There’s no question it’s been a challenging year for a lot of people.
In many ways, for us too. Amid the constant fear and uncertainty of a pandemic, 2020 has been weird in too many ways to count but we did our best to do what we could and consider ourselves very fortunate.
Let’s all raise a glass to 2021 – stay safe out there everyone & take care of those closest to you now more than ever.
Happy new year, people. Here’s to 2021. ❤️
TL;DR – We managed to ship a total of 10 updates, including a ton of new features, welcomed a few new faces to our team, invested in improving our customer support (more on this later) & gave back to businesses in our industry in the way we knew best on Thanksgiving…
2020 In Numbers – What The Data Has To Say
We won’t bore you with all the data we have but here are the numbers we found worth getting excited about:
Released 30 new features
Squashed 80 pesky bugs
Grew to 15,002 installs
Published 41 blog posts to help WordPress service businesses grow & make the most of WP FeedBack ✍️
The one that really stands out is how many tasks we’ve helped clients & agencies not only create but also resolve. It’s really validating to put into perspective how much time this means we’re saving people, alongside making it possible to easily deliver websites projects & “dealing with clients”.
This is estimated at a whopping 5 years that we saved for our users this year.
Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The elephant in the room. It wouldn’t be a real 2020 review if we would have avoided what has made this a year one like no other.
Business aside, it would be remiss to assume that not everyone was hit really hard. The situation has been difficult – constant lockdowns, the inability to meet other people, difficulties getting essential services, the list goes on.
There seemed to be a common misconception that software businesses are recession-proof when it comes to a pandemic like COVID-19. This is evidently untrue.
Although every business falls on a scale of how recession-resistant they are, with businesses in the hospitality industry being at the top of that list – every company afterwards is still affected (or will be depending on how long COVID goes on).
Simply put, for WP FeedBack – our customers work with businesses that are affected. Those businesses, therefore, held onto their money.
This meant that agencies and freelancers that build websites got less work, at least in the beginning when people were freaking out.
And this all inevitably meant fewer people needed WP FeedBack PRO to get incredible work done.
Luckily, as the situation progressed, our industry has bounced back as more and more businesses pivoted to the digital space. and even closed the year with some substantial growth for freelancers and agencies that managed to act fast and ride the wave.
We too pivoted our approach slightly and spent a lot more time to focus on giving a lot more value to our existing users and enhancing the product while most new users have joined based on word-of-mouth rather than cold sales.
Our entire team was set to attend (and sponsor) WordCamp Asia and spend a whole week together there. Clearly, this was cancelled for obvious reasons which was disappointing as we were not only unable to get full refunds but – as a remote company – it was also our chance to meet the people we work with on a daily basis, and build company culture.
The Company Retreat That Never Happened
Of course, we didn’t just accept it and move on. We were the very first team in the industry to step in, announce, and successfully deliver afull-blown virtual summit.
Introducing The WP FeedBack Virtual Summit
With events across the globe being cancelled – one after the other – we decided to step in to fill the gap between regular online meetings, and in-person events.
The end result – according to feedback from attendees and sponsors – was an online event experience that came closer to simulating in-person events than anything they had ever seen.
The silver lining of us moving the entire event experience online was that it now meant people all over the world would be able to attend – including many that wouldn’t have attended in-person events.
Above all, this was truly amazing for us as a team to bring to life. And partner with incredible companies in the industry as sponsors – including GoDaddy, YITH, GridPane, WPMU DEV, RunCloud, SiteGround, Convesio, Web Ventures, Page Builder Cloud, Dollie, Codeable, WP Clover, Weglot, BuddyBoss, and BoldGrid.
Here were some highlights:
108,000 visitors when we kicked off the summit – ended up crashing the website (as we expected around 2,000).
We became the biggest online WordPress summit ever – with:
5,724 attendees
Reaching 126 countries
295,250 page views
30 talks run by industry-leading experts.
Made it possible for developers, marketers, and designers to network, connect & learn in a difficult time to put smiles on their faces despite COVID-19. We also sold an all-access pass for those who wanted to view the talks at a later stage (as well as a whole range of freebies).
Strengthening The WP FeedBack Vision
Throughout 2020 and as the product was evolving rapidly, it started becoming more apparent that there was some confusion surrounding the perception of WP FeedBack. At least compared to how we see the product.
As time went on, we became much more than a WordPress plugin with the PRO Dashboard and the features added in addition to this.
While the initial goal was to create a feedback plugin, our users’ needs were broader than that and so the vision expanded.
So I booked more than 150 zoom calls with our users to see how they were utilising the new features and found that most were still using (and perceiving) the product as it was on version 1.0, when we first launched and they were all amazed to see the rapid development and effort our team has put into creating a system to deliver the project from start to finish.
We’ve come a long way.
So in order to position ourselves as a cloud-based application, as opposed to a WordPress plugin – which is what we were when we started – we completely altered the messaging and design of our homepage.
This was an exciting change that led to a significant increase in conversion rate and more importantly, enhanced the results we were getting the users that implemented properly throughout their agency – drop an insane 80% of the project completion time (from weeks to days).
And heading into 2021, although we can’t share much more yet – we plan to continue aligning our vision with what our users need & the market wants.
With version 2.0 coming later this month and massive rebrand of the entire product that will help existing and future users see the astonishing results we can bring to their businesses and lives.
