Starting a Web Design Agency: 5 First Steps to Take
Starting a web design agency: what does it take? The answer to this question depends upon multiple factors. These include your proficiency level, budget, web design objective and niche specialization to mention a few. No matter how experienced you are, it will hardly be possible to create an agency from scratch with minimum time and effort investment. In most cases, people encounter numerous challenges and problems that require efficient and quick solution. If you are fortunate to handle these issues within the pre-set deadlines, you will be able to start a profitable business. If you don’t, you’ll need extra effort or even third-party assistance to get started successfully. The list of factors to be considered when starting a web design agency may be quite long as it will depend upon your individual situation. However, let’s outline the top 5 steps to take to cope with the task with minimum hassle and time loss.
Step #1: Know Your Objectives
Whatever endeavour you have, knowing your actual objectives is a must. It’s crucial to understand what goals you set and how you pan to reach them. Otherwise, you will feel puzzled and unsure enough to overlook important nuances. Prior to setting the goals, analyze your degree of web design expertise to be sure you are ready to cope with all the tasks you will face without extra assistance. Next, decide on the area of your web design specialization as there are lots branches the web design niche encompasses.
Step #2: Market Trends Should Not Be Overlooked
Take your time to explore and analyze current trends observed in the web design market. It’s no secret that this industry is one of the most rapidly developing, with new technologies and tendencies hitting the market each year or even more often. Web design tools you go for should obligatory come up to user requirements and expectations. If they don’t, what’s the sense to start a web design agency in general? Awareness of the market trends will also let you define the strong points of your competitors. This knowledge will definitely come in handy to beat the competition and drive user attention.
“Contemporary web design niche is no longer static. The platforms that have initially been implemented as simple SaaS solutions have now grown into powerful AI-based systems. The era of comfy yet advanced web building solutions has started ”.
Howard Steele, https://superbwebsitebuilders.com
Step #3: Pick The Clients to Target
It is impossible to meet the needs of all users with no exception at all. For this very reason, you have to decide on the target audience in advance. Will these be online resellers or web store owners? Are you going to deal with local clients or you pan to cooperate with international clients as well? What age category of users do you plan to target or this does not matter at all? These are only a few questions to answer prior to deciding on your further strategy.
Step #4: Strategy Matters
Having handled the above mentioned issues, you will be ready to proceed to your web design strategy development. Get ready to invest some time and effort into your business plan – it should be logical, reasonable and it should also comply with all the aspects listed above. No haste is admissible here as you run a risk to overlook vital details.
Step #5: Get the Right Web Design Software
As soon as you are done with the strategy, it is high time to proceed to the very process of web design agency creation. There are several options to choose from, when it comes to website development – SaaS-website builders or hosted CMS (see the difference). If you need the one that will save your time without implying any skills or preliminary preparation, then using website builders will definitely be the right step. There are various options you can go for in this respect. IM Creator and uKit, however, have always been and now remain among the niche leaders that won’t let you down.
IM Creator
IM Creator – is a responsive state-of-the-art and user-friendly website builder that comes with decent integration options, blogging and eCommerce engines, abundance of quality templates and design customization features needed to complete all kinds of projects. As of today, over 17 million websites have been launched with the system and this number keeps increasing with every passing day. This is the main proof of the system’ credibility and functionality.
IM Creator is free for everyone, who aims at the development of non-commercial websites, but there are also paid plans to meet the needs of professionals. White Label Tool is one of the most generous and profitable solutions in this respect.
IM Creator White Label
https://www.imcreator.com/whitelabel
White Label is an advanced tool offered by IM Creator to users, who have already built their brand names and now wish to target the larger audience via starting a web-based business. The offer will come up to the needs of professionals, hosting companies, resellers willing to use the feature set of the website builder under their brand names. This is a kind of a website, brand, hosting, domain name and customer support included into one package. It is impossible for third-party users to tell what platform your web design agency was built on. This is because the White Label is fully integrated with your business style, using its logo, brand colors and other must-have elements.
With IM Creator, you will get the unlimited licences to start as many websites as you need. What matters most here is that you won’t be charged any extra fees for this amazing opportunity. Your clients, in their turn, will get the unlimited storage space to create projects that differ in size, features and other individual parameters. You’ll be able to bill the clients either through the integrated IM Creator billing system (to use this option, you’ll have to pay the 5% fee for each transaction) or by using your own billing channel at no cost at all. It’s up to you to make the choice regarding the best payment option.
It doesn’t take long to set up the White Label tool. Just pick one of the available White Label plans IM Creator offers (the cheapest option currently constitutes $350) and sign up for it, using the step-by-step wizard the system automatically generates. With White Label, you and your clients will get truly personalized web building experience.
