It took a trip to Africa and a bit of market research to learn the key to building a profitable web design business, or any business for that matter, is to help your clients make more money.
January 8, 2006 (Press Release) --
It was the summer of 2003 and before starting my Cincinnati web design firm Creative Media Productions I decided to take a 5 month, 17 country tour of Africa.
Along the way I photographed the wildlife, culture and scenery. And of course the people I met were curios about where I was from and what I did back home.
Among the people I met were small business owners…men and women who owned safari businesses, tours and hostels.
And with time in the evenings after exploring the city I started to talk to the owners of these businesses about their marketing and business building efforts. And of course websites were often the main subject of the conversation, because they would soon learn what I did for a living.
During the conversations, I learned that every business owner had the same concern…
”I want my website to be a cost effective marketing tool?”
A genuine concern for all business owners, but a solution a lot of web design firms did not offer, including my own.
Through my travels I would spend several hours, after writing to friends and family, surfing for information on designing cost effective websites at internet cafes.
I sifted through a plethora of information, most of which was useless.
When I returned to the states I began implementing what I had learned when I designed a site for a client. And I quickly gained more satisfied customers who started recommending me to others, because of the traffic their sites generated.
The main question I now ask when interviewing a client is “Do you want your site to generate free targeted traffic from the search engines?”
And the answer is always “Of course, isn't that what a site is supposed to do?”
Most business owners think that if they get a site built by a design firm that the traffic will come, but this is not true.
Business owners come to me perplexed, because their site is nowhere to be seen in the search engines. And after looking over their sites I soon learn that it was not optimized for the search engines.
If you're a web designer and want to make a good living designing sites for businesses, then learn SEO. If you don't make your clients money from their sites then they won't be satisfied and recommend you to others.
It took a trip to Africa and a bit of market research to learn the key to building a profitable web design business, or any business for that matter, is to help your clients make more money.
Lonnie Kunkel is the owner of Creative Media Productions www.cincinnati-web-design.com a Cincinnati web design firm that specializes in designing cost effective sites with a positive ROI for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Along the way I photographed the wildlife, culture and scenery. And of course the people I met were curios about where I was from and what I did back home.
Among the people I met were small business owners…men and women who owned safari businesses, tours and hostels.
And with time in the evenings after exploring the city I started to talk to the owners of these businesses about their marketing and business building efforts. And of course websites were often the main subject of the conversation, because they would soon learn what I did for a living.
During the conversations, I learned that every business owner had the same concern…
”I want my website to be a cost effective marketing tool?”
A genuine concern for all business owners, but a solution a lot of web design firms did not offer, including my own.
Through my travels I would spend several hours, after writing to friends and family, surfing for information on designing cost effective websites at internet cafes.
I sifted through a plethora of information, most of which was useless.
When I returned to the states I began implementing what I had learned when I designed a site for a client. And I quickly gained more satisfied customers who started recommending me to others, because of the traffic their sites generated.
The main question I now ask when interviewing a client is “Do you want your site to generate free targeted traffic from the search engines?”
And the answer is always “Of course, isn't that what a site is supposed to do?”
Most business owners think that if they get a site built by a design firm that the traffic will come, but this is not true.
Business owners come to me perplexed, because their site is nowhere to be seen in the search engines. And after looking over their sites I soon learn that it was not optimized for the search engines.
If you're a web designer and want to make a good living designing sites for businesses, then learn SEO. If you don't make your clients money from their sites then they won't be satisfied and recommend you to others.
It took a trip to Africa and a bit of market research to learn the key to building a profitable web design business, or any business for that matter, is to help your clients make more money.
Lonnie Kunkel is the owner of Creative Media Productions www.cincinnati-web-design.com a Cincinnati web design firm that specializes in designing cost effective sites with a positive ROI for small businesses and entrepreneurs.
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