In this episode, we are talking about how to level up in your web design business
how to build your brand,
and how to make more money without trading time for money.
You ready? Let's get started.
Hi, I'm Holly Christie. I'm from Websites Made Simple. I'm a website designer, a website designer's mentor, and I'm here to help you absolutely love your
website design career because trust me, we've all had those times.
Whether you are starting out or whether you've been in this game for a long old time where we've thought of chucking it
all in and going and doing something else, I don't.
The very first thing is your website has to be absolutely brilliantly representative of the work that you do. And
sometimes as web designers we can think, oh, I really like to try this trend, or I've just seen that and I once bring it to my own site. And I have seen designers. Build
and rebuild and rebrand and restyle their website like you wouldn't believe.
customers. You need to have a really strong brand presence, and that means doing it once and leaving it alone. There's sometimes we get branding that we work with
and think, oh yeah, I really love this.
And there's other times you think, I don't love this, but I like it enough to put my name to it and I know that I can work with this.
And you'll find that on my own websites. There's obviously the websites made simple website, which I have specifically for website designers and developers who are looking
for resources to have a better career.
And I have my website, vista demanding life.com, which is for actually selling websites to the website clients as
well. And you'll see that the branding is the same color across both websites. It's just used in a slightly different way as well. Just have those different identities. And when I
redid my branding a few years ago, I worked with a branding designer and I thought.
I don't love the fonts and you know, a couple of those colors I'm, I'm not completely
wedded to, but I know I can work with this and you'll see all across my social media, whether it's Instagram, whether it's LinkedIn, whether you look at my web
designer's contract pack or onboarding packs or whatever it is, you will see that I use my branding really, really consistently.
personally, I love gradients, but
gradients aren't part of my brand, so I don't have them on there. I like that. Kind of girly swishy, kind of feminine vibe , but that doesn't work for the type of
websites that I build for my clients, so I don't have it on my own website. So whilst building your personal brand, I'm also going to
recommend.
You kind of don't make it to you, because sometimes when we try and do that, we can get a little bit lost in the nuance as
well. So make sure your branding strong. Make sure your website is representative of the websites that you build for other people.
you need to be showing up consistently somewhere on social media and you can have a look at the one that works best for you.
For me, I
find that's LinkedIn. I still have a, I'm gonna say watered down Instagram presence and I used to have a very strong Facebook presence,
but as the years went on, I stopped getting customers from there. And so it felt That it had its day. So I do have my pages slightly active there, but I don't
waste time there.
Other web designers I know can have really strong presence on TikTok as well. Whatever works for you, go ahead and do it, but show up.
Be consistent and try and show up in kind of more than one place. So like, as I say, I do LinkedIn, but I also show up on my
podcast. I show up on my website by adding to the blog post.
Yeah, I make sure that I kind of spread my marketing around a little bit as well.
thing is to be strategic with your content as well. And this is a mistake I see lots of designers and developers do. They start to build a personal brand, but they don't have a real strong focus behind it. And so they put up lots of posts of like, this is me, or this is what I did this week, or This is how it worked.
And they forget that. They also need to be saying, this
is what I do. Here are some websites I build. I sometimes see designers and developers go kind of head to head on LinkedIn, for example,
and one will say, absolutely, one way of doing something is the right way. Someone else will take offense and We can all go in the ring and we can all go in the arena. I am
generally not here to invalidate someone's opinion or someone's experience. I may say that's not my way of doing things. I may be a little
bit more contentious and you'll find in my podcast archives, you see some of my LinkedIn posts, I am not a fan of Elemental as a tool for website builders.
And I
will sometimes put that on my posts. I made podcast episode and it, it gets a lot of attention and it's okay to have something that you will live and die by. There's an
amazing website designer called Rachel Mess. I know her through LinkedIn. I've met her personally. She's all about accessibility, and yet that's the hill she's gonna die on.
That's what her websites are about. That's what her posts are about. And her whole brand is, I really care about leveling the playing field for people through accessible websites.
So do get known for having an opinion that is really important to you, one that you can really get behind, but don't invalidate other people's experience as
well.
You do it, make sure you mix up your content as well. we've talked a little bit about putting the
content out there. I think we need to remember that different people engage with stuff in different ways. Like for example, I create video content, not all the time,
and the videos are a little bit off the cuff, but I still do them personally.
