😞 Struggling to get web design clients? (Leads or Conversions)

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Transcript

hy Client Slumps Happen

Josh Hall 0:00

Hello, my friend. Happy Friday if you're catching this live. Time for another little solo chat here with you. And I want to give you some help if you are struggling to get web design clients right now. This is for you if you're a new web designer trying to figure out how the heck to get web design clients. And even if you're established and you're just in a bit of a dry patch for whatever reason, I'm going to share my top recommendations to help you get out of this slump. And I want to give you a piece of advice that became oh so clear to me more recently. And I think it's really going to help you. And it is to help you identify the actual problem. Because the reality is, if you have trouble getting clients, not only in web design, this is for any industry, it's one of two issues: leads or conversions. Literally every challenge of client acquisition will fall into getting leads for your business, getting visibility, getting traffic, getting in front of people, or converting them from a sales call or from sales, some sort of sales funnel or process to being a paying client. So what I want to start with here is for you to look at your data. Now, this is harder if you're brand new. So this is more for those of you who are a little more established, but even if you just have a couple months behind you, you can look at some of this data. Because I found that there is comfort in data, even if the data isn't comfortable. Um, meaning if you this will help you know exactly what the problem is. There's no sense of theorizing about this or being hypothetical or wondering what's going on. Just look at the data. Let's look at how many leads you got. And of those, how many leads, how many converted to paying customers? Now, practically, if you can look at about 90 days worth of data, that's best. Three months is a great metric. One month I've found isn't quite enough, especially for web designers, because depending on your level of business or your level of scale or the amount of clients that you work with, you may be only getting one to two, maybe three leads a month. Um, if you're getting a lot more, then you could look at a month. But in most cases, 90 days is ideal. So I want you, however you want to do this, I want you to sit down and I want you to jot out all your leads. If you have a CRM like 17 hats or something where you are like actually, you know, getting leads and you have them in a system, even better, way easier. But at the very least, look at your leads and over the last 90 days, ideally, look at how many leads you got and specifically where they came from. Now, leads for web designers are typically going to be either calls or a contact form submission. But it could also be DMs or referrals in some way as well. But in most cases, probably calls or contact form submissions for booking inquiry. So look at those, see how many you got. Now, the next step is to look at your conversions. Now, I do want to say something really important when it comes to conversions. And that is if you have a conversion rate of less than 50%, do not let that discourage you. In fact, all the top salespeople, there's a lot of different schools on conversions, but the top salespeople will tell you sales is often, depending on the audience, less than 50%. In fact, some people will say if you're over 50%, you should be raising your rates pretty dramatically. Personally, for web designers, if you're getting qualified lead, like qualified leads, here's my recommendation on conversion rate and when to chart when to charge more and when to view this as a concern. I think for most web designers, 50 to 75% conversion rate is fine. It's a sweet spot. In fact, if you're getting over 70% conversions, meaning out of 10 people, if seven people are moving forward, it is absolutely time to raise your rate, my friend. And if you're getting 80 or 90%, it was time to raise your rate a long time ago. So honestly, 75, 70, 50, 50 to 70% is kind of the sweet spot. Now, if you're under 50%, I would definitely try to work on that, at least for web designers. There are some industries where like a much lower close rate is acceptable. For example, when I got started, there was a guy at a church that I was helping out with who I think he was a salesman for some sort of like aviation product or something. Anyway, it was a lot of cold emailing and cold marketing outreach. So his sales percentage target was like 20%. He told me if you could get 20% of sales, you know, you're doing great in his industry. Again, if you're talking with mostly qualified leads, then I would say you're going to want to at least be 50%. Um, but yeah, don't let that discourage you. 50 to 75% is ideal. And you need at least 10 proposals to get accurate data on conversions. And the reason I say this is I had a student years ago who reached out and said that they were really discouraged because they were sending proposals and no one was moving forward. And I asked how many she had sent out. I thought was going to be like, you know, at least 10 or 15. And she said she sent two. And I was like, oh my gosh. And she was new to the industry. So I understand it can feel very hurtful and personal when when people aren't jumping right away. But like two, like just keep going. You are going to get a lot more no's, especially in the beginning than yeses. And again, even somebody who has a great sales process and is super established is likely only going to convert 50 to 75, 70% on average. Again, depending if you're like hyper