Thanksgiving & Black Friday – How We Decided To Give Back in 2020
Towards the very end of 2020, in celebration of Thanksgiving & Black Friday – we wanted to do something special.
Normally, we would have gone done the traditional route of offering a percentage discount to people who sign up for a WP FeedBack during this time. But we didn’t need to look very far to realize that a simple discount wasn’t the way to go about it this year.
After extensive research, we decided to simply give away our 1 domain plan for free, for the entire week. With one caveat, you had to activate it within 30 days in order to keep it.
Suffice to say, this seemed to work. That week alone, WP FeedBack grew by 4,000+ users. All of which are enjoying the benefits of WP FeedBack, which we’re now focusing on helping grow to the point where they’ll need the full power of WP FeedBack PRO (likely once COVID finally blows over).
A Personal Note From Our CEO
This is a great opportunity to share with you how grateful I feel that thousands of you are joining me on this journey over the past 15 months since the launch.
If you would have told me 2 years ago, while running my small agency, that my team and I would be making such an incredible impact on the industry that gave me so much personally, I would say you’re crazy.
I had to make some tough calls, bet on myself and believe in my team and I’m very thankful for the opportunity to serve you and to continue to build innovative features that help us all grow together.
Pushing ahead, let’s kill it (again) in 2021 ❤️
We are always focused on making our platform better, we want it to become the definitive way that agencies and freelancers work and collaborate with your clients…
This year we are turning it up to 11. We have planned every major release this year already, including the actual features that will be in each one and let me tell you; we’ve got some AWESOME stuff coming.
By the end of 2021, WP FeedBack PRO will not be what it is now, it will be much more. While we continue to serve your agency and grow our platform, thank you for being here, it’s been an incredible journey so far and we can’t wait for 2021!
26 Things To Check Before, During, and After Launching a Website
Building & launching a website isn’t easy. Just the sheer number of seemingly small details that can easily be overlooked is unimaginable – consistent typography, spelling, layout, call-to-actions, 404 error pages, content, SSL certificates – the list goes on…
This article will guide you through the things you need to check prior to launching your site (both before and after the site is built), as well as in the post-launch period, to ensure that everything is working smoothly and your visitors have a great user experience.
What To Check Before You Start Creating Your Website
Before you start designing your website or hire a web designer, there are a few things to consider, especially if you already have a website and want to redesign it.
1. Analyze Your Current Website
If you are doing a website redesign, you may want to analyze your current site and identify its shortcomings. Ask yourself: what is it that you haven’t achieved with the present website?
Whether you find that your site looks a bit old-fashioned, doesn’t perform well in terms of ease of use, or its SEO structure isn’t very effective – make sure to clearly identify all issues with the current website. By doing so, you’ll get a better understanding of what kind of goals you wish to set for your new website.
2. Crawl Your Present Site to Collect Data
Documenting the structure of your site is a necessary step in any new website development plan. Whether you have a small or a large website, it can be very time consuming and labor-intensive to check every page manually.
You may want to consider using a website crawling tool which will help you get a better view of your site’s existing pages, assets, and overall structure. This will significantly reduce the risk of ending up with duplicate pages or missing a redirect when making changes to your site structure.
3. Choose Your CMS Wisely (Choose WordPress)
If this is the first website you’re launching, you need to choose the right content management system, because this will simplify the process of launching & also maintaining your website.
Thankfully, this is an easy decision – choose WordPress.
Not only is it the most popular content management system, but it’s also the most versatile, flexible, and trusted by brands including CNN, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, and more. At WP FeedBack, we’d even go as far as to say that we see no other content management system as a viable choice…
4. Develop A Solid SEO Strategy
In order to improve both the quality and quantity of your website traffic from search engines, you need to devise a solid SEO strategy. This basically means that your website should be optimized so that it becomes more visible in search engines and gets more “organic traffic”, i.e. traffic that you aren’t paying to drive to your site…
A solid SEO strategy involves keyword research, creating a content strategy around those keywords, and tackling the website architecture, among other things. If you already have a website and decided to create a new one, devising an SEO strategy would involve figuring out how current pages can be modified and mapping out the unnecessary pages.
What to Check Once the Site is Built
Now that you’ve built your (new) website, you’ll want to check that everything is in place and working well before going live. Let’s run through a couple of things you should keep in mind in this pre-launch phase.
5. Ensure Your Content Is Error-Free
One of the most important things you should do before the launch is review all content on your site, including page content and premium content (e-books, case studies, etc.).
There’s nothing worse than having a typo on a key page. Proofreading every piece of text is a must if you don’t want to end up looking unprofessional. All spelling, grammar, and factual errors should be eliminated.
There are online tools that can come in handy in this process, such as Grammarly or Whitesmoke.
Don’t forget to also remove all generic content, such as lorem ipsums.
Another way I check this is using a convenient Chrome Bookmarklet that I can simply click when I’m on a site that I’m testing. To create a bookmarklet, visit the Google Chrome Bookmarks manager, right-click and then click Add new bookmark.
Then when prompted with the following name, enter a name that you’ll remember this bookmarklet by in the future, such as “Queries“.
