How to Open & Operate a Financially Successful Web Site Design Business

By Charlotte Evans and Bruce Brown

The Pricing & Ethical Guidelines Handbook published by the Graphic Arts Guild reports that the average cost of designing a Web site for a small corporation can range from $7,750 to $15,000. It is incredibly easy to see the enormous profit potential.

Web design businesses can be run part- or full-time and can easily be started in your own home. As such, they are one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet economy.

Here is the manual you need to cash in on this highly profitable segment of the industry. This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the business side of Web site design. It should be studied by anyone investigating the opportunities of opening a Web design business and will arm you with everything you need, including sample business forms, contracts, worksheets and checklists for planning, opening, and running day-to-day operations, plans and layouts, and dozens of other valuable, time-saving tools that no entrepreneur should be without.

While providing detailed instructions and examples, the author leads you through finding a location that will bring success, drawing up a winning business plan, buying (and selling) a Web design store, pricing formulas, sales planning, tracking competitors, bookkeeping, media planning, pricing, copy writing, hiring and firing employees, motivating workers, managing and training employees, accounting procedures, successful budgeting, and profit planning development.

By reading this book, you will become knowledgeable about basic cost control systems, retail math and pricing issues, Web site plans and diagrams, software and equipment layout and planning, legal concerns, sales and marketing techniques, IRS reporting requirements, customer service, direct sales, monthly profit and loss statements, tax preparation, public relations, general management skills, low and no cost ways to satisfy customers and build sales, and low cost internal marketing ideas, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. The manual delivers hundreds of innovative ways to streamline your business.

Learn new ways to make your operation run smoother and increase performance. Business owners will appreciate this valuable resource and reference it in their daily activities as a source for ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can be easily applied. The companion CD-ROM is not available for download with this electronic version of the book but it may be obtained separately by contacting Atlantic Publishing Group at [e-mail].

Atlantic Publishing is a small, independent publishing company based in Ocala, Florida. Founded over twenty years ago in the company president’s garage, Atlantic Publishing has grown to become a renowned resource for non-fiction books. Today, over 450 titles are in print covering subjects such as small business, healthy living, management, finance, careers, and real estate. Atlantic Publishing prides itself on producing award winning, high-quality manuals that give readers up-to-date, pertinent information, real-world examples, and case studies with expert advice. Every book has resources, contact information, and web sites of the products or companies discussed.

This Atlantic Publishing eBook was professionally written, edited, fact checked, proofed and designed. The print version of this book is 384 pages and you receive exactly the same content. Over the years our books have won dozens of book awards for content, cover design and interior design including the prestigious Benjamin Franklin award for excellence in publishing. We are proud of the high quality of our books and hope you will enjoy this eBook version.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Publishing Group Inc.
• Release date: Jun 17, 2009
• ISBN: 9781601385154

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Web Design 101

Most businesses and a growing number of individuals are looking into having a Web site on the Internet. After all, Web sites are much cheaper than regular store fronts and much easier to maintain. They reach a global audience and provide instant access to your products and services from anywhere in the world.

The job of a Web designer is to create Web sites for whoever wants them and can pay for the service. The work involved combines technical knowledge with creativity and a strong marketing sense. Web designers, like any other business owner, have to juggle many responsibilities that are not specifically related to the creative aspects of their business. Remember, being a Web designer does not mean you can’t also be a business owner, and this book will show you how to be just that.

We are going to begin with a look at an aspect of Web design that is often overlooked, not only by design professionals, but by the people who write about the business. We are going to begin by exploring the nature and history of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Both are significant because every artist has to understand the material they are using, whether it happens to be a canvas and paints or HTML and Java script. Similarly, every entrepreneur has to understand the business that they are headed into to ensure they are ready for the challenges and successes ahead of them. Likewise, not every Web site design business owner needs to be a Web site designer; therefore this chapter covers some basic elements about the Web, site design, and takes us down the path towards business establishment.

A Brief History of the Internet

The first thing to consider is the rarely understood difference between two everyday terms used by Web designers and Web users. The Internet is not a term synonymous with World Wide Web. The two are entirely different entities.

The Internet is a series of computer networks hooked up to each other by systems similar to those upon which we rely for our telephone networks these days: copper wires, fiber-optic cables, and wireless connections.

