How to start a Website Development Service

How to start a website development service

Starting a website development service is a valid and logical business move for programmers and internet entrepreneurs. It makes sense one so many levels. Physical and digital companies get value from websites, the ability to represent your company 24/7 and the ability to reach are just some of the reasons that companies need websites. That along with the amount of tech knowledge needed to create and manage a website makes it a service that proves valuable to companies and entrepreneurs alike. The best part about choosing to offer this as a service is that you don’t need to be a programmer in order to make websites, tons of companies just need a simple web property and that can be accomplished using tools such as WIX, Wordpress or Shopify. Enough on the benefits of running a service like this now I shall jump into the planning and steps that go into launching a website development service.

First up is figuring out the products you are selling which in this case is the services you are offering. Obviously website development is the focus but that is very broad are you just building single landing pages or are you offering fully built out E-commerce store, are you doing custom websites or are you building from templates on a website builder. It also can be valuable to offer services that complement websites such as digital marketing. The services that you decide to offer aren’t set in stone over time you might decide to add or subtract what makes sense as you learn more about your customers.

Once you decide on what services you offer you need to define exactly what someone will get for that service which is called the deliverables. If someone buys a website do you just build out the site and call it a day? Do you come up with the website text as well as provide images and other assets? Are you developing special features for the website such as a customer database or scheduling features? All these things need to be figured out and clearly established for the customer so they know what they are getting and what you have to do for the job to be complete. These deliverables also play a big factor in establishing the pricing for your services as well.

The pricing of the services should be decided upon by a variety of factors, there is no hard set rules for this but there are certain things that should always be considered. The audience which you are targeting should be the biggest factor, the cost of your websites has to make sense for their business. The deliverables you are offering, competitors and your operating expenses are all other factors that weigh heavily upon your price.

Let’s focus a bit more on the audience aspect of this because your deliverables and pricing go hand in hand with your audience. Who do you plan on making websites for. A pizza restaurant and a doctor office will need almost completely different websites with different features. Think deeply of who you want to target your service too. It could help to focus on a sector you have experience in as you can possibly find more ways to offer value to your customers.

Marketing is the final part of the final focus for this blog post. This is why again I stress the audience so much. You can create marketing assets that are really tailored to who you plan on developing websites for. In this day and age the ways of marketing your website development service are nearly endless. I’ll list just a few here, advertise on online platforms such as Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Upwork, Fiverr etc. Those platforms have a very large audience so you can most likely find your target audience on those platforms. If your focus is local companies you can go old school with methods such as posters, business cards, and even going door to door and just introducing yourself. Having your audience planned out will help you focus your efforts and creating a clear message.

Wow I have only begin to scratch the surface with this topic so I definitely feel like Im going to drop more posts in this series. I am working on my own web development service as well located at www.overtime.xyz (Its still a work in progress) but I wanted to go ahead and drop it here so you can come and learn from a live example. I definitely can go more in depth with this topic so I plan on dropping a part 2 soon so if you got any feed back definitely shoot me an email at okerajohnson@gmail.com

I feel proud with this post I really feel like I’m starting to give y’all some value so get ready for more posts like this!