And in the URL field, paste in the following code:
javascript:window.open('https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dsite%253A%2527%2Bwindow.location.hostname +%27 inurl:demo OR inurl:/home/ OR inurl:test OR inurl:-2 OR inurl:screenshot OR inurl:sample OR inurl:portfolio OR inurl:landing');
If I am to use this bookmarklet for this very site, this is what you’d get. This basically quick check to make sure you don’t have any old landing pages or demo pages that are being indexed by Google/are publicly accessible.
In our case, the demo pages that do appear in search are intentional because this is the demo of our software available at demo.wpfeedback.co which we want to have publicly available. ?
6. Check Your Site’s Images, Audio, and Video Files
Look for issues with audio or video files featured on your website. All audio and video files should work correctly.
Images should be optimized and labeled in an adequate manner. Make sure that alt tags are added to all images. Alt text helps people with visual impairment to be able to understand the image, and it is also helpful in optimizing your site for search.
Sometimes, if they don’t have the correct image, website designers resort to using placeholder images when creating a page. Make sure to replace all such images with the correct images and designs.
7. Be Consistent in Content and Title Formatting on All Pages
Consistency will add to your site’s professional appearance. Therefore, it’s wise to maintain consistency for the formats of all titles and heading. You can use sites like Woorkup’s Capitalize & Convert Case tool to help you format your titles in the same way.
8. Check Content Readability
Content should be easy to read.
Sounds fairly simple, right?
Well, let’s actually break down what defines content readability.
For content to be readable, sentences should be short.
You should use bullet points.
There should be a lot of white, empty space.
And the font should be appropriate and consistent.
Wherever possible, separate your content into different portions of text.
Subheadings enhance the readability of your site’s content, and also improve your SEO, so make sure to use them.
Approximately 50% of website visitors would leave a website if it lacks contact information. Bearing this in mind, if you want your website to appear professional, credible, and attract visitors, it’s crucial to have a contact page.
You may check out some widespread contact form builders, such as Contact Form 7
If a website has a responsive design, it simply means that it’s functional and looks good on all devices. For example, if you consider that over 50% of the internet traffic is from mobile devices, ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly is an absolute must.
In practice, this would imply that the content should be identical on both the mobile and desktop version, the text should be easy to read on the mobile version as well, and navigation should be simple.
If your website looks good on the browser you’re using, that doesn’t mean it won’t look different if accessed from another browser. This is why you need to review whether your site is compatible with diverse browsers, especially the most popular ones such as Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
You can test browser compatibility on your own, simply by accessing your website through different browsers to see if everything displays correctly.
Alternatively, there are many tools that can help you do this, like BrowserShots, for example, an open-source online app that uses several computers at different locations to access your site in their browser. The app then takes screenshots of your site from each computer and uploads them in a central server so you can review them.
12. Review Plugin Compatibility
Since there is a high volume of third-party plugins you might be using to develop your site, sometimes it can happen that they don’t work well with one another, resulting in compatibility issues. Sometimes it is a case of conflicting code or functionality. In other cases, it can be a matter of having two plugins that attempt to change a given feature but are doing this in two different ways.
Whatever the cause, compatibility issues can result in a certain feature not working properly or at all. In some cases, such issues can even break your site.
Moreover, compatibility issues don’t only occur between plugins. They can also happen between a plugin you’re using and the theme being used, or even between a plugin and the WordPress version you’re using.
Fortunately, there are various free plugin options that can easily run compatibility testing before you go live. One example of such a plugin for WordPress is PHP Compatibility Checker.
13. Create A 404 Page
404 error pages may not be likely on a newly created website. Yet, if a visitor makes a typo or if there is a wrong external link to your website, they can still occur. And redirecting 404 pages to your homepage isn’t advised, because it just doesn’t make sense from a user perspective that they just end up somewhere where they weren’t trying to go…
That’s why it’s best to be on the safe side and create a custom 404 page. Having this page will reduce the risk of losing visitors and improve user experience overall. Moreover, a successful 404 page doesn’t simply retain the visitors on your site, it also makes them stick around and check out what else is going on on your website.
14. Inspect URLs
Building a site usually involves moving things around. This can easily lead to broken links, both internal and external, which is why it’s advisable to double check whether the URLs are correct on the live version.
This entails ensuring that the landing and thank you pages are working properly or that the necessary forms are present. For instance, you could test out the web forms yourself to see whether messages are successfully submitted/sent.
Checking the conversion paths also includes ensuring that CTA (call-to-action) buttons are present in the right places. Any element on your site that asks visitors to do something is considered call-to-action. For instance, this could be a button or something as simple as prominent text. CTAs are the main way in which you convey to your visitors what you actually want them to do.
Ensuring call to actions are clear and you’re guiding users to take a specific action leads to an increase in conversions.
Therefore, you absolutely must ensure that your CTAs work well and are present in adequate locations before launching your site.
16. Install A WordPress SEO Plugin
If you want people to find your site when browsing the internet, you need to optimize your site for search engines, or in other words, make it more Google-friendly.
To do so, ensure that all pages on your website have unique page titles as well as unique meta descriptions. All pages that are meant to rank organically should also be optimized around a specific keyword or several keywords.
As mentioned earlier, the only SEO plugin you need to optimize your WordPress websites is Rank Math.
17. Check Your Social Sharing Buttons Are Using The Right Accounts
Your social icons should be functional prior to launching your site. Make sure these icons link to the correct pages, that the necessary buttons are installed, and that visitors are able to share them.
