How to start a web design business

Let me ask you two quick questions before we begin. Do you have experience building websites? And have you made your first Naira with that skill? Because if you answer yes to both, there is a big chance that you have been bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. I can tell you that’s how I felt when I built my first website for a client. It was more as a hubby at that point and I ended up making about N45k. It doesn’t seem like much but it meant everything to me.
At that point, I realized how much control I had over my income when working for myself versus getting a job that is salary-based. Once you have above-average skills, you deserve to put cash in your pocket when helping someone else, but that task can seem a little daunting when you want to take it to the next level. You have to become more strategic to turn your skills into money month after month. That’s why I want to discuss with you what to consider when setting up your web design business.

1. Your Target Market: the first step to your web design business should be identifying your target market. Who do you want to work with? And the number one mistake that I see being made by myself and a lot of other people that are getting started is they want to market themselves to every type of business. That’s the wrong way to go about it because if you’re doing that, then you are not appealing to the needs of one particular business type. So the best piece of advice that I can give is to pick a niche or an industry that you are interested in and you’ll like to work with.
2. Competitor Analysis: Once you’re comfortable with your target market that is when it’s time to take a look at the competitive landscape. Who exists in the space already? I love looking at local websites and other business websites to see who built them because you start to notice a lot of trends.
3. Your Solution: Now is the time to start thinking about the solution. How you’re going to go about building, designing, and managing client websites and how that is going to make you stand out from your competitors. The nice thing about a web design business is that the start-up cost is low.
4. Short and Long-term Goals: it goes without saying that if you want to achieve something, you’re going to want to create a specific goal with a deadline. This is something a lot of people do broadly. They have this really big idea but they specify the steps to get there. You have to really have a concrete vision of what you want to accomplish.
5. Your Sales Strategy: last but not least is your sales strategy. How do you plan to reach the clients that you are going to target? I would say that this is probably the most difficult thing that you going to have to deal with. This is a lot more nuanced than building a website. Building a website is relatively easy in the grand scheme of things but finding the right people to sell that website to and crafting your sales message or your marketing plan, that’s a lot more difficult.
   I’ll end with this; “Business = Art + Science”. There is no tutorial that you can take to become great at business. You only get great at business through experience because it involves a lot of creativity, a lot of human interaction and humans are the biggest variable in business. There is a science part of it and that is the quantifiable approach. Figuring out how to build a website, how long it takes you, how many people it’s going to take to reach your goals? And you have to combine the two because it’s rare to be good at everything, especially at the beginning. Even as you grow and become better, you’re still not going to be good at everything but you’ll realize how to counteract your weaknesses. Potentially outsource some of the things that you’re not good at and you’re going to get much better with more time and experience you have.