turns any potential “value added” effort into a subjective design exercise. Without objectivity and purpose you can’t offer anything meaningful. You may get a few clients but they won’t be committed to you, just the design. This is why most websites under $25,000.00 don’t deliver much in terms of business value for most organizations, and why most companies are willing to jump ship to other vendors — too many focus on how a site looks vs what a site has to do functionally to deliver success. Solving business problems and addressing focused marketing challenges takes more than a simple whitewash to deliver success.

3. Delivering value based design comps opens you up to having your design work stolen. If a prospect has a good relationship with their existing technical provider, they can simply take your ideas and have them implement your design and layout work or hire some guy from Upwork to copy your ideas for a few hundred bucks. This is a problem with public RFPs that ask for spec design work and why most professional graphic design firms do not participate in them.

4. Delivering superficial design spec doesn’t give you an opportunity to impress the prospect with preliminary project planning and strategy development. Too many web designers and developers are viewed by clients as simply another tool in their box of tricks vs being a contributing architect to their online business success. This is obvious for anyone who has seen the 18-24 month churn pattern for most businesses who engage in a cycle of hiring a new developer for every new site launch.

My suggestion is to get in front of a decision maker and talk with them about their perception of the Web and online marketing - understanding goes a long way in delivering what they want/need. Find out where the disconnect is between what they have and how they define future success. Once you know where they are and where they want to get to, you can build a proposal for how to help them achieve those goals. Aesthetic design may be a part of that strategy. but it is likely one of the smallest parts and, while highly visible, it’s the frosting on the cake. The recipe for the cake is where the value lies.

If you want to secure more work, that is profitable and harder for others to come and take away, then you have to offer more value and you can’t do that by giving away services for free. Another designer will always be able to come and design something better and more aesthetically pleasing. Those who offer to build systems based on solving business challenges based on an evolving strategy will always be in demand and will never have to work for free.

Just my $.02

[minnow470]

I agree. I recently tried this with a prospective client and it totally backfired - for all the reasons you’ve listed.

[richardvargas155]

I think that there can be a middle ground found here. I have yet to design a $25k site, but I have done a site for 5 figures recently that didn’t require any proof of concept or what I like to call “carrot dangling”. However, I would argue that the majority of giant clients like Nike, BestBuy, BurgerKing, etc. have agencies submit RFPs (request for proposals) on the norm, and these RFPs contain more than just design but explanation of the design based off of a surface audit of the current website.

Now, an untapped market or neglected / uneducated market in my opinion is the mom and pop or locally owned private small businesses. Providing merely a quick mock up design alone of what you can offer may fail you more times than it will help you. However, a mockup based off of you interpretation of the business needs as well as an explanation of your process and design are much more valuable in the small business market. I would go further to say that your success rate would be 90-95% because the majority of freelancers and agencies targeting these small businesses are not going this route and doing them an injustice by ripping them off by just giving them something that looks “pretty”.

To wrap it all up, a quick mockup carries little value, and expecting to sit down with a small business owner or decision maker of a small business to discuss business goals a lot of times is unrealistic. The last thing 95% of business owners or managers want to hear is why they should spend more money. But having a sit-down with them and incorporating a thoughtful mockup and a breakdown of your direction shows that you did your homework, you carry the design skills necessary, and more importantly your critical thinking skills. This route could definitely be a winner.

Just my $.02 … Look! Now we have $.04.

[werner7]

I can see how both perspectives of @dabigcheeze and @ajdsgn can work depending on the client. As @ajdsgn said, he is a small business owner, which normally start with smaller clients then build up. When you work with other small business owners it does come down to the most cost effective way to gain new customers.

Here is my $0.02:

Believe that you provide the best value for money: That means you have to make yourself believe that if you charge $10,000 or $25,000 for a new or re-designed website, the customer is still getting a great website for their money. The customer won’t believe it if you don’t. Taking pride in your work and believing that you are worth $xxx an hour for your time is essential.

Build a relationship with your client: Sometimes I just talk to the customer about themselves. Sometimes it’s not even about the website! This creates a relationship and trust… If they like you, they are more likely to go with you. Ask what bother’s them about their work, the current situation… Whether or not they have pets etc… It doesn’t always have to be about the website. This doesn’t exclude asking the essential questions about the website though!

Setup payment plans if needed: Often customers won’t have the cashflow for $10k+ websites. That is okay with me! I offer payment plans for 3, 6 and 12 months. Not only are they more likely to get the website that their business needs but it helps with their cashflow and ensures they will still get all their wages paid. Your job is to tell them that before they know it the website will pay for itself. Give them a realistic expectation - Ie… the website will pay for itself within 3 - 6 months.

Ultimately it’s about honest sales. People want to know you have got their back and that they can trust you to do a great job and regardless what you charge them, they will make their money back many times over from the website.

That’s all of my $0.02… now we have $0.06!

[kyle]

Great discussion…a lot of good “cents” on this thread

@werner7 - Interesting idea about the payment plans for larger priced jobs. I’m curious what percentage of those larger projects chose the payment plan and generally what time period do they pick (3, 6, 12, etc)? Do you run into issues collecting payments? That would be one concern I would have with offering that. Love the reminder to take time to talk to them about non tech/website related things and build an actual relationship.

A thread I’m seeing in several of the comments is to focus on value as opposed to price. I was actually talking to my son this morning about this. He was wanting a few dollars for something and I said I would give him $50. His eyes lit up…and then I finished the sentence…IF he would help me make $100. While the end client will always be sensitive to whatever the final price is, what they truly want is for you to solve solutions for them they may not even know they have.

This gets back to some of what @dabigcheeze and @richardvargas155 were getting at. Once you understand their bottlenecks or what they are trying to solve in talking to you, present a vision for how you would solve that if it were your own business. Don’t necessarily expect them to be able to tell you what they need.

[werner7]

@kyle they vary so much. Some of them love the sound of the payment plans but end of paying when the website is done. It’s just there ‘in-case’ something happens. That gives them a little bit of security I guess. I host all my websites I create, for one, it keeps all my intellectual property safe and I can guarantee better performance and support. Since I’m hosting the websites as well people tend to pay up. I’ve never had to take a website down due to people not paying.

Every town has their own mentality of how they do business and it’s even more true across different countries. I’m in NZ so not all my methods might work in other countries.