The main things to check here are that social media share icons are associated with the correct accounts, and also functional on a range of browsers (depending on which ones you aim to support).
The terms and conditions page may be seemingly unimportant and one of the easiest to overlook, but depending on the setup of your website – you may be legally required to have such a page.
This is especially the case if you’re running an eCommerce store or business website. Some also consider the presence of these pages to be one of many trust signals that Google uses when evaluating websites.
For this, since it is complicated – we advise looking into Termageddon which is a terms and conditions & privacy policy generator for websites and applications. It is however unique compared to other solutions as it automatically updates when the law changes keeping your company protected and, in turn, allowing you to focus on more important things.
Similarly, if your website gathers personal information from visitors, most jurisdictions require that you have a privacy policy page. This can be any type of personal information, such as email addresses, GPS location, or phone numbers.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a regulation on data protection and privacy in the EU and the EEA. GDPR compliance is legally required if you operate in the EU and collect user data. Furthermore, this regulation applies to any business, regardless of where it’s based, that is processing the personal data of individuals in the EEA.
Finally, not only is a privacy policy page required by law, but it is also required by many third-party services that you could be using. For instance, in its Terms and Conditions, Google Analytics states that if you are using their Analytics service, you must include a privacy policy page where you disclose your usage of Google Analytics and their cookies.
Fortunately, this is also something that Termageddon can help you handle. ?⚖️
19. Sort Out Any Navigation Issues
Having a good navigation structure on your site is essential. You don’t want users to find themselves wandering around and not knowing which button to click. If you wish to avoid losing visitors, make sure that navigation is simple and user-friendly.
Most importantly, you need to ensure that navigation works properly.
You can, for example, engage your friends to navigate your site and find the content they need so as to get critical feedback. You can also check out several online tools that can help out with improving navigation, such as OptimalSort.
Also, don’t forget to link your logo to your homepage.
20. Implement A Backup Solution You Can Rely On
From hackers to an innocent coding error, there are a number of things that can take your entire website offline.
You deserve peace of mind, which is why you should always have a reliable WordPress backup solution like BlogVault in place so that if something ever goes wrong, you can easily restore your site.
And, thankfully with BlogVault, you can also take advantage of their 1-click staging functionality to test any changes before pushing them to production which significantly reduces the risk of even having to restore your live site.
21. Lock Down Your WordPress Website
Securing your website means reducing the risk of DDoS attacks or malware, so take website security seriously from the beginning.
There are various ways in which you could strengthen your website’s security.
Note: If you use WordPress, we strongly recommend adding two-factor authentication to your WordPress website as an additional measure to protect against administrator accounts—or other WordPress user accounts—leading to your site being compromised. All it takes is a single person’s credentials to be part of a leak or phishing attempt.
For instance, you could consider limiting the number of login attempts users are able to make during a given period. This will minimize the risk of brute force attacks, i.e. attacks where a hacker is trying to guess the username and password over and over again until they discover the correct combination.
You can also think about whitelisting IP addresses. Basically, this means that your dashboard can be accessed only from specific IP addresses. As IP addresses are unique and can’t really be replicated, whitelisting provides an effective way of protection.
22. Keep Spam Away
The more popularity your website enjoys, the more spam it is likely to receive. This is why it’s wise to have anti-spam software in place. CleanTalk, Akismet, and Captcha are all good anti-spam solutions.
Not only does an anti-spam solution facilitate the management of comments, but it also adds to your website’s security.
What To Check Post-Launch
All right, now that you have launched the new website, all done! Time to celebrate! ?
Well…not so fast. You still have a few things to check post-launch if you want to ensure everything goes smoothly.
23. Test User Experience Again
Now that your site is officially live, it’s advisable to test it and see whether you’ll get the same results as you did before it went live.
So be on the lookout for any potential issues with browser compatibility, test whether the design is responsive across different devices and browsers, check if there is adequate validation of CSS/HTML, re-check whether external and internal links, as well as social share icons, function well, and so on.
24. Verify That Conversion Paths Work
Take some time to test whether the functionality of conversion paths is as good as it was pre-launch. Test the call-to-action buttons again and check whether the data is submitted well through the web forms.
25. Review Security and Backup Strategies
Now is the time to check whether your backup strategy is being implemented properly. See whether copies of the website are regularly being created. If you used plugins, make a plan for updating them.
In terms of your website’s security, if you’ve used any strategies such as limiting the number of login attempts users are able to make during a given period or whitelisting IP addresses, you may want to test if these are working properly and protecting your site.
26. Test Your Analytics Setup
After launching your website, you will likely want to know who visits it, what kind of browsers these visitors use, and other user-related data. This kind of information is crucial if you want to keep on improving your website so that the content is adjusted to the audience.
To achieve this, you may want to consider registering an account with Google Analytics. This is a web analytics service provided by Google that’s ranked as the most widely used web analytics service. There are also many Google Analytics alternatives you can go for instead.
Wrapping Up
Launching a new website can appear like a daunting task. However, if you follow the steps on this comprehensive checklist, you will find that the process is not so scary after all.
If you found this list helpful, feel free to check out the WP FeedBack blog for more detailed guides just like this one…
What are the steps you take before and after launching a website? Did we miss out on anything? Let us know in the comments below. ?