The World Wide Web, often referred to as WWW, is the collection of data that we all spend our time accessing when we go online. The Web is made up of documents and other resources, such as videos and sound bites. They are all linked up to one another and given specific locations via hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is one of several types of services that we access on the Internet. E-mail and file sharing are two other processes available via the Internet, which entered the spotlight in the 1990s. The earliest Web browser was named ViolaWWW and was based upon a system called HyperCard, an early Internet application program put forward by the company that would become Apple Inc. (then known as Apple Computer Inc.). HyperCard is recognized as one of the first successful hypermedia systems, a precursor to the World Wide Web, and was based upon a relatively simple programming language known as HyperTalk.

HyperCard was brought to the market in 1987 and finally removed in 2004. Its career was substantially shorter than this, however. In popularity, it was replaced as early as 1993, according to some critics. Mosaic 1.0 was brought forward by the University of Illinois’s National Center for Super Computing Applications, and by 1996, Internet was starting to become a household name. We can look back to its early days as a technical feature. The massive amount of focus on the general application of the system led to its early popularization. The Internet gradually emerged on the popular market during the 1990s as it linked up computer networks that had been established for some time. The Internet grew by an average of 100 percent per year during the decade.

The emergence of the Internet in the 1990s was the result of a range of developments in communication during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Most of these were established and tested in universities across the United States and in Canada. University Internet communities emerged in Cleveland (Cleveland FreeNet), Blacksburg (Blacksburg Electronic Village), and Nova Scotia. These opportunities for free communication were seized quickly, particularly by students, who recognized the potential for free expression.

As of September 30, 2007, approximately 1.244 billion users were registered to use the Internet, according to the Internet World Stats. At the time, the philosopher N.J. Slabbert called the Internet an emerging basic feature of global civilization.

The General Structure of the Internet

To understand Web design, it is important to understand the general structure of the Internet. Knowing how the Internet works allows Web designers to properly serve their clients. Background information about the emergence of the Internet helps in developing effective strategies for Web site function. In particular, designers need to look at the general structure of the Internet, including some of the most widely recognized features of the World Wide Web, like IP routing and hypertext links.

Internet Protocol, commonly referred to as IP, has three levels. At the lower level, it is known as OSI layer 3. This layer of IP is defined by datagrams or packets. These carry data from one position to another. OSI stands for Open Systems Interconnection. The name itself provides a fairly good general explanation of what the protocol is about. More common than the OSI layer 3 protocol, however, is version 4 of IP protocol, commonly referred to as IPv4. IPv4 and IPv6 are both fairly standardized to provide Internet connectivity.

World Wide Web, which we have established as a different entity from the Internet, is a large database of interlinked forms of information, documents, images, and just about any other form of data you can imagine. All this data is linked together by hyperlinks and URLs, which connect servers — the computers that store the originals of the data — to other computers.

When an Internet user types in a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) address, they call up a specific block of data using its assigned code. Let us take Amazon.com for example. Somewhere out there, the documents, images, and sound files that make up Amazon.com are stored. They are stored on a server computer. When you, the Internet user, type in the HTTP address, www.amazon.com, your computer communicates with the Amazon.com server computer. Data transfer begins: your computer requests information from the Amazon server, which then transmits copies of the original files over to your computer.

These days, the sheer volume of information on the World Wide Web is phenomenal. In 2001, more than 550 billion documents were available on the Web.

A survey of several hundred million Web pages in 2002 found that the vast majority were presented in English (about 56.4 percent). German was the second most common language (7.7 percent), French represented 5.6 percent, and Japanese was used on almost five percent of Web sites. About 75 different languages are used on the Web all together and the volume of Web pages and variance in languages grows exponentially each year.

Internet Users as Your Clients

There are some theories that English is used most frequently because of the relatively limited capacity of early computers. Those used on the Internet were developed primarily in the United States, but they were also relatively incapable of handling non-Latin alphabet characters, which ruled out the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian, Arabic script, and Japanese and Chinese characters. Accented letters were not supported either, ruling out languages like Spanish, German, and French.

These days, the most requested languages, according to the 2007 Internet World Stats, are English (31 percent of Web users), Chinese (16 percent), Spanish (9 percent), Japanese (7 percent), German (5 percent), and French (5 percent). Approximately 37 percent of the world’s Internet users are based in Asia, 27 percent are based in Europe, 19 percent are based in North America, and 9 percent are based in Latin America and the Caribbean.

