How To Get More Clients as a Web Design Freelancer
A freelance web designer with no clients is not a web designer! Crafting websites is an awesome activity and any endeavours or sleepless nights of a designer are forgotten when the users are delighted with the final product.
The designers like pro bono works or personal projects, but the income is determined by works made for clients, therefore any customer is extremely important! The clients need specialists to make websites for them, so the binomial designer-client will resist for many years.
The clients in need of a web designer have tons of opportunities to select one. It’s enough for everyone needing a website to “google” for freelance web designers or local web design agencies.
Of course, he can hire a freelancer from another continent or from wherever he wants. Unfortunately, this luxury is not available for web designers! They must work hard for every client and sometimes their work is under evaluated. Nowadays, being a good designer isn’t equivalent with having clients!
In order to attract them, a freelance web designer or a design agency should let people know that they are available for hiring. You guessed, marketing is mandatory for everyone that wants to make an income from design.
On the other hand, nothing can replace the work and skills of a good web designer!
Fortunately, we know that being a web designer isn’t an easy job and we tried to find efficient methods to attract more clients. Much more, we published many useful articles that surely must be read by you.
Best Tips on Get More Web Design Clients
The tips below are our recommendations, so these might be or not useful for you, but these worked for the majority of designers. It will be great to know if these helped you in making more clients or if you have a proposal, please feel free to share it with us.
Tips #1: Work efficient, not more
Many web designers commit a big mistake: they consider that working more is the fuel of gaining more money. Working efficient is the real solution! It’s not rocket science: staying all day long in front of a monitor and chatting with friends doesn’t mean that the respective person worked.
Comparing to one that focused just two hours on making a good layout, the last one will gain more money. It’s obvious that before having new clients, a designer should have time available to work for them. The conclusion is crystal clear: be efficient and organize your working time if you really want more clients.
Tips #2: An “efficient” portfolio is mandatory
A portfolio is the business card of a designer…if you don’t have one, you don’t exist! A web designer/web design agency should have a website where the most beautiful projects are uploaded and a contact form for ones that are interested in contacting them.
A portfolio that attracts clients is more than that. Everyone should use social networks, web galleries or any other possibilities to showcase the products. Lots of designers ignore these modalities of exhibiting the works and you may take advantage of them. Keep in mind, every missed opportunity might be a missed important client!
Tips #3: Testimonials – a client never ignores another client
Declaring yourself to be a better skilled designer than you are is a big lie, even if some people prefer to call this marketing. Don’t take me wrong, but marketing is marketing while a lie remains a lie!
People needing web designers’ services know these shifts and they don’t fully trust the words of designers. On the contrary, they pay great attention to other clients’ opinions.
A wise web designer will take advantage and will add a testimonials section into his portfolio. The more important are the previous clients, the more attractive the designer becomes!
Tips #4: Keep in touch with the previous clients
A satisfied client is the best marketing method and it’s totally unacceptable not to profit from this fact. A good web designer will keep in touch with the previous clients.
The advantages of having a good relationship with them are obvious: they may recommend your service to other people and whenever they will need the services of a designer, it’s a big chance of being once again hired.
Tips #5: Blog and socialize
Another modality of getting more clients is to be social media active and share with other people your past experiences and personal opinions. It’s a more subtle manner of getting clients than, let’s say a good portfolio, but it seems to work very efficient.
The idea is simple: by blogging, other people may fall in love with your style, but also they may notice that your approach is very professional and some will contact you to design their websites.
Social media isn’t only Facebook. There is also LinkedIn or Twitter that are more “professional” networks and some designers were contacted via these platforms.
Undoubtedly, any web designer, no matter if he does or doesn’t have clients, must have a LinedIn profile and a Twitter account.
Conclusion
As you already noticed, there is no miraculous solution of getting clients, everything is about the quality of the services provided and the self–marketing strategy. The statute of a freelancer allows gaining enough money for a living, but the endeavours are beyond description.
Personally, I see the position of a freelance web designer as an intermediary solution. The reason is simple- evolution. As a freelancer you may receive a good project, but the well paid ones are very complex and a single individual can’t accomplish it.
The solution is constituted by small team of freelancers that are flexible and extremely talented. These are both sides advantageous: the clients don’t pay so much money as in the case of hiring a web design agency and the freelancer teams are happy with the projects gained that are paid considerably much well than working as an isolated designer.
Getting clients isn’t a facile task and the actual economic conditions aren’t the perfect context for entrepreneurship. In spite of this climate, a freelancer should constantly seek new opportunities and sometimes the “big fails” are as important as the successes.
I hope that you will appreciate this post and it will be great to share it with your friends!
– Written by Daniel –
1 Comment
[…] Dealing with clients is a very important aspect of the activity of a web designer. The university courses treat this aspect superficially, but in real life this is a very important chapter. A good relationship with a client may assure a relative stabile income and in the actual economical context, this is extremely important. Altogether, having all the eggs into a single basket isn’t a good idea and a new client, from time to time, is a very good move. In fact, there is an unresolved dilemma: which is the best client, a new one or an old one? Personally, I think that the best solution is to have a balanced mix of new and existing clients because in this way a pretty stable income is assured and on top of that there are good chances to make it bigger. Anyway, we have prepared a short list in which old vs. new clients are compared from various perspectives. As usual, we ask for your precious opinions about this dilemma- the more opinions, the better! […]