niche and you want to get higher than that. But in most web designers, like don't take it personally, is totally fine. 50 to 75% is fine. Meaning, out of 10 proposals, five to 10 of those move forward, awesome. So those are really important things to identify as to whether this is a leads or a conversion problem. All right. Now, before I share some solutions with you, I have a solution that will help with both leads and conversion. And it is a and if you're interested in having a website in a day offer, either as a starting package for your web design packages or eventually as your main offer, my good friend Bailey Collins has done over 500 website in a day packages. She now charges$4,000 for those. And she has wrapped up her entire process in her new course, the Design Day Blueprint. A lot of community members of my Community Web Designer Pro have gone through this and they have put it inside of my framework for build support grow. And it has worked out so well as both starting packages or more of a main featured package for your web design business. Right now, she is offering a special deal for all listeners of this show. You can go to joshhall.co slash DDB, that's short for design day blueprint, and use code Josh10, which will get you 10% off her course. And when you use my link, joshhall.co slash DDB, which will be linked below, you can get the brand day bonus module, which is a$500 value. Again, perfect for you if you want a better offer to help you both with leads and conversions. That's joshhall.co slash DDB slash or yeah, joshhall.co slash DDB to pick up Bailey Collins brand or design day blueprint course and get that brand module as well. So big thanks to Bailey because she's actually a sponsor for our upcoming Web Designer Pro Con event. All right. So you have identified whether the problem is leads or conversions. And maybe you had to pause and come back, in which case, awesome. Otherwise, it's probably a gut feeling too. You could pretty quickly think about this and realize, like, oh my gosh, yeah, the problem is leads. It's not conversions. So if it I'm gonna give you some of my favorite strategies for both leads and conversions. So if the problem is number one with leads, again, new inquiries or calls, then here are some solutions. Broadly, you just gotta focus on visibility. You've got to get in front of new people or more new people if you're more established. All of the strategies that I cover in my business course for both in-person and online are going to be key. Some of my favorite in-person strategies, referral groups, specifically not just networking groups, but referral groups like BI. That's working with so many members in Wimper Center Pro. My the referral group that I was a part of was similar to BI. It was kind of an offshoot version. And it was where 50% more of my leads came in. And the thing to remember with networking groups and referral groups, it's not the members who are often going to be clients. Sometimes they will. It's their networks that you're a part of. You become the web designer for 20 people, but actually you're now the web designer for maybe 2,000 people because you're expanded into all of their networks. So in person, any referral groups are going to be your quickest ROI. But don't overlook Chamber of Commerce's local directories in your local area. Go to business ribbon cutting events, meet with people you know in your personal and professional network. Just let them know what you're doing. A lot of clients or a lot of members of my community web designer pro, get it get clients by just saying on their personal Facebook or Instagram that they're now doing web design. Speaking of some online strategies, you've got to make sure people know what you do. And there's, you know, any platform you choose works. There's no right or wrong strategy. Some are going to be ideal for you. Honestly, if I were starting today, I would do YouTube, just like I did back in 2017. If you share expertise in what you do on YouTube, you will get clients. Now, this is not always going to bring local clients. So if that is, if if you prefer to work locally, I you could target YouTube locally, but I would definitely look at referral groups, but post the stuff you're doing on YouTube. You don't need to be an influencer. You'll be shocked at how far that goes when people need, for example, Shopify work or Divi work or Elementor work or whatever the case may be, especially if you do want to target that locally. I would also online be really, really helpful and present in both free and premium groups, both web design and business groups locally. There's a lot of clients that I've got over the years and I've seen my students get who are in groups that are like a local business style group. And then if you are a web designer in that group and you're just super helpful, you will get leads that way as well. Of course, any and all social media strategies will work as well. It's just harder to these days, I think, grow a following. So you just need to be really targeted with what you do and who you serve. But in person, online, the key for you is visibility. If you do want more of my strategies on this, I highly recommend jumping into my web design business course. I have a whole lesson on finding clients. Talk about that in a little bit. In person, online, whatever you do, visibility. Now, in both of these cases, I would also really, really think about building referral partners. My absolute favorite way to get business in all walks of life is referral partners. And these folks are adjacent to web design, meaning they are like a salesman for your business at all times. These are going to be