SEO & Content Marketing for Web Design Agencies & Consultants
Chances are if you’ve been building websites for a while – you’ve heard people everywhere talking about SEO & content marketing.
More than the web design world, theSEO industry is full of misconceptions.
Why? Well, simply because there’s so much attention around SEO and everybody is trying to make money off of people interested in SEO. Yes, it is a sad truth but the SEO industry is full of scammers and so-called gurus. Some have even called it a minefield of dodgy practitioners. Aside from this, it’s riddled with people that over-promise and under-deliver.
In this post, we’re going to put those misconceptions to rest and talk about SEO & how it relates to web design agencies.
A general way to understand what SEO & content marketing is and why it matters is they help you do three things: (1) attract potential customers, (2) build trust, and (3) convert potential customers into buyers.
Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a website to rank higher in search engines (like Google). Fundamentally, this can involve anything that will help a website rank higher, i.e. performance optimization, design, on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. Buzzwords aside though, how does this really matter to web design agencies?
Well, put it this way – the most successful freelance web designers and web design agencies out there have a system that generates inbound leads for them as opposed to having to constantly send outbound emails (cold emails) to potential customers. Not that outbound marketing doesn’t work or can’t be a part of your strategy regardless, it most certainly can, but SEO & content marketing are far more scalable customer acquisition strategies for a service-based business (such as an agency)…
Using SEO To Generate Leads For Your Agency
Every agency solves a specific problem for a specific set (or subset) of people.
Sure, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of other agencies that might be capable of designing a website just like you can, but what sets you apart from other agencies? How is your approach different and what makes a certain type of customer the ideal fit for your agency as opposed to any other agency?
Asking yourselves these questions will lead you to the answer to one fundamental question that you really should have the answer to if you want to be able to market yourself – what is your unique value proposition?
Once you have the answers to the above questions on hand, I’m sure you’ll start to see where we’re going with this. You’ll naturally start to see a trend of what sets your agency apart that are all perfect content ideas.
Over time you can get even more granular and start prioritizing with SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc. but to begin with exhaust the ideas that are specific to you & your agency…
Now let’s dive into some examples of another agency doing this in practice.
This type of content is evergreen. Shane (the owner of Lonely Viking) may have invested a short amount of time to put this post together but over time (if it attracts enough backlinks), he’ll start ranking for a keyword with a decent amount of search volume in a competitive industry.
As a company that does logo design for businesses, you can see the value of this. Once they earn a searcher’s click – they then have a chance at converting the people that land on their page.
This post alone attracted thousands of visitors of which it generated a couple dozen qualified leads (and continues to without any additional money or time being invested). Of which an even smaller percentage converted into actual customers (obviously not every client is an ideal fit), but even if say just 2 became customers for an SEO & marketing agency that would mean > $10,000/month in added monthly revenue.
Andriy is a freelancer who recently started turning his personal website’s blog into the home for everything he’s learned from working with membership site owners over the years. This is yet another perfect example of somebody taking advantage of the insight that they specifically have to create content. While obviously, it’s still very early stage – similar to the examples above, these posts don’t need to attract tens of thousands of visitors to be worth it. They just need the right visitors which can convert into five or even six-figure deals.
To emphasize: Note that as an agency where one client can lead to tens of thousands in revenue (if not hundreds of thousands in revenue), you don’t need millions of visitors or readers. You just need the right people to find your content. So the effort (time investment) if you’re doing this yourself or financial investment is extremely easy to justify if you already know who exactly you can help.
There are obviously easier ways to find customers. SEO & content marketing are not the easiest and should almost always not be the very first methods you use because they not only take longer, they’re also more expensive – which is why it’s a customer acquisition channel that only makes sense to invest into later in your agency when you know that it will yield great results.
The purpose of SEO is to get this content in front of billions of people that are searching for answers & resources every single day.
Use Content To Attract & Qualify Your Ideal Customer
Now that we’ve covered how SEO & content marketing can be used to generate leads, this is the next step. Beyond just attracting leads, once you already have top-level traffic – content marketing is the perfect way to qualify clients and educate them at essentially every part of the customer journey. Yes, even post-purchase.
Let’s use ourselves as an example for this one.
WP FeedBack PRO – which is slightly different as we build software to make web designers’ lives easier – frequently publishes blog posts where the primary focus isn’t client acquisition and is instead revenue expansion.
The general concept behind this is that if we give our customers the resources (and tools) that they need to be able to grow, they’re going to become bigger/more successful (and in some cases, also more profitable) for our agency/business…
Another type of content that works really well is showing people how you work. Often for high-ticket services, people are not ready to invest because they don’t know exactly what the process of working with an agency like yours would (or could) look like. If you invest time into creating content that showcases how your agency works with clients, examples of past clients, and why you do it like this – people that are interested in working with you because of your process be more inclined to reach out or convert (if they’ve already reached out to you). out.
Why You Should Consider Offering SEO To Your Web Design Clients
Doug Seidl of Straight-up Digital Marketing who was kind enough to take the time to contribute to this post has been a professional web designer for 20 years. For the first 15, he was quite happy doing the design and development aspect of building websites. The “craft” of being a web designer was what got him into doing this for a living, to begin with, and so he became comfortable focusing on that aspect of the work…
Within the last 5 years, however, he has deeply immersed himself into the world of SEO and higher-level digital marketing. Simply put, times have changed. When Doug first started, being a web designer was rare compared to how common it is today. As most of you know, as time and technology have progressed, the barrier to entry is much lower and there are more people than ever that can throw together websites of varying quality.
