Utopia Website Design Blog

All too often we’ve have had disgruntled business owners approach us who have been disillusioned with the lack of business acumen shown by web designers. Conversely, we’ve had more than one conversation with freelancers or small design firms who seem to think that creating a website, dropping it onto someone’s lap and then walking away is good business practice. If you want you’re design business to grow up instead of grow stale you’ll need to build, as they say, multiple steams of income.

In the past 3 months we must have sent out 7 or 8 rather large proposals. I’m loathe to report that most of them haven’t produced so much as a whisper from their new owners. Which brought me into speculative state of mind. What could a web design firm do to keep the ball rolling and therefore, keep the proposal in play? With the past 3 proposals we’ve sent out we’ve started testing some new techniques and I’m happy to report that things are looking up. Here are a couple of things that we have learned that may save you some time.

A new client of ours sat down with me after finishing his project and explained to me that he charges $600/hour as a business consultant and he wanted to give me some advice. He spent the better portion of an hour giving me some of the greatest advice I’ve received since opening shop. This post is to share my $600 advice with you. I’m sure it will sound simple, but, I guarantee you will see the returns in money, time, and less stress….I already have.

The value of a well written proposal cannot be under-estimated. The proposal is the beginning of closing the deal. Many designers fall into the trap of thinking that the proposal is a necessary evil and that potential clients will rely on your beautiful web portfolio, good looks, quick wit, and charm to make their decision.

We love to design, we love to create, we love to code beautiful websites. However, as they say, ‘money makes the world go round’. So how can a freelance website designer decide on how much to charge for their beautiful creations? Too much and we risk scaring the client away. Too [...]

Designers spend a lot of time making sure their websites are picture perfect. A tonne of work goes into designing a website that many people are unaware of. I’m sure you can imagine how frustrating it is when some application decides to partner up with Microsoft and add code to your site that breaks the design. In a recent project I had this problem with Skype altering the way phone numbers display in Internet Explorer web browser.

Determining what activities are in scope for a web design project requires any respectable web designer to wear two very different hats.  On the one hand, we have to please the client and on the other hand we must value our services enough to put a leash around scope creep.
Generally speaking, clients who are not used [...]

When is a client a friend and when is a client a client?  I’m not talking about having as a client someone who is also your “friend” outside of business hours.  Although, I’m sure the principles I am going to discuss would still apply.  I’m talking about how a client can get to know and [...]

I suppose it isn’t polite to complain about having too much work.  So I’ll summarize by saying that the past 9 months have been a blur.   With the business steadily growing I’ve had less and less time to think about the state of Utopia Design.  However, it appears that things are starting to calm down [...]