Offer Your Clients More

Put the words "web design" into Yahoo and you'll find over 20,000 sites. This demonstrates how more and more people are starting their own Internet businesses. Why you can even see an example on a current US "American Express" commercial (so it must be true). How can you make your company or business endeavour stand out from the other 19,999?

Try Niche Marketing
I knew someone who said his web company specialised in "bike shops." Another person said his company specialised in "Roman Catholic schools in Brooklyn." Hey, that's one way to get business! "We specialise in your industry." Of course, if the bike shop guy wants to expand to include shoe stores, he may have to change his company image if his logo/slogan were industry-specific. But it also has the selling point of "nobody knows military-issue nuts and bolts, barber shops, or environmental non-profit orgs like our web design company."

Offer Your Clients Something They Could Not Do Themselves
Part of why Internet business has become a New York City street at rush hour would be WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") software. These apps have removed the need to know or understand HTML. Just build your web site easily in this window, and we'll write the HTML for you. You don't even have to understand the Web. Anybody on this planet, including your potential and current clients, with $100 and a few spare hours can get his or her hands on software like FrontPage, PageMill, HomePage, or NetObjects Fusion and claim to be a web site designer or make a web site. So why not offer your clients something they couldn't do themselves or get from every person in town.

1. Make sure you understand optimising graphics and different formats for the Web. I've seen sites by so-called professional site designers, and every graphic on every page was 150K, which will load in around 1 minute average. This does not have to be you. Lynda Weinman has written lots of great books about graphics for the web. Even an experienced site designer can learn something from her.

2. Why not learn HTML and code it by hand without WYSIWYG software?! Now you're really offering your client something he or she couldn't do in any reasonable amount of time. By knowing the language, you will be able to deconstruct any site you see and construct anything your client needs. Another important fact is that software is released/updated every few months if you're lucky - you could wait a year for newer versions of some software. This means while HTML is evolving, you're stuck with being able to do only what your software knows about. It's one thing if you're missing out, but it's a whole other thing if your clients are missing out! After using it for years, I recommened 2000% Sausage Software's HotDog Pro. It's an HTML editor but with lots of tools, plug-ins, and macros so that your HTML writing goes quickly and efficiently.
   The copyright of the article Offer Your Clients More in Internet Business is owned by Debbie Levitt. Permission to republish Offer Your Clients More in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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