Doug had a realization & asked himself “now what?“.
What more could he offer clients that makes a meaningful impact and helps him differentiate himself from the average web designer/developer that just puts together a website?
This led him to realize that if he would simply be able to not only build them a great-looking site but also one that functions well & helps them achieve their business goals – this is, in turn, also more valuable to the client.
How To Offer SEO As A Web Design Agency
For your clients, aside from satisfying their requirements by building a website that achieves their goals – you could take this a step further…
Have you ever thought of improving your service as a web design agency by taking it beyond just design and development?
Aside from understanding your clients’ needs so you can build them the best possible website – you could consider taking this a step further.
Once the website is live, why don’t you offer two additional services:
A technical SEO audit
Some believe this should be a core part of all web design/development work, but the truth is that some of the best designers and developers out there can (accidentally, of course) not take into consideration certain things that have a huge impact on SEO.
A great example is a website’s navigation.
This has a huge/measurable impact on the performance of your website because pages that appear on your website’s navigation are considered (by search engines) to be top-level (more relevant) pages.
A second is page depth (or click depth) which is the number of clicks that it takes to get to a page. If a page is almost impossible to find for a real user, search engines deprioritize this page and may take this as a signal that the page is not as relevant/important as other pages that are linked directly on the homepage and easily accessible to users.
Taking these things into consideration in the early stages when planning a website design or redesign could be something that you upsell to customers.
Since it is a highly specialized service that will lead to a project taking longer, I believe it makes sense to charge for (or at least explicitly feature in your web design proposal). While on the other hand, if the business you’re working with has in-house resources that understand technical SEO – they would obviously be able to coordinate with you early on in the process…
2. Helping them plan a content strategy
Depending on the type of businesses that you work with, the chances are they have the money to invest in the resources to execute a marketing strategy but often don’t really know where to start on strategy. The result is that a VP or CEO hacks together something that they think makes sense, but it typically fails to really drive results because they don’t understand what it really takes.
Before offering this as a paid service, we recommend putting a strategy into practice on your own website to validate the concept, or partnering with a consultant/agency that could allow you to offer this to clients without increasing the complexity of your agency’s operations further…
Don’t Oversell What You Can Do
There are a lot of agencies that go too far to close a sale. In SEO, you can’t directly control how quickly or how well something is going to work unless (in most cases), so don’t overpromise that you’ll start generating 200+ leads or 10,000 organic visits per month if that is unrealistic based on the client’s budget.
Technical changes will have a minimum impact on traffic if there is very little traffic already there. You are very unlikely to see a technical change (made as a result of an audit) to move the needle from 0 organic visitors per month all the way to 10,000. Content is everything.
Note: There is a distinction between content and copy. Copywriting is a service that it makes sense for web design agencies to offer/handle for clients since it is relevant to the website itself.
On the other hand, content – while it may seem appealing to upsell as an additional monthly service – comes with a whole range of other complexities when you start doing it for anywhere above 4-5 clients all at once. Diversifying income is great, but diversifying your specialization will lead to being just “ok” at everything as opposed to being known for being truly capable of turning around incredible websites for the type of businesses your agency works with…
How Could You Structure Your Offer?
If you’re set that offering SEO is something that you’re fully capable of and ready to venture into, here’s how I recommend structuring your offer as a web design agency:
Instead of selling a monthly general SEO retainer which is very common & difficult to deliver at scale: create actual deliverables that you can sell at a small additional cost and are easy to deliver at scale.
Keyword Research / Content Strategy
For example, once you have a solid keyword research process for a certain type of business in place – offering this for $500-1000 on top of web design as a service afterward is relatively easy to deliver for you.
Technical Site Audit / Website Quality Audit
Similarly, the technical site audit or website quality audit side of things can be built into your initial web design proposal. Depending on how you price your web design service, this could either be built into the cost or charged separately and be completed once the website has launched/been redesigned. Either way, since for many business owners that web design agencies work with, the main concern will be to convey value – on your proposal/invoice I would feature this as a separate line item (even if the value of $500 is brought down to $0 because it’s included), that way they can see what they’re getting for the amount of money that they’re investing to work with you.
Landing Page Design & Development Included w/Monthly Care Plan
Whether or not this will be a hard or an easy sell for the businesses your agency works with will heavily depend on who you typically work with. However, for a number of businesses – spinning up new pages as new locations become available, or as new features become available could be incredibly valuable.
Each landing page theoretically has the opportunity to rank for a new keyword. For example, a bakery originally based in New York that opens a new location in Los Angeles could and should aim to rank for the search term and variations of “Los Angeles bakery”, etc. These types of businesses often don’t have in-house development/technical people so a care plan that is priced in such a way that it accounts for the sudden need to spin up pages and handle other maintenance issues would definitely be well worth it. And if positioned correctly, the true value of this could be conveyed to the business owner…
And that’s really just the beginning of what you could offer & do when it comes to SEO for a local business such as the example above.