As a Web designer, you should always keep your audience in mind. With a good idea of how the Internet and the World Wide Web work, what their respective functions are, and how people go about using them, you can do just that. Remember, you must satisfy your client’s needs to grow your business.

Most people spend their time online e-mailing, reading up on news and gossip, and exchanging information. Likewise, a large portion of the population does shopping on the Web. There is literally no product which is not readily available on the Web from automobiles to phones to books (and everything in between). Communication is the primary function, and you do not have to look far to find venues where people are exchanging ideas and information. Yahoo!, for example, offers plenty of opportunities for sharing information. Yahoo! Answers allows people to register with the site and post or answer questions. The volume of information exchange is relentless and overwhelming.

When you begin working for a client, you have to start by developing a concept for the content of their site. You should brainstorm their needs and desires in the context of what you know about the Internet and the World Wide Web. When you head into a bookstore, the place tends to be organized in terms of book types. If you head to the fiction section, you expect to find novels and short story collections. When you go to the history section, presumably in the nonfiction section, you expect to find books that relate to history. The same goes for Web site content. When your client is in the business of selling used cars, they expect that the content of their Web site is going to relate to this general theme. Their clients expect it too.

The Web site designer is ultimately responsible for ensuring that the content on the site is relevant to the targeted visitors. The designer is also responsible for the site’s look and feel, determined by the features of the site; the mode of presentation; and the use of elements, such as color and font. Every detail from the organization of navigation menus to the colors used on the site is going to impact the experience of the visitor. As a designer, it is important to consider the personal tastes and general vision of the client. This is often the most difficult part of a Web design project – how do you translate the vision of the client into the reality of Web site design package in an efficient and cost-effective manner?

Understanding how the Internet and the World Wide Web function is integral to making good decisions about these different elements and their applications. Before you make any determinations about the design of Web site content, you are going to need to visit the sites of your client’s most notable competitors and get a reasonable handle on the type of business your client is involved in. You also have to consider that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and often, the most sensible approach you can take in business.

The more Web sites you visit, the more ideas you will have stored in your mind for possible use in future projects. Like any professional, you should be looking to stay up to date with the latest trends in Web design so that you can meet the changing demands of the market. You cannot predict the things that your clients will ask for, nor should you be limited in terms of the results you can deliver as technology and trends change. You’ll find you must have a thirst for knowledge to keep up with the blistering pace of Web development tools and innovative design methodology.

In the upcoming chapter, we will explore the best approach to completing a Web site design project, taking you through the various phases of the process, which include the planning phase, the design phase, and the editing phase. Like a writer, a Web designer should get to know their subject, their client (the individual Web site owner), and the general content of the Web site. If you are hired to develop an e-commerce Web site for a travel company, for example, your final design will be better if you take the time to visit other travel company Web sites to see what elements are included in their Web design. You should look for what travel sites with a similar purpose have in common; in addition to what elements they do not have in common. Again, this type of research will help make your design more relevant and will ensure that your general approach to Web design is professional.

Let us assume at this point that anyone can go ahead and design a Web site, even someone who knows virtually nothing about Web design. All anyone need do, in theory, is purchase a basic Web site template from a company like Go Daddy or one of the many other companies out there who offer canned Web site design packages which literally let you set up a pretty nice looking site in a manner of minutes. Using a template-type program, anyone can design a Web site. The reason that people pay for the services of a Web site designer, however, is that the superior quality of a Web site produced by a professional designer, is guaranteed to be high. It should be well researched and the purpose aligned to the design in a sophisticated way. As a Web designer, you can offer much more than superior quality Web site design. You should offer Web hosting, email marketing, pay-per-click marketing, search engine optimization, and many other services designed to expand your product line, provide better service and results to your client, and expand your revenue stream. We will discuss each of these throughout this book. Let me be clear, success as a Web site design business owner means you need to know (or have staff that knows) how to design professional, custom Web sites using tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Adobe CS4, Microsoft Expression Web, and have a strong background in graphics art design applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Corel Paint Shop Pro X2. This book can’t teach you those technical skills, but will teach you the business skills and potential market segments which will garner success and profitability as Web site design business.

