Category : Clients

in Clients

Design for the Customers You Don’t Have

When doing any sort of redesign work on the web, you want to keep your existing customers in mind. You have no doubt done countless hours of research and user testing to get your business and website to where it is today. It is probably even safe to say that you have a very good understand of your customers and who they are.

Thats all fine and dandy. Great even.

But, to me it seems flawed to only take into account your current customers when doing any sort of research, planning, or designing. If you only ever take your current customers into account, how can you ever plan on growing your business?

Yes, if you understand your current customer and make website for them, your company will most likely grow at a steady rate. Again, this is fine if its the way you want to do things. But, most business owners I know are constantly looking to the future and how they can grow their business.

By growing a business, one would assumes you are looking to acquire customers that are different from the ones you currently have. These new customers may be fairly similar to the ones your currently have or the may be extremely different. So do yourself a favor, when doing your research and user testing, get feedback from people outside of your customer profile.

Getting feedback from people outside of your typical customer profile will help give you valuable insights on how to grow your business to appeal to a wider variety of people.

in Business, Clients, Freelancing

What I Have Learned About the 80/20 Rule

shutterstock_5345458Any good freelancer has surely hear the saying that 80% of your work will come from 20% of your clients. As a young freelancer, I found this saying to be far from true. In the beginning, it was more like 80% of my work came low paying clients I found on job boards and 20% of the time I wanted to shoot them in the face.

At the time, I couldn’t understand how this saying could be true. I rarely ever had repeat clients, let alone ones who would come back time and time again.

Looking back, I’m sure it to do with two things:

1. The quality of my work.
2. The quality of my clients.

Problem 1

Obviously when I started freelancing I wasn’t exactly the best designer. Granted I got better as the days passed, but I was still far from exceptional. This undoubtedly was part of the reason I didn’t get repeat clients. While most of my clients were happy with the end product, it wasn’t anything special enough for them to seek me out the next time they needed work.

The solution to this problem is only one that can happen over time. In order to be able to produce designs of a caliber that cause clients to seek you out, you need practice. Becoming an amazing designer like Elliot Jay Stocks or the guys over at Meta Labs won’t happen over night. Constantly designing and pushing yourself to up your game is the only way you will ever become a sought after designer. As such, it is the main way you will get 80% of your work from 20% of your clients.

Problem 2

Assuming you have had a dozen or so clients in your time as a freelancer, I am sure you have come across a variety of clients. Some of them good, others, not so much. I have learned that the sort of clients that fall into the 20% category are a certain type. Typically, that type are the ones who appreciate good design and are willing to pay for it. These types of clients are rarely found on job boards and classified sites.

So, that begs the question, where are these 20% of clients found? More than likely they are found through word of mouth referrals and through amazing work. As I said before, if you produce amazing work, clients will find you.

Looking Back

I make no claims to be an amazing designer, but I manage to make a decent living at it. Having worked my way up from nothing as most freelancers do, I realize now that the 80/20 rule is very much true. In fact, it is a very amazing thing. You usually end up with the majority of your work coming from those 20% of clients because the two of you get along and work very well together. So not only are having to look less for work, but you are getting to work with people who appreciate your designs and creativity.

in Business, Clients, Uncategorized, Video Posts

Episode 18 – Practice Writing Proposals

This is one of my shorter vidcasts, but an important one none the less. As your business grows and you start working with bigger companies, they are going to expect more from you than just a few emails and a contract. One essential element bigger clients expect is a formal proposal. If you have never written one of these, it can be a bit intimidating.

Waiting until you have a big name client ask for a proposal is a bad time write your first proposal.

Do yourself a favor and write a few practice ones first. Writing these practice proposals is a great way to learn what is expected in a proposal, feel more comfortable writing them, and maybe even get a job or two.

Writing these first few practice proposals will be time consuming, I can promise you that it will be well worth it. Not only will this skill help you land bigger clients, but it will probably help you land smaller clients too. Think about it, if you are after a small $2,000 job and you submit the client a well written, formal proposal, and all the other applicants just send in an email; who do you think the client will pick?