I find that video content really bores me, so I am not likely to engage very
much with video content. I love carousels though. I like flicking through carousels. If they're boring, ill kind of get off them. That's a really good
way of getting information across, and especially if it's slightly longer form content.
So for example, if I write a blog for my website, I will then take the
key points from that blog and I will turn them into a carousel, and they usually get quite good engagement as well. Obviously from social channels as well. It works well because
they see people spending longer time engaging with your content.
I also like to put some slightly more personal stuff up there, and that could be an annual
review or a monthly review Throughout 2026, I'm aiming at doing a monthly review, which will be my personal and professional experience about that month has done. So.
If you see I'm not doing it, you are welcome to get in touch with me.
Hello at websites made simple co uk and say, why are you not doing this? Make sure that people get a real feel
for your work and they get a real feel for you. Promote both equally. Answer the questions through your website that people are asking. So that could be, how much
does a website cost?
When can I expect to see a return on the investment of my website? What is the web design process? How to choose the right website
designer. How to choose the right software. All those sorts of things are what people are putting into Google all of the time when they're looking at buying a
website from a website designer.
And as much as people will go on recommendations, they'll check out websites, they will ask Google All Bear Ask Chat, TPT.
And you want to be, make sure that your results are in there, and then if you're answering those questions and they're in your blog, you can turn them into the carousel. You can get them out there on your social
channels as well.
But trust me, that kind of evergreen content never gets sold either. And when people contact me. About a website. The first thing I will know about it
is that they've booked a call with me through the button on my website, and it'll drop into my inbox saying, this person's booked a call, and I actually have an autoresponder on
that.
That means that when they do that, they get an email saying, really looking forward to us going on the call. In the meantime, here is some information you might like, and that will be a
link to the different blog posts on my website, which says, how to choose the right designer. How much would a website cost?
How long does it take? What's the process like so that by the time
I go on the call with them, they already know roughly how much the quote's gonna be. They know how long the process is, they know what they need, and they know what questions
to ask me to be confident in. Choosing me as their designer. So usually by the time that they go on the call with me, 80% of the heavy lifting has been done through
my website already.
Leverage your network and I'm not a huge
fan of in-person networking. And especially if you followed me for a while, you will most likely know from my personal content that I'm a single parent
and those like 6:00 AM meetings, they're never gonna be something that I'm gonna make.
And actually at 6:00 AM I don't wanna be out meeting people that's for sure. And
that is where social media can really come into its own. And I go on so many web designers profiles and they've got either an inactive LinkedIn
profile or they have 300 connections or whatever it is. You can do better than that.
And I'd really recommend LinkedIn 'cause there's a lovely web design community on
here as well. And it's easy to grow network there. By just being active and being on it and seeing what people are commenting on and going and putting your opinion in, or
helping with advice or putting up that post that you weren't quite sure about, but your network is gonna be your key to the next steps of your business as
well.
And get to know people, take the time to drop them a message, comment on their posts. I will often drop into someone in the messages and say, oh, I see we're commenting on all of the
same stuff, and I've built some really good relationships with people that way. And then it means when I think I would like to get to know some more people.
me and I'll just drop into their LinkedIn and I'll say to them, you know, we're commenting on the same stuff. I would love to get to know you better. I'm thinking of running a webinar on whatever their
topic of expertise is. Should we join forces and do this?
And most people are gonna say yes. There's also the opportunity to ask people if you
could speak on their podcast or whether you could speak in their membership group. Make sure you get to know them first. Do not cold pitch them. That will not go down
well and most people will not only ignore it, they might block you as well.
So it might be a bit reputation damaging, but it's if you build a relationship with someone
and you think I'd like to get in front of their audience as well, it's absolutely okay to do that. I have people contact me quite regularly. They ask me to go on their
podcast. They ask if I can come and speak in their membership groups, and they ask me to go on webinars with them.
And I'm relatively discerning. I don't say yes to everything,
but I really enjoy meeting new people and I enjoy sharing different parts of the industry and stuff. So never be afraid to do that. To leverage your network this
year.
things, and this ties in a little bit with saying about the make sure your website is really kind of demonstrating your knowledge in that area as well.
