A web design agency will take care of everything to do with setting up a website. From design to development to choosing a hosting provider, your job is to get everything set up for your clients. It can be a lot of work, but you’ll have yourself a lucrative business if done correctly.
This article will show you the steps you need to take to get your web design agency off the ground.
Step 1: Find a Suitable Host
As a web design company, you’ll be offering your clients a package that includes web hosting. Ideally, you’ll have multiple customers who will need a host, so you want to choose a provider to handle your various clients’ needs. Many companies offer hosting for design agencies. Two of the most common hosting plans for agencies are VPS and reseller. A VPS plan will allow you to enjoy better performance, improved resources, and full root access. This will give you a lot of freedom to install the scripts and apps you need and fine-tune the server environment to meet your exact business needs. However, if you have less than 250 customers, a cost-effective hosting option is reseller hosting. This would allow you to control the features and resources you allocate to your customers, but you would be limited to what comes standard with the plan.
Step 2: Choose a Content Management System (CMS)
You can’t create great websites for your clients without a functional content management system (CMS). A CMS functions as the back end of your website; this is where the magic happens. If you don’t have good back end services for your website, you won’t be able to create a truly wonderful website.
When searching for the best CMS, you should look for one that offers flexibility and opportunities to present content in unique ways. Furthermore, it should have a powerful administrative dashboard. This dashboard should make it easy to manage all the tasks involved in content production. Therefore, it should keep track of scheduled content, monitor site, and administrator activity, add functionality through extensions or plugins, manage notifications for tasks, and administer multiple sites and platforms. Don’t skimp on your research here as you’ll likely want to use the same CMS platform for all your clients, so you’ll want to find one that can handle all their various needs.
Step 3: Plan to Optimize for Search Engines
When designing a site, you must keep the basics of SEO in mind. Your clients won’t be happy to have a beautifully designed website that nobody can find. You should have a solid plan to follow for every website you design to ensure that every site is optimized for search engines. This includes structuring web content so that the important text is represented as headings and using divs instead of tables. You will also need to work with your clients to come up with appropriate long and short-tail keywords. Additionally, you will need to make sure your site architecture is intuitive, so it’s easy for search engines to crawl.
Step 4: Design a Customer Service Plan
Customer service is paramount to client loyalty. If you want to keep current clients and earn new ones, you need to deliver superior customer support.
The internet doesn’t have opening and closing hours, it’s a 24/7/365 business. This means that if there’s something wrong with your clients’ site, they’ll be calling on you regardless of the day or time. For this reason, you need to be prepared to offer customer support at all times. How you offer this support is up to you, but some of the easiest ways to be available 24/7/365 are through chatbots, answering services, and FAQ pages.
Step 5: Market Yourself
Once you’ve got your business set up, it’s time to get the word out. You need to let people know what you have to offer. This can be done in a variety of ways, but to be effective, your marketing needs to show that you have the expertise and ability to get the job done. For this reason, it’s a good idea to start by building your reputation as a subject matter expert. One way to do this is by creating and sharing blog posts that show your knowledge of subjects related to web design and development. You could also guest blog about these subjects on popular blogs that potential clients frequent. You’ll also want to develop a presence in groups that potential clients might belong to, like local community Facebook groups or business-specific LinkedIn groups. Then, once you start getting clients, make sure to have them leave you reviews on your site and business directories.
Conclusion
As a web design agency, you’re going to handle everything for your client from start to finish. This includes not only the design and development of their site but also hosting, SEO, and customer support. Therefore, you must set yourself up properly to offer an exceptional service in all these areas. Preparation is key. Once you’ve got everything set up, it’s time to find customers. There’s a lot of competition out there, so be sure to build up a reputation as an expert that people can trust. Do all these things, and you’ll be on your way to creating a successful web design agency.
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