When you got started in the design industry you probably thought all you’d have to worry about was designing websites that looked nice and made your clients happy. I don’t blame you. With the quick run I had doing design, that’s exactly what I thought.
If that is the idea you started out with, I’m sure you quickly found that your responsibilities run deeper so today we’ll talk about 4 ways you can help your design clients be successful after working with you.
1. Get strategic
If you’ve watched any of my videos or read my blog before, you know the drill. The most important thing you can do for your clients is have a real purpose behind your designs.
The more strategy and thought you put into a website, the better results your clients will see after working with you, whether it’s more email opt-ins, more product sales, or something completely different. But making sure the websites you design serve a purpose can have a huge part to play in the future success your client has.
To add the right type of purpose in a website, it’s really important to focus on your client’s goals throughout the design phase of your projects. You might find that your clients already know what their goals are and you just need to reflect that in your design or you might find that your client has no idea about what goals will move them forward and you have to put on your expert hat and help them out.
But either way, make sure that you’re focused in on your client’s goals in every phase of your design process.
2. Know their competition
Next, taking the time to learn about your client’s competition can give you some amazing leverage in moving them forward towards success.
Now, I’m definitely not saying you should do this to copy what others are doing, but through looking at these other brands and websites, you’ll notice gaps that are being missed that your client can fill, things that your client might be missing, and ways you can make them stand out from the crowd while still getting the attention they need from their ideal audience.
3. Don’t leave room for distractions
Moving on to the next way you can help your design clients be successful – making sure that you leave your design distraction-free is so important in the ability your client has to get good conversions consistently.
Instead of website visitors being distracted by ads, links to other people’s websites, or social media accounts that don’t matter as much as other things, you have the ability to make sure your client’s audience is focused on what’s really important. Both things that will help them, as an audience member who wants to learn, while helping your client reach their goals.
4. Empower your clients with the training they need
And last, but certainly not least, if you want to set your clients up for success, provide them with the training they need to move forward with their website. There are two major parts to this training that you’ll want to focus on.
First comes the website itself. Regardless of the platform, it’s important that your client feels empowered to make changes, add new content, and grow their website as their business evolves. Training them to take care of updates, change content on certain pages, and update images are important things that they should know how to do without a second thought.
But after that more general website maintenance, there’s a deeper level of support and training that a lot of designers miss. Picture yourself with a client who is really focused on getting email opt-ins. Because of that, you design the most strategic and effective website out that that’s sure to convert at a rate higher than either of you have ever seen before. Buuuut then you hand that website over to them and they have no idea what to do once those subscribers get on their list…that website isn’t doing them a whole lot of good anymore, is it?
And I know what you’re thinking, training your clients on using their email list or how to convert on consult calls totally isn’t your job. But it can be a small part of it if you’re really focused on helping your clients.
Now I’m not saying that you need to be an expert in these things and do all the training yourself. Consider teaming up with other business owners you know to provide training for each other’s clients. Or maybe have a list of helpful blog posts and resources that your client can refer to when they’re getting started along with a list of people they can work with when they’re ready for the next step. And these are all things you can use over and over again for each client, once you have it created the first time.
So while it may not be in the job description, I’m sure you can see how big of a difference it can make in the success your clients see in the future.
To learn more about the first few tips we talked about today, be sure to grab the checklist on the 10 steps to designing a strategic and effective website.
10 Steps To Designing A Strategic And Effective Website For Your Clients
