Pricing your service

Pricing your design service is one of the your toughest challenges. It involves much more than you may think. When you set your price, you are not only setting your income, but also setting your target audience and creating an image for your business. Your price becomes a marketing tool. Set your price too low and your clients will either take advantage of you, or not perceive the value of your business. Set your price too high and you turn off clients who are interested in your service. So how do you go about setting your price? There are many pricing strategies to choose from. Some even “wing it” on a project by project bases. However, if there is one piece of advice I could give, it would have to be that having a pricing strategy is probably the most important aspect to sustaining your business.

By now, you should have a target segment and you should know that segment pretty well. Begin by finding out some of the prices they are currently paying for web design service. Look at the rates of your competitors. If they’re not listed, do some investigating. These prices are just to look at, not to use… I’ll tell you why. Most web design companies offer a one time fee for designing a site. Sometimes, they will charge a monthly or yearly fee to host the site. A large portion of their income is from the design of the site not the host. What these design firms fail to do is create a routine need for their service. It is much easier to keep a client than to earn a new one.

Instead of offering a one-time fee for site design. Break your payments up monthly. For example, rather than charging $5,000 for a site design, charge a monthly fee of $500 for site design and 4hrs of maintenance each month. Have a minimum of a one year contract so that you are compensated for the initial design. There is a very good chance that the company you built a website for will maintain the monthly payments for the updating service you offer them. as long as the client sees the need for the monthly updates, you earn residual income.

Pricing Strategies

I mentioned the importance of targeting a specific market through pricing strategies earlier in the year. This week we’ll take an in depth look at pricing strategies for developers and how they effect business. Stay tuned!

Distribution Channels

Web design is a service generally done directly between the designer and the client, the channels involved are somewhat limited. Because the channels are so limited, this increases the amount of competition between the organizations competing within the same channels.

Guru.com offers a second channel for web developers to connect with clients. Rather than having a direct channel to the clients, web designers can now go through guru.com which handles the logistics of the business. Including finding clients, receiving payments and pricing. There are many other sites like guru.com. I encourage you to check them out.

Communities – Get Involved

Howdie!

It seems like it has been forever since I’ve posted to this blog. The past week has kept me busy with work.

I know that many of you are already aware but communities can be a great tool for web developers. First, it allows web developers to communicate with each other and stay up to date on current web trends. Second, members of most communities are more than willing the help out with any web related issues. If I’m having a problem with programming or want advice on a design template, I often seek the help of community members on specific sites. Use this tool! Get involved in web design related communities. You may even score some job opportunities.

Here are a few of my favorite communities to get you started. There are tons more, just do a google search and you’ll find some you like.

• http://digg.com/design
• http://www.thefwa.com/
• http://forum.24-7media.de/
• http://www.adobe.com/devnet/

Marketing Tools

If you’re reading this blog, my guess is that you are a web developer. This means that, by far, your website is the strongest marketing tool you have. It’s important that when clients see your website, they get a feel of professionalism and quality work. Natalie Aranda has written a great article on effectively marketing your web design business. The article can be viewed at http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Effectively-Market-Your-Web-Design-Business&id=246519.

Don’t forget about your current clients. Word of mouth can be one of the most effective marketing tools. Be in constant communication with your clients. A simple call every month to make sure they are happy with the work will remind them of what a great service you provide. And chances are that they will be more likely to tell a friend. During holiday seasons, send a gift basket with some leave-behinds. Make sure your business contact information is on everything!

Also, make sure that a link to your business is present on every site you design. There’s a chance that some business owner will view the site and like what they see. Make sure they have a way to get a hold of you.

This week is all about marketing communications

It’s NFL Playoff season! As the Patriots and the Giants prepare for the big game, marketing firms are busy creating content for the biggest advertising day in the year. Marketing communications is an important aspect of any marketing campaign.

This week I will discuss some avenues of marketing communications for web design businesses. There are numerous forms of marketing communications. Some of the common communication avenues are e-mail marketing, banner advertising and search engine marketing. I assume that you are familiar with these so I will focus on some less common marketing communication tools.

Is your brand image turning off potential clients?

Today I would like to talk about how specifically defining your products and your clients can directly improve your brand image.

