5 Reasons Clients Leave Their Web Designers (Avoid These Costly Mistakes!)

Are you unknowingly pushing clients away? In this video, I reveal the 5 main reasons clients leave their web designers—and how to make sure you’re not making these common mistakes. Retaining clients is just as important as getting them, and by avoiding these pitfalls, you can build long-term relationships, increase recurring revenue, and grow your freelance web design business sustainably.

💡 You'll Learn:
✔️ The top 5 reasons clients stop working with web designers
✔️ How to improve client relationships and increase retention
✔️ Simple strategies to ensure clients stay happy and loyal

👉 Don’t just avoid these mistakes—take proactive steps to make sure they never even enter your client’s mind!

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#WebDesign #FreelanceWebDesign #ClientRetention #WordPressDesign #WebDesignBusiness

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Overview of Client Retention
• 5:00 Five Reasons Clients Don’t Return and How to Fix It
• 38:00 Key Strategies for Client Happiness and Retention

Transcript

Cathy Sirvatka: 0:00

It's ideal to have clients come back to you again and again. When you get clients who come back to you over and over again, it can contribute substantially to your annual income. The repeat work that they bring to you proves that they're happy with you and your service and that they trust you. Also, happy clients will refer friends and associates to you. Eventually, you won't even need to seek out customers. They'll come to you. This is the ideal situation for a freelancer, but the fact is not all clients come back. Once a new customer comes through the door, so to speak, it behooves you to do everything you can to make them happy. You want them to continue coming back to you. Today, I'm going to talk about five common reasons why clients might not come back to you. If you take these actions, you'll be able to retain more clientele and have more consistent income and less sales effort. So let's address these issues head on. Here we go.

Cathy Sirvatka: 0:56

Welcome to the Web Pro Savvy Podcast. This is your host, Cathy Sirvatka S as in Sam I-R- V, as in Victor A-T-K-A.

Cathy Sirvatka: 1:16

It's a great feeling when a customer returns to you for more work or, better yet, signs on for a maintenance plan or retainer. You can enjoy an ongoing relationship with them and have more consistent income. In order to facilitate this happy scenario, we're going to count down the top five reasons clients tend to not stick around and how you can avoid them. Number five poor quality work and lack of professionalism. When you pay a business thousands of dollars, you expect it to be professional in both quality and care. Well, the same goes for your customers.

Cathy Sirvatka: 1:45

Make sure you keep up with your tech and your design skills. It's easy to rest on your laurels with the knowledge and experience you already have, but we all know in this technology-driven business, changes are the norm. Be sure to include your own continuing education in your yearly business plan. That's true for tech and design. Keep up to date with the latest trends of website design and layout. Take a course in user interface or user experience. Learn some new CSS and design tricks that you think will be beneficial going forward. Keep up with the latest best plugins and WordPress techniques. Subscribe to a podcast or a YouTube channel, or subscribe to a helpful blog and consider taking courses that will further your skills.

Cathy Sirvatka: 2:27

Keep up with your professional skills, like in meetings, and with deadlines. Communicate in a pleasant, business-like tone in any interaction, whether it's online, on the phone, in person, email or text. People react to tone, so you want it to come across as pleasant and steady. Stay focused on the matter at hand and don't get caught up in too much small talk. Show up to meetings on time, whether in person or on Zoom, and if you're running the meeting, show up early and be prepared for meetings. Do homework on your prospect. Look up their current website. Look up their LinkedIn and their social media. I even look at their code on their website just to see if they have a WordPress site or maybe it's Wix. I like to know as many details as possible before going into a meeting. Sometimes I even search for their hosting or their domain registrar. All of this gives me a fuller picture when I go into the meeting.

Cathy Sirvatka: 3:22

Number four lack of communication. Make sure clients understand what's happening at all times, at the very beginning of a project. Lay out the entire process. They don't need the technical details, just give them the general steps. Give them a timeline that goes from the initial conversation through to post-launch. Check in with them regularly to keep them apprised of your progress and also keep them moving on, whatever homework they may have for the project. It's really easy for a client to go dark on you and it's easy for you to kind of let them because you're really busy doing stuff, but that is a slippery slope and it only ends in tears I mean yours. When a project gets drawn out, everyone loses their momentum and enthusiasm and you start losing money because you allow that deadline to slip. Be that person that encourages everyone to keep talking and moving, including yourself.

Cathy Sirvatka: 4:19

Number three poor management of expectations. This is not something a client will verbalize not in this way but they will get frustrated if they think they were supposed to get something from you that you did not plan for. Any kind of misunderstanding or miscommunication can upend an entire project. So use contracts. List out everything that you will and won't be doing in this project. This sets your client's expectations from the get-go. In addition to a signature page, have them initial those pages where the specific steps of the project are listed out. That way, if any questions arise, you can both refer to that list and they can see what they approved. Use it like a checklist for your project. This has come in super handy for me over the years. When a client has disputed something. A good contract is especially helpful to prevent scope creep. If a client wants to add services that are not in your contract, you can tell them yeah, we can do that, but it will be an additional fee because it wasn't part of the original plan. It just keeps everyone calm because it's all there in black and white. This aids in growing their trust in you because they can clearly see you're not trying to get away with anything.

Cathy Sirvatka: 5:35

Number two lack of responsiveness. Respond promptly to calls, emails and texts as long as they land within business hours, because boundaries right. If it's an emergency, reply as soon as possible. Otherwise, respond during that part of the day that you have set aside for client communications. Just don't leave them wondering if you got their email or, worse, whether they're important to you. If you don't respond in a timely manner, their mind will make up all kinds of unfavorable things. So respond as soon as possible. Now. If a client texts you on a Saturday afternoon and your contract clearly states that you work Monday through Friday, nine to five, then you should respond to that client on Monday morning. If you reply on Saturday, you open yourself up to the client, treading all over your personal time. Set the tone in the contract and then stick to it. This is not you being difficult, this is you being professional.

Cathy Sirvatka: 6:33

And number one missed deadlines. When you commit to a project timeline, stick to it. This is something I struggled with early on. But missing deadlines wears on a client's attitude when working with you. Their time is just as important as yours and they trust you. So these are pretty simple things that you can do to give your client a good experience. It seems pretty basic, but you'd be surprised how many freelancers don't pay attention to this stuff. But if you practice these things, you're going to be way ahead of the game and your business will do well.