SEOers, videographers, they're going to be social media people, they're going to be photographers, folks who are not doing websites, but could be a great fit for you. Or they're doing different types of websites that you don't do, and vice versa. A lot of my leads came through my referral partners, particularly my videographer who sent me some of my best clients. Now, if you're established, one thing that's easy to do is to forget to sell to our past and current clients. So you might like I just did a presentation on how to roll out SEO Boost on the recent SEO Surge Summit. And we had actually a member of Web Designer Pro was at that summit, literally sold an SEO boost while my presentation was live to one of his previous clients. So you can sell upsell. You don't need to sell a massive project all the time to new people. You can sell any new service you're offering or any revised service or even services that somebody passed on years ago. You can circle back to them. Don't forget about your the goal you're sitting on, which is your current and past clients. Speaking of that, if you're established and you're like, what's gone wrong? What's happening here? What I would recommend doing is looking back at your last five best clients and projects and go to the data and look at how you got them. Where did they come from? What lead source? Maybe they came from a referral. Well, maybe it's now time to go back to that referral source and be like, hey, Jim, um, we know we have some openings for the next couple months. You sent me this other client. It was so great. I wanted to give you a gift card as a thanks. And we'd love to be a good fit for you. If you know anyone else who needs our services, I'd also be happy to do like a free webinar or workshop to share some best practices in 2026 for websites for your clients if interested. Boom. Guarantee you'll get some work like that. So look at your five past best clients and projects. How did you land them? Where did they come from? And just double down on that. Anything that is working, double down on. Cut out all the noise, cut out all the stuff that doesn't work, and just double down on what is working. Be really proactive with getting referrals from previous clients as well. And as I mentioned, there's we're in a bit of a trust recession. So anytime you can like do something live or do something that gets you in front of people in a way that is interactive, that will help you land and help with conversions, which will be next. Again, I cover all this and a lot more in a lesson about finding clients inside of my web design business course. And I have a special offer for you that I'm gonna share after I share some tips for conversions. So lastly, if the problem is conversion, if you're getting tons of calls and tons of contact form submissions, tons of DMs, but they're just not moving forward. A lot of things we could look at here. But in most cases, it's gonna be either your funnel for leads or your sales process. And this depends on your offers. If you have something that's super clear, like Bailey's what like one-day website, it's a little easier to sell because the results are right there. If you have more of a custom approach, you just need to be really, really clear nowadays on the results that they're gonna get. And also the timeline. That's a biggie too. So work on your sales process. If you go to the podcast playlist for this show, joshhall.co slash playlist, we have a ton of episodes about sales processes. This is something I cover in my web design business course as well in detail. In fact, I have an entire module about sales because there's a lot to it. So definitely recommend that with the offer I have for you here. But look at your sales process and think about where hangups often are. Um, add some urgency by like give them an offer at the end of a sales process, give them like 24 hours to move forward to get a special deal or a special discount off your proposal. Speaking of proposals, I've found proposals that are really tight as far as the deliverables and are not like 19-page PDFs convert so much better. People need to be able to scan proposals just like they scan websites, especially if they're sending them off to a board or something for review. So keep your proposals pretty brief. Um, you gotta clarify your offers too. If your offers are just all over the place and it's confusing to you to look at, it's gonna be a hundred times more confusing for your leads, which is probably why leads see like an entire suite of services, but they're like, I don't even know where to start. I don't know how this is gonna help me. This looks so overwhelming. I do recommend in that case grouping all of your services into my framework, which is build, support, and grow. And you can have your website build services and build, start there, offer support services with a monthly website maintenance plan, and offer any sort of growth service, whether it's strategy, whether it's SEO, whether it's digital marketing, whether it's email marketing, whether it's just consultative services or hourly retainers for your clients in that. And again, a big focus for to help with conversions nowadays is results-oriented copy, especially on your website in your social media. You don't build websites, you help clients grow by having their website be a 24 sales, 24-7 salesperson for them. Simple as that. You've got to get creative with your niche and the type of clients you serve with what they're looking for. And also when you're doing your sales calls, ask about their goals, ask about real metrics, ask about their customers and what they're charging. You'll be viewed instantly