Many startup-design businesses make the mistake of attempting to build up their portfolio and increase the range of their brand image by taking on any client. This was my case. I was so eager to get business that I would take any type of client, whether I felt comfortable with them or not. My website reflected this. My portfolio had clients ranging from e-commerce shops to personal home pages. This created a negative brand image for myself because I appeared to be competent in all fields of web design but a master in none. As a result, potential clients turned away. They did not care if I could handle all the aspects of web design. They only cared about getting the best designer that excelled in the skills necessary to create their site. In my attempts to create business opportunities by appealing to any potential client, I lost my appeal to just about every potential client.

I learned from my experience and have made some big changes by completely defining the services I sell and who my target client is. This has greatly improved my brand image because my entire site and every part of my business is being branded in a single direction.

I did this by first deciding which skills I had and how they played a role in the type of clients I liked working with. This helped me define a set of services to sell. For example, I believe I excel in designing rich internet application (Flash sites backed by a database), search engine optimization, site analytics and internet marketing. Therefore, I chose to offer three services in which I felt I could profit from.

1. Flash site template: The creation of a custom Flash template. This would be a one-time purchase from the client.
2. Flash site and site setup: This included an entire site designed in Flash including the insertion of content and site setup with hosting and domain name registration. This was also a one-time purchase from the client
3. Flash site with marketing: This included everything in the previous package, along with a monthly site maintenance, analytics reports, monthly review of marketing strategies and search engine optimization strategies.

Having clearly defined a set of products, I then turned my attention to defining the potential client. The list of potential clients can be broken down into many different types: large vs. small businesses, local vs. global businesses, e-commerce vs. brochure, etc.. I chose to focus on local businesses ranging from 20-100 employees . I avoided e-commerce shops because I felt that they did not fall under my expertise.

By limitting my products and defining my potential client, I was able to improve brand image by reflecting a portfolio that represented the type of work these potential clients wanted to see.

Stay tuned! This week is all about improving your brand strategy.

As web designers, we are responsible for creating an online brand image for our clients. Most of us will agree that this is a standard part of our job and we do it in some way for every client.

If this is the case, why are so many designers struggling to create an online brand image for themselves? We know the web industry probably better than any other group of people out there. So, where is the struggle at?

There are many factors that play a role in the struggle. The biggest being that there are so many web designers out there that it can be difficult to be noticed and differentiated among the group. This just increases the need to have a good brand strategy so that, when we are noticed, we earn trust with our potential clients.

The purpose of creating a brand is to establish a meaningful, differentiated presence online that will increase your ability to attract and retain potential clients. A good brand needs a clearly defined set of products as well as a clearly defined set of potential clients.

Throughout this week, we will take a look at branding issues web designers face, some common mistakes that are made, and how to avoid them.

Getting yourself noticed. Are you targeting your market segment?

Whether you’re a web design firm or an individual freelancer, trying to get yourself noticed can make you feel like a small fish in a big sea. The truth is that the web design industry is being flooded with designers. Companies have realized the importance of a great web presence and colleges are supporting the need by turning out designers by the thousands.

So how do you get noticed and run a successful design business?

Over the next few weeks we will look more in depth at some of the challenges web design businesses are faced with. Today, I would like to start out by offering 3 tips that I have learned from my experiences.

Assess your strengths and define your niche- What aspects of web design are you particularly good at? By defining your strengths, you can create a niche for your company. Perhaps you are great at flash interface design and would like to work solely with flash sites. Or perhaps you understand databases and enterprise level systems and would like to create high-end web applications. The choices are limitless. The key is in correctly defining you strengths.

Define your target market-Understanding your niche, research who your target market will be. Large businesses, small businesses, startups, industry specific… What market segments are you most comfortable working with?

Don’t settle for less- One of the biggest mistakes web designers make is settling for a job outside of their target market. A target market is created so that designers have consistency in their business. You will eventually become familiar with your market and your way of dealing with that market. Working with another market can cause more hassle and stress than it’s worth because, often times in these situations, designers are working under terms conditions set by the client.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I am sure that there are some web design veterans that have tips and experiences they would like to share.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog for Internet Marketing. My name is Rich Kenyon. I am a fourth year I.T. student at R.I.T.

The purpose of this blog is to inform it’s readers of current trends in marketing web design businesses.

The web design industry is very dynamic and constantly changing. With the rapid increase of design firms on the web it is critical that these firms set themselves apart from the competition by targeting a specific market segment, finding a niche and delivering top notch sites. In this blog, I hope to take a closer look at the niche certain design firms are in and how that niche plays a role in aligning the design firm with their target market.

Enjoy!