But get really well known for it. Like
I am really well known for service brochure style websites. And back in the day I did used to do shop sites and you know, to be
honest, if I had a good business buddy who wanted to add a shop to their website, I would go and help them. But it's not my real area of expertise.
expertise is user journeys. It's how to really showcase services. It's how to get more clicks on those websites, how to get that website to a point that people go on it
and think. Yes, this is absolutely what I was expecting the website of this person to be. I'm loving the consistency. I'm going to engage with them.
And then, you know, once
people have made that engagement through the website, they're much more likely to go on to use you as well. So I'm really well known for that. The other thing I'm really well
known for is talking web designers and web developers down from the ceiling when something's not quite worked out.
And again, this can be a real benefit of
networking and leveraging your network. Times a week, I will have web designers drop into my LinkedIn and say to me, I'm feeling really wrong, fitted. I've
delivered a website and entirely to the client's specification, and we've gone all the way through, we're ready to publish.
and said that they they're not sure that it's good enough, they want a second opinion or, they might come to me and say, I'm feeling nervous. I've got
someone's website content. The content's not good enough. They're not prepared to change. The content will be guided, and I'm not sure what to do with the design or something like that.
And so I will always, always kind of get 'em on Zoom or I will, they'll send me the link and I'll run a video and we'll work through it together as well. And people know that they can
jump on a crisis call with me anytime. And I'm, you know, I'm really happy that that's what people know me for. That is part of the whole website's made simple, and they
only need to come to me a couple of times with these sorts of things to then realize that actually they now have the tools for handling this as well.
have a weekly group mentoring called that. I do that web designers can come on each week as well, and they can bring that sort of thing as well and learn from each other On that two, it's called
Sparks Group Mentoring. And if that's something that sounds good to you, go websites Made Simple UK and you can check it out for yourself.
website space. So whether you're a designer, a developer, an SEO, or a copywriter, you're welcome there.
So I couldn't be on a podcast without saying start a podcast because podcasting is such a good way of
demonstrating your expertise as well. And it's a really good platform because you can use it without being distracted. Like you put something in
a LinkedIn feed or something like that, and generally it's gone within a couple of hours and you're looking at other people's stuff.
on social media, but if you have a podcast, you've got your own podcast channel, and you can have this really linear experience of how you
want to share your knowledge, your expertise, and your experience, and the experience you want your clients to have of you as well. So I absolutely recommend
that for 2026, a podcasting is something that you look into and if that is something you're gonna look into.
post called What I Learned from a Year in Podcasting, and it's on my this demanding Life site, so I will link it in the show notes as well. I really recommend that you read that before you
start a podcast. Trust me on this one. And I really, really, really recommend my absolutely brilliant podcasting producer Neil Lio.
Ponos Podcasting. He's brilliant. How to
web.
Leverage your email list. And this is something that, you know, website designers and
developers aren't really known for their kind of prowess when it comes to writing and emails and templates and all that sort of stuff. But trust me, the more emails
you send, the better you will become at it. And actually, one of my friends Lisa York, she has an email writing a course called Email Blockbuster 1 0 1,
and I can send you the links for that as well.
That is a real game changer about how to write emails that are curiosity based, that are
engaging, but most importantly. Gets people clicking through, engaging with you, buying your products and services and stuff like that, and having
the discipline of emailing your list every week or every fortnight will really make a difference.
And even if you only have, you know, a few
subscribers, set yourself a challenge that every week you'll put out a post inviting people to subscribe to your email list, and every week you'll send an email. And
whether you are just sending it to three people to begin with, doesn't matter. Just get in the habit of it because more business is done through email lists than all the other places put together.
So
seriously do that. And finally, as I'm recording this, at the beginning
of 2026, get started with this stuff. I mean, so often we think I will do this after I finish this website, or you know,
next week, it's that manana manana thing. No, if you want to have a much better year than you have ever had, if you wanna make more money, you wanna build your brand,
you wanna grow your business and you want to do that without being, you know, low value websites, and more time and more time and more time into it.
Put these steps into practice. Now, I promise you. The end of this year will look completely different to the beginning of this year for you. So get
started. Lemme know how you get on it. You can join my email list. Go to websites made simple co uk slash email. I would love to see you on it. I email my list every
single week and let you know what's going on in the world of web design, what's going on in my life.
And I'll say, let you know when I'm opening the doors to my programs and
you know, what's available for you then and there. So until next time, happy web designing.