different. You will not be used or viewed as a pixel pusher, you'll be viewed as a profit builder for them. Also, easiest thing to do, especially for those established, just share your wins. Share your case studies, share recent projects, even past projects from years ago relentlessly over all of your marketing channels, socials, any groups you're a part of, your newsletter, et cetera, go for it. Do not be afraid that you're bothering people. Just share your stuff like freaking crazy. Um, I do recommend having a potential client page if you're somebody who's in the middle of not a productized service, but also not super custom where you, you know, don't want to get anyone and everyone coming through your website. I talk about that in my business course as well. Basically, just a nice little funnel to separate questionable versus qualified leads. And then last thing I would recommend doing is do a um uh expiration date on your proposals. Give them 30 days. You cannot let a proposal go for more than 30 days. You don't want to get somebody nine months later saying, hey, I'm ready to move forward when you're like, shoot, I raised my rates like six months ago. Oh, and there is a cool little follow-up tip that I heard from Andy, who was a recent guest on the podcast back in episode 421. He did over 200,000 in revenue last year for his agency in the second year. And a big part of that was his conversions. And he recently said this in that SEO surge summit. He said, follow up until they say yes, they say no, they die, or you die. So I think it's a great quote. I mean, true. Like just follow up, keep on following up. People are busy, they need follow-up. So those are just a few of my top conversion tips of many. I cover conversion way more in sales and a lesson on getting clients inside of my web design business course. So, on that note, I've been talking about that because this, you know, leads and conversions are something that is very hard to cover in a one episode thing. And this is actually based off my newsletter that just went out this afternoon. So I want to give you a special offer to jump into my web design business course if you have not gone through that yet. And if you don't know, my business course is a part of my entire suite of courses inside of Web Designer Pro. And I'm gonna give you 50% off your first month in the courses tier. This grants you access to my business course, all my templates, all my scripts, everything, and my entire suite of courses. So after you go through that one, if you want to learn how to scale or learn how to build recurring revenue with a maintenance plan or go through my process course or my design course or my SEO course, it's all there for you. 50% off your first month. The courses tier right now is only$49 a month. So you'll get your first month for$25. That's it.$25, less than a dollar a day. You will get access to my business course and all my courses. The link will be below uh in the description of this podcast. That is automatic. So you don't need to use a coupon code. It'll bring you in there. And you just need to use that by the end of March, March 31st at 11.59 p.m. Eastern. So you've got to use it this month to jump in. After 30 days, the courses here is only 49 a month. So steal of a deal. There's absolutely no pressure. You can cancel anytime. But to get your first month free, click the link below. It'll be the first link you see. And I would love to help you with all leads and conversion stuff inside of my business course. So I want to know, I'm just gonna hypothetically ask you here how does this give you some help with and some confidence in diagnosing the issue, whether it's leads or conversions? Because once you do that, you can use any of these strategies I listed here, and of course, everything that I have in my business course, which is gonna help you in a much fuller way to help you get out of this web design client slump. You're not alone, but I will say tons of people are killing it. So I don't want to hear excuses necessarily. I just want to help you with solutions because all you have to do is make a few tweaks and keep on going, my friend. Don't worry about the conversion proposal rate stuff. If you're less than 50%, just keep on chugging. I'm rooting for you. And it is still an absolutely incredible time to be a web designer, especially now that we're in this trust recession where, yeah, people can build AI websites. But my question is, how's that going for the small business market? I'll give you a hint. It's not going well. So you are needed. You are needed, needed, needed. Leads and conversions. Those are the problems. I just gave you some solutions. Stay subscribed. We got a killer episode coming up on the podcast next week. In fact, it is a very special guest. It is one of my clients that I started working with in 2012, one of my best web design clients ever. I'm having him on the show where we get into his perspective on hiring me very early on in my journey and how I built how he trusted me, and also what his uh what his side of things were when I let him know that I was selling my agency and what he thought about that. So we're getting into all that more with Gary Sigrist, one of my best clients, the owner and CEO of Safeguard for Solutions, which he reminded me that I actually helped name. So had a lot of ownership in that business back in the day. And it's so cool to see him still killing it today. He's still a client for In Transit Studios 16 years later or 14 years later. So freaking awesome. So that's coming up next week on the podcast. All right, my friends, can't wait to hear how this helps. And I will see you on the next one.