Holly: In this episode, I am talking specifically to people
who have been in web design for, let's say, less than three years.
And if you have been in web design for longer than that, please do stick around
'cause I do think there's some stuff that you're going to learn from this.
It's just I really wanted to reach out and have a chat with you if you are early in
your web design journey and just feel like you could use a little bit more support.
I really wanted to use this episode to talk to you about my own journey with
web design because, as you'll often hear me say, web design is very often
a self-taught industry, which means that when we come into it, we come
into it for different angles, we come in with different experience, using
different tools, and it's really easy to stop and think, "I'm not doing it
right," especially when there are more experienced people in the industry who
are saying, "You should be doing it this way," or, "My way is the right way."
And if you've come across people who have said that to you or made you
feel less than, I have an episode of the podcast called Stop Tech Shaming
and why there is no space for tech shaming within the industry, and
do go and have a listen to that.
You can hear all about my own experiences of being tech shamed as
well, and how usually if someone is tech shaming you, it is a reflection
of them feeling uncertain within their own experience rather than yours.
But Let's get started on how I can use this episode to support you in feeling
more confident and having slightly better practices in your web design career.
Ready?
Let's get started.
So the very first thing I'm going to say is if you can invest in your
web design career, do invest in it.
And that might sound a bit crazy because y- most people would
have to invest in their career.
If they're a coach, they're going to have to invest in coach training.
If they're selling products, they have to invest in the products
that they're going to be selling.
But web design is a little bit different, and often web designers
have really scrappy setups.
And by scrappy, I mean they might have a theme license, or they might
be working off a free version of Elementor, and all they really need
is a laptop that they have already, bit of hosting, and off they go.
And that's great, y- because it means as well that the profits
and the margins on web design projects can be really high as well.
And brilliant.
But there is also a lack of
confidence that can come when you don't invest because to a certain extent,
you're not really backing yourself.
You're just saying, "Oh, I'm just … I'm making this work, I'm making it work,
I'm making it work." And it comes down to how we see the money in our
business as well, and I've also got an episode about this, about outsourcing
within your web design business.
Now, you might not be in a position where outsourcing is right for you
right now, but what the episode does talk about is how we view money in our
web design business and how we use that money in the web design business as well.
Because we can have this real temptation, especially in the early days, to hang
on to every bit of money that we earn within the business and say, "Right,
I need to use that for my salary."
But actually, in the same way that you need to kind of spend money to make money,
that's very true in this case as well.
And I am all about us working to best practices as well.
So when you are investing in your web design business, you want to be investing
in some really good themes as well.
And those aren't free themes.
They might be ones that have a lifetime license in some
cases or an annual license.
You might want to bite the bullet and go for, like, the agency pricing
model as well, especially if they're doing kind of a one-off pricing.
But do make sure that you are putting that investment in because you will get
much better tools, much better results, and you will be handing over a higher
quality product to your clients as well.
And ultimately, the websites that we're building, they are for our clients.
You know, once we've finished the project, we step away from it, but
they're the ones who's left with it, and we want to be able to say we've
left them with a really good product.
And at the same time as investing in things like themes, you want to make
sure that you've invested in things like your insurance as well, and you want to
have legally compliant contracts as well.
And if you don't have a contract and you don't have terms of service,
then go along to my website that accompanies this podcast, which is
called websitesmadesimple.co.uk, and you will see that I have the website
designer's contract pack there.
It has every type of contract which is compliant to UK law as
well that will support you in running your web design business.
And that might be the actual contracts that you use with clients, the terms
of service that you use with clients, but it's also hosting contracts,
hosting maintenance, working with freelancers, all that sort of thing.
It's all there, and it's a pay for once, use it with every single client.
But I promise you, investing properly in the setup stuff is really important,
especially in the early days.
So the next thing I wanted to advise you is to focus on an area where
you can improve or learn every year.
So every year I choose something new to focus on with web design, and
that might be that I want to build lighter weight, slimmer sites that
are smaller on the server load, and so it might mean that I start using new
tools or new themes for doing that.
One year I decided to go all in on focusing on accessibility as well because
I absolutely believe that everybody should be able to access websites.
And not everyone's going to be sitting there with a keyboard
and mouse or a mobile phone.
And it's really important that we know that our websites can be navigated
through the, Fuck, what's that word?
Not keypad.
Keyboard.
That's it.
Okay.
I'm so sorry.
That our website can be navigated using just the keyboard.
It's also really important that if someone is partially sighted or having
a website read to them through a screen reader, that we've got things
like our alt tags in place and that the clickable links tell people where
they're going to go, all of those things.
And then there's everyday accessibility that we don't necessarily think about.
