Welcome to the last episode (sigh) in our Business Bootcamp series. Over the last year, we have been attempting to question everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design businesses. We looked at the entire process, from meeting our first client to helping them to support their site. We’ve tried to contrast approaches by looking at the traditional project (waterfall) where we are hired to build the finished (website) "product", and an agile approach, where we will try to use online SEO and UX data gathered, to iteratively improve the site as an ongoing collaboration with the client. Here we have set ourselves a few questions in an attempt to sum up what we have learned over this series and, more generally, our time in the website building industry. It's been a fun ride!
Welcome to the penultimate episode in our Business Bootcamp series. Usually, this is where I write... "where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish". But if you are joining us now, you probably need to go back a year to season one! We are on Season 5, which is the last in this Bootcamp series and is about what happens after the website build. This is episode 5. Today we are talking about Future Proofing (our tech based business and maybe our clients’ sites). We're supposed to be talking about Traditional (Waterfall) v Agile, but as you'll hear we get slightly derailed and go off piste for quite a bit of the podcast, which is fun! We cover: Reduce or embrace dependencies? Should we offer long term support? What kind of efforts do we put into making sure that we're keeping our knowledge and skills up to date? Check it out...
So you're in the business of selling WordPress websites? If you are in that business, then I can guarantee you that there's more money to be made than just getting the site done and then moving on. Today it's all about the upsells that we might offer. We go through a list of things that we've tried in the past, some of which were profitable and easy to do, others of which were hard and lost us money. It's a lottery to be honest! Things that one person excels at, others might be loathed to do. Website hosting, email hosting, design, custom development, social media, content creation, SEO, optimisation... I could go on. In fact, I (we) do in the episode today. Have a listen and then head over to the post and leave us a comment.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WP sites and running a web design business from start to finish. Today we're talking about the way that hosting has changed over the years. In much the same way that you look at a website from 1999 and wonder how that was ever allowed to exist, the same is true for the technology stack that is hosting our WordPress websites. Perhaps, back in the day, you ran servers of your own in your office or house. You then likely moved to something like shared hosting and a VPS. Now we've got managed WordPress hosting companies and cloud services which allow to spin up servers in an instant with just the resources we need. Add to that the interest in headless WordPress, and well, we've got a show on our hands and plenty to talk about.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WP sites and running a web design business from start to finish. Today we are talking about 'Monitoring websites for clients'. Relationships with clients after a traditional project rarely end with the site going live. Those who take an agile approach will not have clients continuously responding to user behaviour changes. What should we be monitoring for clients? There's more to this than you might think! And we get into a lot of the tools that we've tried before to make all of this happen. There's a full list in the show notes.
With all these no code options, do you find your clients are becoming experts and no longer needing you? We try (and fail) to talk about this today and end up going on about JAMStack instead! It's a serious point though. Page Builders and Gutenberg have opened up the website creation process to a whole new audience, and it brings into question what we do as WordPress web developers / builders that make us worthwhile. What can you say to the client to make you seem like value for money in a time when 'affordability' is more important than ever, and when many of the tasks that used to be 'out of scope' for non-technical users, is not possible in an easy-to-use interface? Go listen...
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. We are on Season 4 which is a short season looking at training clients. Today we are talking about website documentation and support. When we hand over a website, are we obliged to support it into the future, or can we just hand it over and be done with it? If we are going to support it, is there some standard of documentation we need to provide? Paper based, videos, in-person. I suspect that we've all got different ways of handling this, so check out the podcast to see what we do. BONUS, it's a short episode and you'll be done with it in no time!
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. We are taking contrasting approaches to getting our new businesses running and our first client’s site built. Today we're talking about what you, or don't do when handing over the site in terms of training. Do you prepare reams and reams of documents which carefully outline the ways to achieve all-the-things, and hand it to them in a big binder? Do you make videos for the client so that they can see what they need to do? Perhaps you react after the fact and wait until the client comes to you with specific queries, which you answer one at a time? Or maybe, just maybe, you don't do much at all and hope that the client figures it all out for themselves and leaves you alone to get on with the next website? Whatever it is, we'd love for you to listen to the podcast and then leave us a comment about how your process differs or aligns with ours.