The reason this is incredibly valuable to do is that it often helps sell the core service because clients know that you’re truly considering the performance of their actual business as opposed to just hoping to turn around their website and get rid of them as quickly as is humanly possible…
But now, let’s dive into how an actual web designer/developer is able to successfully (and profitably) offer SEO to his clients:
A Real Example Of SEO In Practice
Let’s go back to using Doug’s situation as an example for a moment. Most of his clients don’t come to him looking for SEO help – this is really important to note. The type of clients that web design agencies/freelancers can help with SEO & digital marketing typically only come looking for help with their online presence in general.
This usually ends up meaning a new website or website redesign. This initial engagement with the client is how you build trust & relationship (i.e. offering lower-value services like websites, SEO audits, etc.) and then work towards moving them up the “value ladder” to higher-value services such as an SEO retainer.
Once Doug onboards a new client, here’s what comes next:
Gather information such as technical info, exact NAP, business description, etc.
Run analysis/audit on current website
Do keyword and competitor research
Look for ‘low-hanging-fruit” and quick-wins (important in early stages)
Set up basics like Search Console, Analytics, GMB, etc.
Build citations (local and niche relevant), and build “social media fortress” if needed.
Setup in KPI tools to measure success over time.
As you develop better processes, you can start outsourcing certain parts of this process – the same way Doug does for link building – so his time can be spent on high-level activities.
Offering SEO To Clients – Best Practices
Communicate with your client often, and be transparent.
Don’t overpromise.
Be honest.
Take the time to educate them in terms they understand (no industry jargon).
Warn them upfront how long things can realistically take (many prospects have unrealistic expectations).
Think about content, as this is one of the quickest paths to SEO gains.
Low competition keywords can be one of the best ways to start out.
Conclusion – SEO Is Important But Don’t Strive to Be An Everything Agency
Last but not least, we want to emphasize that while there are ways to offer SEO services to your clients that are relevant to their website (if you are a web design agency), we don’t want this to be confused with the concept of becoming an “everything agency”.
How do you plan to incorporate SEO & content marketing into your agency’s service offering? Or are you already doing so? Let us know! ?
How Gary Cut a 4 Month Project Down To Just 4 Weeks!
Gary started out as a designer in the early 2000s and became a Creative Director while working for a large design agency.
Realizing he had the experience and knowledge, he decided it was time to start his own agency in 2007, At Play Creative. They are working with pretty big and impressive clients, such as DC Heroes, Disney and Hasbro.
He’s been working with some clients for as long as 12 years, so speaking with him was super interesting, let’s dive into the case study…
How Did Gary Approach Web Projects Before Atarim?
“Chaos, some clients don’t even believe in subject lines…”
Going through how Gary approached projects was very interesting, because it is almost identical to how I used to go about it during my design agency days.
As he was delivering projects to corporate clients, he is usually dealing with a project manager or CEO, depending on the size of the company. This meant that most of the time, especially at the beginning of a project, him and his team were forced to drive 20-30 minutes to their offices for face to face meetings (in the pre-COVID world)…Or even worse, they would have to fly to a different city just for an hour meeting.
Then would start the email back and forth and chaos ensued.
GARY’s OFFICE WHEN CLIENT EMAILS START ROLLING IN
Clients sending emails about random different things every time a light bulb sparks in their brain…
Clients sending 3 different emails to speak about one subject, sometimes not even including subject lines…
Clients sending texts at 6am…
He then moved over the Basecamp to try and organize these emails in some way to make it easier to find all of the fragmented information, but this actually made it worse as it was taking up more time.
Now, that all sounds crazy right? But I bet you’re feeling a similar pain.
Gary started accepting this as a part of business, and that’s “just how it is.” We’re here to show you that, no, it’s not how it has to be.
And he hits on the head with this:
“If the project is to design and build a functioning and efficient website, shouldn’t most of the time be spent designing and building that website while talking to your clients? Instead, 50% of the time is being spent on DECIDING how to talk about designing and building the website?”
And whatever agency Gary has worked for over the last two decades, even the best and biggest, fragmentation is ALWAYS there. So much so that they hire people whose job is only to make sure fragmentation is not happening…
BUT, it almost took him a year to start implementing Atarim.
When he first dived in, it was very foreign at first. Understandable, bad habits die hard and using email to communicate with clients is one of the worst habits out there.
We are all creatures of habit, and that extends to our clients 100%. It can be difficult to cut ties with a platform or method of doing something, especially if you’ve been doing it for the last 20 years.
At the time, Gary had massive clients that were big enough to influence how he was operating, and this meant if they didn’t want to learn a new tool, that was that.
Now though he introduces Atarim like this:
“I’ve installed a new feature on YOUR site, to make it much easier for YOU to communicate with me…”
Now they literally don’t even want to send emails anymore.
He is no longer chasing information from his clients in an email, that might have no subject line, or it’s in base camp, trello, text message…It’s right there on their live website.
The amount of time spent on communicating with clients has literally been cut in half, meaning he has more time to actually BUILD and DESIGN the websites instead of just talk about them.
Would Gary recommend that others use Atarim?
“I want you to really think about how much time you spend talking to your clients? Now just that, but how much time do you waste trying to find what your client wants or specifically what they’re talking about?
Imagine if every time you spoke to your client, you had 100% clarity on what they were saying, without them needing to be specific.
Sounds too good to be true right? This is how Gary’s day-to-day is now, he no longer has to hunt for information or waste time speaking with his clients.
So he would absolutely recommend the tool ?