So for example, left-handed users are going to struggle if all of the
menus are on the right-hand side.
So that's all these little pieces that we learn.
And there, there's just so much to learn.
But the more that you nail down and really specialize in a different area
each time you go to learn something, and I'm not saying that you should
be learning something all the time.
As I say, every year I just think I'm gonna go all in on something,
and that could be your focus as well.
But we learn on the job, absolutely.
And in most cases, every time we build a new website, we build a better website.
We're learning something new.
We're stretching ourselves.
And just having some solid knowledge to back that up can really help.
And this doesn't have to come necessarily from an online
course or paid-for resources.
You can go out there, you can read some blogs, you can look at white papers.
You can follow people on LinkedIn who are really well known in the industry.
You can listen to podcasts.
For example, someone I work with, Nikki Pilkington, she has a
podcast called SEO Fucking What.
My podcast producer may bleep out the F-ing in that because, uh, I
like to not have explicit content.
But her stuff's amazing for SEO, and I listen to it.
It releases every Sunday, and I often come away really inspired and
then go and action what she's done.
But learning about SEO is, like, pretty much the best thing that you can do
for your web design career as well, because having websites which rank
highly on Google is, well, A, only a good thing, but B, it's gonna have
people wanting to come to you as well.
So When you're in those earlier stages of your web design career, you are
still figuring a lot of stuff out through the client interactions and
think, "Oh gosh, I don't want to do it that way that time or next time,"
or you think, "This really worked.
I want to make sure I do that again." And that can happen well with onboarding
clients, but also with off-boarding them.
So with onboarding, we want to make sure that we have all the things that
we need to get them started and get the project started and running smoothly.
And usually, a smooth onboarding is going to determine how well the project works.
So for example, I always absolutely insist with clients that I have all
of the content for their website up front before we start the build, and
that means the website copy, the brand assets, all the images, any links they
want to link to, for example, Calendly or anything like that, before we get
started because drip-fed content is a miserable experience for both the
designer but also for the client.
Clients often-- You've got to bear in mind that when they're commissioning
websites, they have all of their own work that they're doing at the same time.
And so often getting the website content isn't a priority for them.
And if you get started before you have this content from them, it's
this stop-start, disjointed process.
You're chasing them up.
They're feeling bad they haven't got it to you, and nobody wins in this scenario.
So having a really rigid onboarding process can really support everyone
here because it gives the client the incentive to get things to you.
But it also, holding that boundary makes them feel good about the project.
Because as much as some clients like to tap, tap in all the time it actually
when they come out the other side of it, they often say, "Oh, I just felt
like I had to be on the designer's case all the time, and I just couldn't relax
until it was done." And having that really good process will help with that.
And in my Web Designer's Contract Pack, I talk about the
onboarding within that as well.
I've also got some episodes on the podcast
if you want to go through the back catalog around this.
I do also have the Website Designer's Onboarding pack available on the website.
If you want something that's downloadable, that's white label that you can just go
and use for your own clients, then you are welcome to go and check it out as well.
So the next thing I wanted to talk about really was about your marketing yourself.
'Cause it's all well and good me saying, once the clients come in, come
and do this or use this or do that.
But if you don't have clients, then it's all going to feel
a little bit pie in the sky.
And when you are looking at selling websites, you are going
up against so many other people.
And how do people choose to work with you over someone else?
And there's always going to be the know, like, and trust factor in sales.
It happens in everyone's sales, and it means that people like to work
with someone they feel that they know, someone they feel they like, someone
they feel that they trust as well.
And getting known for something within the industry can help build that reputation.
It can help you stand out a little bit.
Now, some people would say go all in on the repelling content, be
controversial, get known for really hating something or being this or that.
And if that's your bag, absolutely knock yourself out doing it.
But I would say often people who do that are a little better known within
their industry before they start.
But it could be that you get known for being all in on accessibility, or
you get known for being all in for a particularly popular type of software
you use, or I got very well known for my processes being very strong, that people,
they'd get the website that they were promised, and they'd love the website
and all of that, but most importantly, they would love the experience.
And I am really proud of having set that up, and that works for both
my web design clients and the web designers who I mentor as well, that my
processes are really strong, and we've always got that we've got this kind of
attitude to it, and it really helps.
So maybe take some time and just plot down some ideas of What you think you're
really good at within your industry.
It could be that you're really good at fixing problems, or you're really
innovative when it comes up with solutions for, let's say, a booking
system or this or that, or you love creating custom plugins, or you love
the relationship with clients and you want to build on that or whatever else.
It- Jot down some ideas and then start thinking about which ones of those would
you really like people to know you for.