So the moment has arrived. You've busted a jut and got the website finished. It's 100% ready to roll. Now what? Well, you've got to launch it and let the world see the great work that you've done! So what's involved in that? What do you typically need to do to make that happen? This is the subject that we explore on the podcast today and it's one where David and Nathan have different approaches. David is going agile and is likely to ship it as soon as the first page is ready, whereas Nathan is waiting until the entire site is completed. What steps do you need to follow on our launch checklist, and what things can go wrong?
There's a WordPress plugin solution for almost every possible scenario. Booking - done. Commerce - done. Learning management - done. Done, done and done. In fact in many cases, there's many different plugins available with slightly differing features! We're spoilt for choice frankly. By are there times when it's better for you or your client to think outside of WordPress plugins and consider a SaaS solution? That's the topic of the conversation to and we dig into situations where we're preferred non-WordPress options because it's just a better fit for the specific project / client. We chat about what we're using and when we think it's best to just confess that WordPress is not always what we want to use and that there are many superb solutions out there. We hope that you enjoy the podcast.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WP sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We are on the third episode of Season 3 where we are looking at The Technical Build. And today we are discussing 'Performance testing during the build'. Here we are primarily thinking about front and back end technical performance, but we will also touch on things related to the design technical issues too. So what things do we do to test performance and what tools have we come across to help with this vital job. Find out by listening to the podcast.
The web designer’s tech stack. We last talked about the website building platform we might use for this project. Here we are widening this and look at the basic essential hardware and software we might need to start our business. So it's all the 'stuff' that you have around you, both physical objects like a computer and a phone, as well as the software that you might be using. When you get into it, it's pretty amazing just how much stuff there is that you 'need'. Way more than I thought. It's also interesting what you don't need; either because it's not essential, or because it got replaced over time with something else. It's a fun episode, and if any of the things that we discuss resonate with you, please leave a comment on the site...
So, we've made it to series three of the WordPress Business Bootcamp and this is perhaps a little more where the rubber meets the road. Now we're going to be thinking about the tools that we use to build a website and keep it going for the client. We're split the 'tools' topic up into two episodes. This weeks it's all about WordPress and next week it's all the other things that you need which are not related to WordPress. What WordPress tools do we need then, and does the way that we build our sites need to have anything to do with our clients, or is it just for our (the website builder) convenience. Listen to this episode to see what we've ended up with as our basic stack, and if you think that we've missed anything, be sure to let us know in the comments.
Another episode of the WordPress Business Bootcamp where we try to go right back to the start and unpick the process of building sites for clients. Today we're on to the tricky subject of 'Design Aesthetics'! Aesthetics affect a brand's credibility and perception. The look and feel is probably the thing that first hit us first and is most important to our clients. But the problem is that aesthetics are subjective, there is no agreed way to deliver such things and we have to find some way to avoid design by committee (the client seeking outside parties) or the loudest voice winning without reference to the overall goals. So how we might do this is the subject of the podcast today. Remember that there's a dozen other episodes in this series prior to this, but we'd love to get your thoughts on this one... tell us where you get your inspiration and how you handle this with your clients.
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We are on Season 2 where we are looking at The Design Process. Today we are discussing "Creating a brand". With so much to take in, we needed to split the subject up into seven, easy to understand, sections. So take a listen to the podcast and hit up the comments if you think that we missed anything.
On the podcast today we continue our WordPress Business Bootcamp series. Now we're trying to figure out "How do we get our website copy?". It's a thorny issue and I'm pretty certain that this problem has held up one or other of your website builds in the past. Who should create the content that goes on the site? Should it be you, a professional copywriter, an SEO expert or perhaps we leave that to the client and just place Lorem placeholders in until they're ready? The problem though is that the text is really crucial for the success of a website, and therefore it's crucial to get it right. Not only will Google like it, but the way that your site looks, the structure of it all hangs on how the words fit in the overall design that you've decided upon. So listen to the podcast as we discuss this topic and leave some feedback...