As a Web site design business professional, you must clearly articulate to your clients the benefits of a Web site and Web-based business versus (or in tandem with) a traditional brick-and-mortar business. You must demonstrate how, with your services, you enable businesses to tap into the power and potential of the Web to reach existing and potential customers. This will allow you to increase communications, expand your customer base, harness the power of a Web-based storefront, and reduce costs in comparison to traditional brick-and-mortar business models. A Web site does not need to replace a traditional business. Often, it is the perfect compliment. All Web sites do not need to sell products. A great example is a restaurant Web site, which features menus, history, photos, and other intriguing information designed to entice and attract business or simply sell products such as books or clothing. A Web site should inform, entertain, and enlighten. It should be easy to navigate, show up high in the search engines based on keyword searches, and be used to advertise current specials. It should let customers know what products or services you offer, let your customers know how to find you by providing contact information and directions to your business, provide your customers with additional information about your business, your products and services, and how to use your products, and most importantly reach a potentially unlimited customer base at little cost.

What ultimately separates a professional Web site designer from an amateur is the ability to use their creative design talents as business tools. While this may sound easy, it actually involves a significant amount of work, skill, and practice. What works for one company may not be the solution for another. Shopping carts, secure Web sites, credit card processing, real-time inventory, dynamically generated Web content, and much more make hiring a Web site design professional critical to most business ventures beyond a simple static Web site.

In each chapter of this book, we have included chapter resources. Chapter Resources are provided as a summary reference or checklist of the key points contained in each chapter.

Chapter Resources

Key Questions

1. What are the principle reasons why people have Web sites?

2. What is the job of a Web designer?

3. What skills are involved in Web site design and development?

4. Briefly describe the nature and history of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Why are they significant to the business of Web site design?

5. What is the difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web?

Key Points

•  Virtually every business and an ever growing number of individuals are looking into having their own Web site posted on the Internet.

•  The job of a Web designer is to create Web sites for whoever wants them and can pay for the service.

•  Web site design work involved combines technical knowledge with creativity and a strong marketing sense.

•  The Internet exists as a series of computer networks hooked up to each other by systems.

•  The World Wide Web is often referred to as WWW.

•  The Web is made up of documents and other resources, such as videos and sound bites.

•  Web pages are linked up to one another and given specific locations via hyper links and URLs.

•  We also use e-mail and file sharing on the Internet.

•  Most people spend their time online e-mailing or reading up on news and gossip.

•  Communication is the primary function of the Internet.

Table of Contents

Chapter 2

Business Basics: A Plan to Get You Started

Before we consider many of the finer points of Web design and establish the basis for knowledge that will allow you to distinguish yourself as a Web site designer or Web site design business owner, let’s take a hard look at the business side of things and discuss how you are going to pull together your design experience, your creativity, your technical savvy, and business management skills to create a highly successful business.

A business, at the end of the day, is an entity that is separate from you. You can be the business owner, you can be the sole proprietor, the only person that is actually involved in running the business, but you are still not one and the same. Before we start down the path of a Web site design business, let me give you some personal advice. Keep your business, particularly one run out of your house on a schedule when possible. Do not let your business or clients consume your time. Give yourself personal time, pay attention to your family needs, and maintain a healthy balance between work and personal growth. Too often Web site designers are consumed by their business and burn out due to the hard work and hours of dedication. Manage your business, don’t let it manage you.

Defining Your Business Objectives

There are a few basic questions you need to answer before you establish your Web site design business. The first thing you need to do is review the basic function of a Web design business. Typically, a Web designer is going to offer assistance in the various aspects of Web site design, including the processes for setting up, modifying, hosting and maintaining Web sites on the World Wide Web. Talk to a Web site designer and find out what goes into his or her day-to-day routines. Is it something that you are ready for? A current Web site designer will be able to answer all your questions and give you the pros and cons to starting on your journey. If you have any doubts and are not completely confident in your own abilities as both a business owner and site designer, engaging others in the industry will give you honest, candid feedback. That said, don’t hesitate to go after your dream. Establishing a successful Web site design business is easier than you may realize.

While most Web site businesses have the same general purpose, a Web site design company can be virtually any size business. Many Web site designers work alone as the sole proprietor of their own business; others choose to work on a team. There are many large Web site companies out there with many staff members working on multiple projects at once. I know many Web site designers who own and operate their own successful business out of their home office. There is nothing to be ashamed of this with this business model. It is affordable, comfortable, and you can’t beat the commute.

Larger Web site design shops do not limit their services to designing Web sites, however. Many of the top shops offer related services, such as Internet consulting and special training for individuals and businesses who want to learn how to make the most of their Web site to promote their business. Web hosting, programming, and e-commerce assistance are also common additional services, not to mention search engine registration assistance and online marketing campaign management. None of these are beyond the realm of a sole proprietor Web site design business owner – it all comes down to scalability.