Just some thoughts I had today. What do you think?

in Business, Clients, Freelancing, Video Posts

Episode 14 – Where Does Customer Service End?

I’m all about customer service. I have kind of taken on the Zappos philosophy when it comes to that area. I constantly go above an beyond to help my customers out. Rather than just give them design advice, I also help them with their business and marketing for free. I’m around to answer any of their questions five days a week and sometimes on the weekends. I make small changes to the site for free and a lot of other things that I could easily charge for.

Normally this isn’t a problem. But, it got me thinking, where does this sort of customer service stop?

Obviously major design and development things are going to cost the client extra. I guess more of what I am questioning is the back and forth changes? The little things that add up fast and make me feel like I’m being taken advantage of.

If, like me, you do all these sort of little things for free, when do you say that you will have to start charging for them? Better yet, how do you explain to your client that you’ll have to start charging them for it after doing it for free for so long?

Obviously you can setup guidelines in the contract, but I don’t like being restricted like that. I guess it’s just a slippery slope either way you look at it if you want to do business this way. That said, I have found that by doing business this way I have been getting a lot more repeat work from clients. Even before I finish one project for them They ask me to start on another one for them.

So, I guess there is something to be said about this business model.

in Clients, Video Posts

Episode 13 – Screencasting for Communication

My buddies over at 45 Royale worked on a project called Screenr. Basiclly, Screenr is a online screencasting tool that allows you to sign up with just your Twitter account. You can then create five minute long screencasts and share them on Twitter or just use the permalink created to share with others.

I’ll admit, at first I wasn’t very impressed with Screenr. Not because it wasn’t usable or functional, but because I didn’t really see the point in creating screencasts to share on Twitter.

My love for screencasting came one day when I had a client who was new to WordPress and wasn’t very internet savvy. After a handful of support calls that were very basic WordPress functions, I decided to create a simple screen cast for the client. The screencast walked the client through how to use the theme specific features as well as some basic WordPress functions.

I have not had a support request from that client since then.

Normally I used to walk clients through how the theme worked over the phone. They would write notes and learn how things worked. No doubt they would forget much of what we went over on the phone as soon as we hung up. The beauty of these screencasts is that they have them to view any time. So, if a month after they have tweeked their theme they decide they want to change something; rather than call me, they can check the screencast first.

I also use these screencasts to talk to my developers and explain to them how I think the theme should work or what some parts of the design may be. I’ll share one of these videos below in case you are interested in seeing it.

in Business, Clients, Video Posts

Punks Not Dead, But Your Portfolio Is

Talking Shop – Episode 12

Like it or not, the age old bit of Kevin Costner wisdom, “if you build it, they will come”, couldn’t be more untrue for the designers portfolio site. Hoping that a potential client finds your needle in a haystack portfolio site out of the clear blue is idiotic at best. Obviously, some good SEO and online advertising can help, but that’s still far from a good start.

So, how can you resurrect your dying portfolio website?

You don’t.

That’s right, you don’t.

Rather than trying to give life to a dying breed, why not create your own superhuman soldiers to find clients for you? And by superhuman soldiers I totally mean join design oriented social networks.

Why Join Design Networks

The better question here is why wouldn’t you join these design oriented social networks? By not joining social sites like Behance, Flickr, and DeviantArt you are cutting back the number of potential clients that could see your work by over 50% or more. OK, so I made that number up, but I’m sure its more than accurate.

By showcasing your work on all of these other social sites, you are increasing your chances for clients to see your work and in turn, contact you for paying work. Even posting your work on stock sites is a way for clients to to find you. I have hired several designers and illustrators over the years that I have found through stock sites. This is not an uncommon way for clients to find designers. It happens all the time.

Your Thoughts?

What do you think about all this? Im sure many of you would like to share your two cents and I encourage you to do so. I also encourage you to share the social sites that you are a part of. Feel free to add links!