Complaints are prevalent in any service industry, but a few very common complaints have defined the web design industry. I speak with prospects all the time who have left other web designers, and I hear the same complaints over and over.
If you’re an aspiring web designer, eliminate these complaints and you’re on the road to a successful business.
For whatever reason, web designers struggle to meet certain basic needs of their clients. With the massive growth of online website builders offering simple development solutions for website designers, I believe many of these common complaints now have an easy remedy. A shift towards this streamlined option for website development will result in more satisfied customers, less complaints, and we’ll all live happily ever after. Ok, maybe not that last part…
Here are the most common complaints from website design clients and how using a website builder platform can make them ancient history.
- “Website didn’t look the way I want”
It’s called “web design” for a reason. There’s a huge design aspect to it. Many new business owners pay web designers for a custom web design, and even if design mock-ups are presented at the beginning of the project for approval, once the site is live online, it often just doesn’t look the way the business owners imagined it from the start.
The beauty of using a website builder to build websites for clients is that you can show your clients exactly how their website will look live in a browser. You won’t need to use mock-ups that often give only a partial view. With a website builder, clients can view many website design themes and even click around to see how the design functions in action.If you let your clients choose their own design theme, you’ll rarely have a complaint later that the site didn’t turn out the way they pictured it in their mind. - “I can’t make changes to the site on my own”
This has to be the #1 complaint website owners have after hiring a web designer to create their website. They are handed the keys to their brand new website, but they don’t know how the keys work and can’t even find the ignition!Millions of sites were built in plain HTML over the last few decades. For a website owner to make changes to these archaic websites, they need to know how to access their site using FTP and they need to know HTML to even make basic edits to their website. FTP? HTML? That’s enough acronyms to scare most beginners. Don’t even get me started on CSS, PHP, and JS.Website builders are putting an end to all the acronyms. Since they are designed with the DIY website creator in mind, they are simple and easy for anyone to use. And while they do occasionally give access to the source code for fine tuning, you won’t need to know any programming language to build beautiful full-featured sites
So a website design professional can create a professional website, hand the owner the keys, and be confident the new website owner can take it for a spin making simple and even advanced edits all by themselves.
- “Website took too long to complete”
If my #2 point above is the top complaint, this one has to be a close second. I hear it all the time – website projects that never finish or take months and months to complete.Website design projects come in different sizes and many SHOULD take a year to complete, but simple small business websites should never take more than a few months, even if they are custom designed. Better yet, they probably should be completed in a matter of weeks. Whether the delay is caused by web designers taking on more projects than they can handle or just mis-managing their time, the never ending projects problem problem is easily fixed by using website builders.
Most NON-website designers can log in to a website builder for the first time over lunch, learn it in a few hours, and have a basic website completed before dinner. Sure – most websites will take longer than an afternoon to build, but even a beginning website designer should be able to easily master a website builder platform and pump out websites way quicker than what website clients have been accustomed to.
Say goodbye to the 4-6 month website project.
Your clients will be shocked when you promise to complete their site in 3 weeks and deliver it 5 days early!
- “Project was already expensive and had additional costs”
Cost has been a subjective concept in web design for many years. Some small business owners are still trapped in 1997 and think it’s totally normal to pay $10,000 for a 5-page basic website while other web designers offer the exact same service for under $500.It made sense years ago to charge thousands for basic sites because it took many hours to write the code and revisions were also time-consuming. But with advances in website technology including website builders, there’s no reason to pay exorbitant prices for simple informational websites.Using a website builder, a web designer can maintain tight control over the number of hours they spend on a single site. This leads to more reasonable prices and the assurance that small project changes will not result in massive cost increases to the client.
If you’re starting a new website design business, you’re probably thinking about taking HTML classes and picking up as many WordPress, PHP, and CSS books from the library that you can find.
Don’t overlook website builders as a solid option for building a web design business. Many website builders are now catering to website designers by offering Professional and Developer platforms specifically designed for creating websites for clients. Check out IM creator’s White Label solution to see what I’m talking about.