Decide whether you want to offer services beyond Web site design. Think about whether you have the business experience and the Internet marketing savvy to provide quality services in e-commerce and online marketing campaigning. If you think it might be a good idea to offer Web hosting services and programming services to your clients as well, determine whether you have the technical know-how to do this sort of work. This is something worth considering if you are capable. It will give you additional ways to make money and pump up your profits. Web hosting services are ongoing, not just a one-time job. When you design Web sites for clients, they often only need you occasionally for a few adjustments here and there, if at all. When you offer clients additional services, you considerably increase your ability to retain them as clients for the long haul. Many of them will consider it to be a choice of convenience. It will be easier for them to go to you for all of their IT needs instead of having several different businesses which with they deal. Personally, I recommend you offer Web hosting services with every Web site design package and include maintenance fees into your contract to establish long-term clients. From there, you can expand your business over time to offer email marketing, blog development, pay-per-click marketing, and search engine optimization services.

Positioning Your Company

Not only do you have to consider precisely what type of Web site design business you are going to set up, you need to think about where you are going to establish your business. The good news is that Web site design shops can be set up virtually anywhere. All you need in this business is a computer powerful enough to allow you to do the design work. Your Web site design shop can be set up in your home, or in an office building, if you prefer. You need to think about what location is going to best serve your business.

Most Web designers maintain that you do not need to have your shop located in an office building and that it is generally not a good idea to incur the high overheads associated with renting a commercial space such as office furniture, equipment, telephone lines, Internet connections and of course your commute time.

On the other hand, if you want to work with high-paying clients, you can probably justify the expense of a commercial office space. Appearance is a large portion of business success according to many business experts. At some point, you may want to start inviting your clients for meetings; and where better to meet clients than an attractive office space?

The decision about where you set up your business is yours to make, and you have to weigh in the various pros and cons of your available options. If you want to have an office space of some sort, investigate the possibility of renting a single desk space in a larger facility or sharing rent and other expenses with another group of professionals.

Do you want to operate as a sole proprietor, or do you want to build up a business with partners and employees? At some point, every business owner needs to think about whether they want to be in business with others. You can start a business with partners, and you can set up a business to have employees from day one. On the other hand, for most businesses, and particularly for creative service businesses, you can operate on your own all the time.

Sizing Up and Weighing In

As a Web designer and a business owner, you need to figure out whether it is better for you to work with other Web site designers or whether you are going to do better by maintaining complete control of your business as its only owner and employee.

Weighing in the pros and cons of small versus large Web site design businesses can be challenging. There are always many advantages to running your business alone. A small business structure allows you to maintain complete autonomy over your business and creative decisions. With a small shop, you are going to be able to make every decision without having to refer to anyone else’s opinion or view point. For some people, this is extremely advantageous. Some people simply do not like working in groups.

A small business also means that you can choose which jobs you accept and you can set your own schedule, including your vacation schedule. You can outsource aspects of jobs you are not confident about completing without committing to long-term professional relationships and all the negatives that these types of relationships can entail.

If you work by yourself or as a part of a very small team, you can take full, or almost full, credit for making a client happy. You also have the responsibility and the ability to resolve client problems if they arise. You do not need to worry about overseeing anyone else’s work, and you do not have to accept the risk that someone you work with might not be able to deliver the high quality service and product your clients expect.

Another nice thing about keeping your business on the small side is the money. If you have one or more partners, you have to share your profits as well as your expenses. When you have a number of employees, you also have to worry about paying them, and you have to think about the tax obligations you incur as an employer. Many people struggle to deal with payroll taxes, so if you have several employees, hire an accountant or some form of financial manager who is savvy enough to help you avoid problems with the tax man.

Having a large business has its advantages as well. Larger companies share the responsibility for each project, which takes some of the pressure off you. If you have many other commitments in your life, anything from family to extra-curricular jobs and responsibilities, having a team supporting your Web design business can enhance your flexibility.

With a large team behind you, it is also possible to delegate work to others so that you can get more done. If you are the company owner, you can take a cut of all the work while reducing your own responsibilities and time commitment. This has the advantage of generating an easy form of passive income for you. That is, you will get some money even when you do not necessarily do all or any of the project work yourself.

Having a larger company is like having a safety net. When it comes to the money, with employees and partners, you are going