Essential Considerations that Can Keep Web Design Businesses in Business

So, you might wonder what you're in for as a flourishing designer of websites and promoter of dot-coms everywhere that they can be. You thought to yourself, "This seems like a cool line of business with lucrative outlay to set down a few strings of markup language!" And that's not wrong at all - it's quite fun even. The trouble is, it's not a long-term business for many or even the savvy among us. The reality is, designing websites for clients is about 10 percent of what makes up designing websites for clients. It's ironic, isn't it?

As kids, we used to think that things were black and white. If the car drove, it was because your foot affected the gas pedal; if the light switch works, it's because someone ran a metal string from point A to point B; if you pay for a burger, the money goes straight into the employee's pocket. We now know it's not that simple and never was, and web design is a lot like any other industry in that way. It's not just designing web pages and having cool ideas for the look and feel, and it's more than just following instructions and feeling so sure of yourself as you're assimilating the client's vision and trying to see things through the same lens they do.

Building relationships with the people who drive your business is unquestionably essential. The thing is, that's most of what your business is about: making a name for yourself, speaking in front of strangers and demonstrating what you've got. Then it's about applying yourself on an actual task and praying that you worked closely enough with the client to understand exactly what they wanted, and with every order that you fill, your work is making slight adjustments to your reputation on some cosmic scale in the world at large. People talk, and your work changes what they say about it.

The bottom line is, if you're going to design websites as a business, make sure you have at least one other person who can handle the other half of everything. If you're the front man or woman for the audience, get a cohort to handle the geeky stuff behind the scenes. It's hard work doing it all alone.