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We're on series 2, episode 2. "How do we structure our clients' websites?" We're trying to figure out which parts of a website does our client really need from the outset. There's hundreds of things that we can do, but as the budget is tight, what are the things that we're going to suggest that the client implement to get the most from this fledgling site? Do they need something specific in the header? What about lead magnets or landing pages? Which pages are essential at the start and how are we going to measure the success of what we're building over time? There's a lot in here, and it may be that you've in a habit of doing things in a certain way, and this conversation might make you stop and have a rethink about the structure of your clients' websites. Go listen...
Welcome to another in the Business Bootcamp series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. We're on Season 2, Episode 1, and it's all about what the whole web design / build process might look like. As is so often the case we're wearing many, many hats in the work that we do, and that's really what this episodes emphasises. How to we set the expectations, get the designs, understand the mood, decide upon sources of traffic, think about SEO, agree on colours and fonts. See, I told you you'd need many hats! We cover what we've done in the past and what we think might work for us going forward in our WordPress website businesses. Have a listen to the podcast...
To stay in business, you need to keep working. That usually means more clients. But where does this never ending conveyor belt of clients come from? What can you do to avoid gaps in your work roster? There's no magic bullet, and likely there's disappointment along the way. But you'll get into a pattern of gaining work at some point, but it's good to discuss some of the things that we've tried before. Find out what they might be in the Podcast today...
Welcome to another in our Business Bootcamp series. It’s the series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. Presently, we are on Season 1 (where we look at what needs to happen) before the build. Have we set the right expectation? Nathan and David are taking different routes to get our invented businesses going and our client’s website up. In this episode we tackle how you might get your client expectations set up, and what those expectations might be. This includes things like what points typically cause friction in a web project, how can we effectively gather content, what channels of communication are we going to use, how will we handle revisions, and the worst of them all... clients just ghosting us. It's an interesting chat and we cover a lot of ground. Go check out the podcast.
Welcome to another in our Business Bootcamp series. It’s the series where we relearn everything we know about building WordPress sites, and running a web design business from start to finish. Today we're thinking about the legal side of things... agreements / contracts and payments. How would you handle this as someone new to the industry. Do you even need a contract? Perhaps you're starting out and making a website for a friend, in which case the situation might be different, but do you owe it to yourself to protect you and your business from things which might go wrong... late payment / no payment, absent client who never returns your calls, a client who is simply unreasonable in their expectations of your time. It's really only after you've been doing this for a while that you might start to realise that some form of legal protection is a good idea, but where do you go to get that? You could try a lawyer, but that might be expensive. You could make something up, but that might not really protect you. You could download something from the internet, but that might not cover all the things that you need covering. So many things! Fins out what we've done in the past, the mistakes that we've made and where you might find some useful resources. Go check out the podcast...
Welcome to another in the WP Business Bootcamp series. It’s the series where we relearn EVERYTHING we know about building WordPress sites and running a web design business from start to finish. The Premise of this series is that we have our first potential website client. All we know is that she is a lawyer in a large city. She asked a mutual friend who thought of us. We have few skills and no business or processes in place. She has no previous website. No branding or copy. As we go through the series, Nathan and David will be taking different routes to get our business going and our client’s website up and running. Presently, we are on Season 1 of the series which is looking at the things that need to happen before the build. Today we're trying to figure out how we might think about charging for the services that we offer, and as always, there's more to this than meets the eye... fixed v value pricing, being competitive, discounting, bundling services together and much more. Check out the podcast and leave us a comment with your thoughts...
In this brand new, and huge series of podcast episodes we try to re-learn everything that we know about running a WordPress website business. We start from the idea that we've got our first potential client, but we have no prior experience. So where do we start? What do we do? Where do we go to find inspiration? What methodologies could assist us towards becoming profitable? Join us on this journey as we start the "WordPress Business Bootcamp"! Check out the podcast...
