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We don't just sell websites, we provide solutions for your website with the best website builder on the market!

Rob Frierson • December 3, 2019

There's SO much more to websites than just the website!

Sample small business website design from iwantawebsite custom website design for small business websites

Sorry, but we don't sell websites!

With more than 17 years of website expertise, we know that clients don't want to buy a website, they want to buy a solution to their problem. Our real value is in the solutions that we provide, and NOT just the incredible websites that we deliver!

Look, we’ve all been there. A client is haggling your price down because So-and-So over at that other design business says she can make a website for half the cost.

And you start to question yourself.

And you start to worry that the client will hire So-and-So instead.

And you are juuuuust about to lower your price…

STOP!

Websites aren’t a commodity. They’re not like gasoline, where you stop at whatever gas station has the lowest price, because the end product is the same. But a lot of clients don’t get that. And a lot of web designers don’t either.

In my career as a website developer, I can’t tell you how many designers I worked with where even THEY treated the website like a commodity. Something to simply slap a logo in and call it a day. That’s all the client asked for, right?

But here’s the thing:

Clients don’t want websites, and we don't sell websites.

They tell us they want a website, but that’s not true. In fact, it may be hard to get them to say anything besides, “We just know our business needs a website,” which is incredibly unhelpful.

But whether clients know it or not, they don’t want a website. What clients REALLY want are more customers, or at the very least more leads. On a rare occasion they may want a resource for visitors to reduce their workload by reducing the number of questions they’re asked. But no one ever wants just a website.

Yet most designers and other website companies continue to deliver, just websites, and wonder why they can’t charge premium prices. They wonder why they are constantly beat out by So-and-So’s lower rates. They compete to get low-paying clients. They never stop to think that maybe they’re selling their services all wrong.

We are different in that we ask WHY your client wants a website.

You have to ask clients why they want a website, and sometimes keep asking until you get to the root of the request.

Clients may not even know why they want a website until you ask them.

Clients may not even know why they want anything; a website, SEO, a new logo, whatever.

You have to keep asking why until you get to the real reason.

Even if WE know that the client needs a website in order to attract more customers, we still have to take the client on that journey so that they realize it themselves.

Once a client realizes we're going deeper than So-and-So, that we're offering an actual solution to their problem, they’ll understand why you charge more.

But we often have to ask them WHY first.

Why we offer strategy with our website design

I often imagine a lot of conversations between clients and designers go something like this:

Client: I want a website.

Designer: Great! I can make you a website. What do you do, and who is your target market?

Client: I’m a wedding photographer and my clients are brides.

Designer: Great, we’ll use watercolors and put a big image slider on the front page.

Client: Cool.

And that’s about as deep as it goes. The designer makes a beautiful website with lots of big images and a pretty color palette, and the client pays for it.

But what does the website DO?

Well it looks great, so the designer’s job is done, right?

Wrong.

As a web designer, we have to determine the client’s goal (in this example and most: get more clients), and create a design that accomplishes this.

And I hate to tell you, but there’s a lot more involved than creating a pretty brand and slapping it in a website. That may have worked in 2002, but today, that no longer flies.

Every element of design should serve a purpose, and that purpose is to lead visitors toward the goal.

Using the wedding photographer example above, we might map out the strategy something like this:

When a visitor first lands on the website, we want them to be blown away by your photography. We’ll showcase a few of your best photos, that demonstrate the type of weddings you like to photograph on the home page.

From there, we want visitors to learn a little about you, so we’ll funnel them to your About page where you can explain how you can help them get the best wedding photos possible.

At that point visitors should be pretty psyched, but we want to drive home who you want to work with and the types of weddings you shoot just a little more. So we’ll direct them to your portfolio where we’ll showcase a few of your favorite weddings.

Finally, we’ll direct visitors to contact you, and we’ll make that as simple as possible with a custom form that collects all the info you need upfront.

This website will draw in visitors and streamline the intake process. Making it easy for clients to hire you, and reducing back and forth emails for you!

Compare that strategic design breakdown to the original, “Great, we’ll use watercolors and put a big image slider on the front page.”

Which do you think clients would pay more for? Are you starting to see that the value is much more than just the pretty pictures and fluff?

We don't sell websites - We sell your value

The thing a lot of web designers get hung up on is tech. They list out a ton of features and expect the clients to immediately see the value in them.

But many clients have no clue what their web designer is even talking about. Tech means nothing to them, or at least very little. You might get the odd client who knows they want a certain plugin, or at least knows they want to be on one specific platform over another for s certain reason, but the majority of clients don’t know and don't care about tech.

What clients do care about is results. Results that help them and their business.

More customers. More leads. Less work on their end.

THAT is what we sell.

Selling a simple site with a custom theme and five page templates means zilch to your clients.

(Unless our clients are designers - then we can talk a little tech, but we don’t get too crazy with it.)

But when we're offering that, and So-and-So is offering the same but with SEVEN page templates, for the same price, you’re both just commodities. And So-and-So will beat us every time, but for all the wrong reasons.

We sell the benefits. Actual Results

Instead of focusing on the tech, we focus on how the website will benefit our clients. How they’ll see better results.

Suddenly, we put yourself in a whole new price bracket.

Suddenly, clients see the value that we bring them, and see us as more than a pixel pusher, but instead as a consultant. They start to value our opinion as more of a partner, and defer to our expertise.

We might be selling the exact same thing we were always selling, but changed our positioning from a commodity to an authority.

How to price your value-based services

How much would you pay for something that was going to get you an extra $100,000 a year? $5,000? $10,000? $50,000? More?

People will pay more money for something if they believe it will make them more money, and even more if we can prove it.

It’s simple math for the client-pay $10,000 for a website and get $100,000 in extra revenue a year. Worth it.

But not every designer is comfortable in talking money like that. After all, we can create the best website in the world, but if our client doesn’t do anything to get traffic to it, there will be no return on investment.

Sadly, we can't actually guarantee a result. The best we can do is share past clients’ success, and tell potential clients what’s involved in getting there, and help them every step of the way.

But you don’t have to base value purely on monetary gains. Value comes in many forms. If we can streamline a client’s site so that customers can book a photography session more easily, that’s value. If we can create an intake form that helps cut down on your client’s back-and-forth emails, that’s value. If we can add an FAQ section that reduces the amount of questions your client receives, that’s value. The list of these types of value-add functions is very long!

But we do need to put a price tag on the value we’re providing.

When we add value to the mix, we’re able to more easily support that package price, because there's now a clearly understood value in it.

Think of all the value we can add to a project. Write it down. Then add a price tag to each value point. You’ll be surprised at how quickly it adds up, and you'll quickly see that we're actually undercharging for all that we deliver.

Web design isn’t a commodity.

Clients say they want a website, but in reality, they want customers, and they want to make their processes easier. We just have to clarify why they want what they want until we get to the root of the request. When we get there, they’ll start to see that they need more than a website, they need a solution, which is exactly why they came to us.

Tossing a little strategy in goes a long way. And it’s not that hard once you know what your client’s goal is. Seriously, the strategy portion can take as little as 5 minutes, once we start asking the right questions. For most clients, the end goal will be the same, so you can use a template for strategy (not the website itself) and tweak as needed.

In the end, we sell benefits, not tech, not websites. Our clients don’t really care about what plugin we'll be using, they care about the results that it can provide. Putting a price tag on the value that we offer our clients helps them see what we’re really offering, and that we're worth much more than we're asking.