7 Things You Must Do Before Starting a WordPress Web Design Business

Thinking of starting a WordPress web design business Here are 7 things you must do to jump start your web design business.

1. Business + Accounting Setup

Keeping a record of all your financial transactions is crucial for the success of your business. However you don’t want to spend your time on managing spreadsheets and balancing books because you need to be focused in your business.

Thankfully there are tools that help you automate your accounting and save you money.

We recommend using Freshbooks. It is the most user-friendly accounting tool for non-accountants. You can easily send invoices, receive payments, connect it with your bank account, and automatically track every transaction.

Freshbooks also allows you to track time and bill clients for the number of hours you worked. This feature is particularly useful if a client wants to hire you on hourly basis.

2. Choose Your Framework

Choosing a theme framework to work with will help you reduce your work and speed up your overall development process.

There are several WordPress theme frameworks available. See our detailed guide on what is a theme framework (pros, cons, and more).

It’s also good to have a set of WordPress plugins that you install and keep them as part of your blueprint. Finding plugins that do specific tasks will help speed up the process as well.

3. Always Backup Everything

Losing data is costly and it’s even worst if the data belongs to a client. You should invest in setting up a comprehensive backup system for your entire development environment.

If you plan on hosting your client websites, then you need to invest in backing up client data as frequently as possible.

You should also make backups of your development environment and enable autosave on all your code editing tools and software. Using revision control system like Git can save you from a lot of trouble in the future.

4. Choosing The Best Hosting For Your Web Design Business

Your clients will need your help and advice on choosing the best WordPress hosting. Often smaller web design agencies host client websites by themselves which can provide an extra revenue stream, but it comes with it’s own hassles.

We strongly recommend against hosting your client websites on your server. Instead you should partner with a hosting company that you like to work with and ask for an affiliate deal.

This can turn out to be quite lucrative because certain WordPress hosting companies offer a great affiliate program.

InMotion Hosting pays up to $125 for each sale. They offer business hosting, VPS, dedicated server, and even managed hosting. Join InMotion Hosting Affiliate Program.

WPEngine pays up to $200 for each sale. They are a specialized WordPress hosting company and only offered a managed solution which is a bit pricier. Join WPEngine Affiliate Program.

Partnering with a reliable hosting provider allows you to delegate tasks that you are not good at, managing servers, while still earning the extra money.

As the number of your clients grow, you will thank us for this advice.

5. Surround Yourself With Great People

At first it might feel like you can do most of the work on your own, and you probably can. However as your business grows, you will need more people. Our founder and CEO Syed Balkhi often says:
If you want to go fast, go alone.

If you want to go far, go together.

You can hire someone to work with you permanently, or you can build strategic partnerships with freelance contractors and other agencies.

You cannot be a master of everything, so trying to do everything on your own can ruin your web design business before it can even start. Find the people who have the skills and knowledge that you lack and delegate work to them.

Specialization is key for the success of your web design business.

It may take some time to find people you can count on, but in the long run it will be totally worth your patience and time.

6. Returning Customers

Build relationships with your clients on a more personal level. Take interest in their business, their ambitions and try to go out of your way to find out how you can help.

All businesses are about people and valuing people makes them feel good not only about you but also about themselves.

You should always be honest, generous, kind, respectful and graceful in the way you conduct your business. Once a job is done, don’t become a stranger. You should follow up with your clients to see how things are working out for them. Stay connected with them on social media and show genuine interest in people.

These small acts of kindness will bring back more business for you than you can imagine. It will also encourage your clients to help you connect with possible leads.

It is a win win for all, and it will cost you nothing but a few minutes of your time every day. You can also send your clients gift baskets on holidays because everyone loves gifts.

7. Build an Email List

Believe it or not, email is the most powerful and cost effective marketing tool. 70% people visiting your website will probably never find their way back to your site again. This means you have just a few seconds of their time to convince them into hiring you.

Sometimes a user might be interested in your services because they are not yet ready to make a decision. You can offer them a chance to subscribe to your email list by giving them an exclusive resource that can help them make the decision.

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