So if someone was recommending you, people recommend me and they say, "Oh, Holly's
the one you want to work with for this because you are gonna have a great time.
If you've been left feeling nervous or let down by a previous developer, you need to
work with Holly." And so insert your name here, what you want to be known for, and
start creating some content around that.
And I know in the early days that we can think, "Who am I to say that?"
It all feels a bit aspirational.
But back yourself.
No one else is going to.
You need to back yourself.
So, get confident and get doing it So the next thing I would say is do not
worry about what everybody else is doing.
And I think if there's anything I would ever be known for, written down for,
is that for the last 10 years I've been advising small business owners
who I work with, and more recently website designers and developers
who I mentor stay in your lane.
Do not worry about what other people are doing.
You know, people come to me and they say, "Who's your
competition?" Said, "I don't know.
I have no idea who my competitors are." All I know is that I am
doing my work in the way that I want to do it with integrity.
I am backing myself, and I am not getting distracted by what
the competition are doing.
I am making sure my focus is fully on achieving the business goals
and supporting web designers in achieving their goals as well.
And so often people compare themselves to others, they get
absolute imposter syndrome, or they go into a freeze response.
They think, "I can't do it like that." And often the only difference
between you and the other person is confidence, is the other person is just
confidently putting themselves out there.
So get known for something, ignore the competition, stay in
your lane, and just keep putting a foot in front of each other.
With it as well collect reviews.
There's so many times we don't do this.
If you think like I have built hundreds of websites, and if you look at my Google,
it's got like 42 reviews or something.
So I remind myself of this at the same time that I remind you, ask for the
review when you hand over the website.
And I do this, but I often just don't follow it up.
And so I'm gonna use this as a note to myself to actually follow
up some more recent website builds and ask them to leave me a review.
Because leaving a review for someone lets other people know what the experience
has been like, what they can expect, and obviously it goes towards credibility.
On slow days on LinkedIn, you can post a nice photo of your review.
It is only good things as well.
So do have-- I have a line at the end when I hand over the website stuff, say, y- "If
you've enjoyed working together, please would you consider leaving me a review.
Here's the link to do that." So I make it super easy for people to do it as well.
what I should do is follow up a few days later.
So, get reviews.
Because also it's really good when you're having a day where it just
feels a little bit overwhelming or, you know, it's not coming together,
you can look back through those reviews and think, "No, I do know this.
I have got this." And the final thing I'd like to leave you with
today is consider getting a mentor.
Often we think that we will go for mentorship when we can afford it,
when we've made enough money, and often we're never in the early days
gonna feel like we've made enough money or that we can afford it.
You know, we, as I said earlier, uh, in one of my previous episodes, that
we look at, at the income that comes in and think, "Oh gosh, I've gotta save
that for a rainy day," or, "I've gotta put this over this many sessions,"
or, we allocate it in our mind.
But actually, there is a real thing with mentorship with,
pays dividends on doing it.
And every time I have leveled up in my business, I have worked with a
coach or with mentors because there are blind spots that I can't see for
myself, that's why they're called blind spots, and there's stuff that
I don't necessarily know how to do.
And, you know, mentorship and coaching can come at all different levels with
all different levels of experience in the coaches and the mentors,
and at all different price points.
So I think when I first went for coaching a few years ago, I think
it was 2,000 pounds for three months or four months coaching.
When I wanted to set up my web design community, I went to work with different
mentors, and it was a six-month program, and it was over 1,000 pounds a month.
But what I learnt on that and the support I had on that, I have
gone on to make a lot more money in my business because of it.
So it can feel really nail-biting you need to work at price point that works
for you as well But it's really important that you do make that investment, that
you do learn from someone who's been there, who's done it, and who can guide
you in how to do it because it can help you shortcut the areas that you might
really be struggling with or areas which would really knock your confidence.
I mean, there's all times where we've thought about leaving the business
because we've had a client who's just been too difficult or whatever else,
and having someone in your corner can really support you with that as well.
And getting a mentor, getting coaching can absolutely pay dividends.
Needless to say, I do mentor and coach new website designers and developers.
So if that's something you think you might like to have
a chat about, do get in touch.
I would love to hear from you.
If there is anything you would like to add to the list of what we've covered
today or anything you would like me to cover on the podcast, do get in touch.
I would love to hear from you.
I answer and reply personally to everyone who comes in, and that might
be that you have emailed me through hello@websitesmadesimple.co.uk.
It could be that you've dropped me a DM on LinkedIn where I'm there as Holly
C Christie, or you can even go onto the website and you can fill out the
contact form, or you can even drop me a voice note through there as well.
So that's it for today, and until next time, take a breath,
you've got this, and have a great time in your web design career.