IM Creator Features
White Label is not the only highlight of IM Creator. There are other features that have made the website builder so popular with newbies and web design professionals. The system boasts extensive WYSIWYG design editing options, multilingual support, integrable widgets, blogging and eCommerce engines etc. Let’s enlist the major advantages of IM Creator below.
- Responsive Designs. IM Creator template gallery is rich is visually-appealing and quality templates that are responsive by default. Even if your clients have no clue about website design, they will be able to enjoy the web development process and the result they will get in the long run. There are multiple elements to add on top of your templates and there are different Stripes to upload any content of your choice with no hassle at all. Animation effects, clear layouts, logical interface, drag-and-drop editing options and responsive visual elements will surely create decent impression.
- eCommerce Engine. The website builder comes with integrated free web store builder that lets you design the framework for a custom-ordered eCommerce website to let a client customize it independently afterwards. There are lots of stunning eCommerce templates your clients will be offered to choose from to be able to showcase their products/services to the advantage.
- Multilingual Support. Being a scalable web building solution that targets all user categories, IM Creator offers an opportunity to create any language variations of your website. Just let your client pick the required languages and start working on the project.
- Apart from the eCommerce engine, the website builder also offers an impressive blogging platform. There is everything your clients need to start and manage informative blogs – customizable templates, news feed solutions, layouts, marketing and SEO parameters, set up feature and more.
- Search Engine Optimization. Projects built with IM Creator do not always look impressive, but they are also optimized for further promotion in the search engines. It is possible to fill out meta tags, upload brand favicon and adjust a couple of other settings to contribute to better website optimization.
uKit
uKit – is an advanced website builder geared towards the development of small business websites. The service makes it possible to quickly and effectively create corporate websites, landing pages, portfolios and web stores in the intuitive visual editor that does not require any programming skills. The system stands out from the crowd due to its responsive templates, modern logical interface and design customization tools. It implies low learning curve, thus being a great option for inexperienced users. The website builder also deserves special attention due to its Affiliate Program that offers extra profit generation opportunities.
Affiliate Program
uKit Affiliate Program is the highlight of the system that enjoys popularity with web designers. The program implies an opportunity to get extra reward in two ways. The first one is via the creation and promotion of your website, while the second one is by encouraging other users to join the website builder, getting the percentage of payments they make in the system. The more users you will attract to the service – the higher revenue you will, correspondingly, get. This revenue is calculated as a percentage of payments made by newly-registered users, who have joined the system by your initiative. To be precise, you will get 30% of the overall payment amount made by these newcomers.
The terms of the Affiliate Program also grant access to the affiliate control panel, multiple offers, discounts, loyalty programs, bonuses and promo actions as well as analytics system, rewarding terms of cooperation, quick customer support and other privileges. These are the major advantages that make uKit Affiliate Program a great bet for freelancers, web designers, blog and website owners, online communities and experienced webmasters.
uKit Features
The website builder has other merits that make it a great bet for millions of users across the globe. Here they go.
- Template Collection. uKit templates are really professional, alluring and customizable. Divided into niche-specific categories, they are easy-to-browse and pick that cuts down final web development time. The designs are responsive to be viewed on different mobile and desktop devices. Due to the integrated WYSIWYG editor, it’s easy to customize them without any skills or previous coding experience. Template switch option is available on any stage of the website development process.
- Integrated eCommerce Engine. Just like IM Creator, uKit allows creating and managing a full-featured web store. It won’t be large as the feature set of the system is mainly geared towards the creation of small and medium online stores. What’s interesting, uKit lets you start a web store in two ways – either by integrating the Ecwid plugin into a ready-made website or by connecting the eCommerce widget provided by the website builder.
- The platform features powerful integration options. It lets you get the most out of AMO CRM and SendPulse systems. AMO CRM lets you track sales, orders and client info that has direct impact upon website performance. Send Pulse, correspondingly, makes it possible to enrich your customer base by getting your clients’ info via the contact forms users fill out at the website.
- Quick Analytics Connect. To be aware of your website statistics and performance, it is possible to integrate Google Analytics into it. The tool lets you control the major statistic parameters of your project, watching the changes on a regular basis.
Conclusion
Whatever goals you pursue when launching a web design agency, you should initially realize that it will be a challenging and time-taking process. However, it should not be too painstaking at all. To avoid the frustrations and disappointments, it makes sense to thoroughly prepare to the business development process by exploring the must-have nuances reviewed in the article. The choice of the right web building tool matters as much as the entire strategy development. This is where IM Creator and uKit deserve special attention.
IM Creator is a system, which is mainly focused on the needs of web design companies and professionals, who already have regular customer flow and intend to create multiple custom-made websites.
uKit, in its turn, works better for independent web designers and freelancers, who are just starting their career and look for a credible full-featured tool for quick creation of high quality websites.
They are worthy representatives of their own niches. There is no leader in their comparison as each system targets certain user category and allows completing various tasks.