Are you ready to stop wasting your time going back and forth with your clients and get to the point?
Top 13 Online Community Groups for Web Designers Worth Joining
Joining online communities in any industry is one of the best and easiest ways to familiarize yourself with trends, gain insights, and make meaningful connections.
Web design agencies and freelancers alike can find valuable advice in online communities dedicated to web design. Whether discussing technical challenges, client contracts, or networking opportunities, these communities serve as hubs for collaboration and support. Personally, I’ve made connections that have enriched my experience at industry events and even helped launch Atarim with the encouragement of the entire WordPress community.
One of the best things about web designers in online communities is their openness in sharing knowledge and experiences. Unlike other industries where competitiveness leads to secrecy, web design thrives on collective growth. Given the vastness of the digital landscape, there’s plenty of room for everyone to succeed without feeling like they are in direct competition.
How Many Web Design Communities Should You Join?
If you start searching for web design communities on platforms like Discord, Facebook, or Slack, you’ll likely find an overwhelming number of options. This is because online communities have become a preferred space for industry professionals to connect, learn, and grow. From large, well-established groups to niche, specialized ones, there’s something for every type of web designer.
However, as tempting as it is to join them all, spreading yourself too thin can be counterproductive. Instead, focus on communities that align with your goals and interests. Too many notifications and conversations can easily become distracting, pulling you away from your actual work.
To help you get started, we’ve curated a list of the 13 best online communities for web designers across different platforms. Read on and choose the ones that best suit your professional needs.
The Atarim Discord community will serve as a hub for:
✅ Web Designers & Developers – Share experiences, ask for advice, and collaborate. ✅ Agency Owners & Freelancers – Network with like-minded professionals. ✅ Exclusive Atarim Updates & Early Access – Be the first to hear about new features and updates. ✅ Live Q&A Sessions & Webinars – Direct access to industry experts, AMAs, and knowledge-sharing events. ✅ Support & Troubleshooting – Faster, more interactive support for Atarim users.
Join the conversation in Atarim’s brand-new Discord community, where web designers, agencies, and digital professionals collaborate, share insights, and grow together. Click here to join now!
The Admin Bar is now – as the name suggests – widely considered one of the most popular places for people in the WordPress industry to spend their time. Overall a great, well-maintained environment to discuss agency growth, ask WordPress questions, talk about specific situations with clients & more. We’re confident you’ll like it and are certain the group owner, Kyle Van Deusen, will be a fan of you if you like tacos. ? ?
Run by GoWP, a company widely-known in the industry for providing incredible support for WordPress businesses with a focus on white-label solutions for other agencies – this is one of our favorites.
Emily Hunkler, the director of growth of GoWP, is highly active in the community and does an incredible job of keeping the community engaged by running weekly happy hour calls among and more…
If you’re the kind of web designer that wants to get directly to the technical point of building up your business rather than spending too much time socializing and community building, the Grow Your Web Design Business by Content Snare is the group for you. Created by professionals who think the same way, this group offers you work-related advice that doesn’t stray too much from the subject at hand.
Its strong professional orientation makes this group especially valuable because of the content shared in it. Thousands of web design agencies and entrepreneurs are a part of this group. They talk about diverse subjects such as creating better processes, finding great tools, getting clients, automation, and more.
Most agency owners in the WordPress industry will have heard of or even taken Troy Dean’s WP Elevation Blueprint – I myself even have and it was crucial to growing Ace Digital (our WordPress design agency before we started building WP FeedBack).
Obviously, as a member & supported of Troy myself it goes without saying this is one that is worth joining & has our stamp of approval…
The Supercharge Your Web Agency group focuses on helping agencies who need advice or guidance related to growing their business. The group admin – Chris Castillo – has made a name for himself in the web design circles and dedicates a big part of his time to bringing value to the group.
The group focuses on WordPress, digital marketing, as well as web design in general. Apart from its admin, it gathers an international group of professionals in the fields of web design, SEO, digital marketing, copywriting, and more, with a number of agencies and small business owners already sharing their years of experience with other members.
Moving onto a group that’s very different from the previous one, the Advanced WordPress group focuses solely on WordPress usage. Also, as the name suggests, it caters specifically to those who already have advanced knowledge of WordPress.
That being said, you can often get criticism from group members for asking what they might consider “newbie” questions. But the good part is – you don’t actually have to. Just by sitting around and reading posts and comments, you will increase your knowledge. Therefore, if you’re the type who can learn by reading without necessarily interacting, you can learn a lot through your membership in this group even if you’re not a WordPress master.
Apart from being highly technical, this is also by far the biggest group on this list, as it’s not specifically destined for web designers but for a wider WordPress audience. In it, you will find out about great plugins (both new ones and older ones), themes, and a variety of other more advanced WordPress functionalities.
The WP Builds Facebook group run by Nathan Wrigley and David Waumsley is another excellent place for people in the WordPress ecosystem to hang out.
They know that they love building websites with WordPress, but the complexities of this awesome web building solution are always out of reach. So they created a place where people can come together and help each other (in addition to their podcast)…
Elementor is currently the leading page builder for WordPress – powering over 5,000,000 active sites. The chances are if you’re using WordPress as a web designer, you’re building with Elementor.
So, what better place to hang out than the Elementor Facebook group?
Closely monitored by their staff, you’ll get help from them among others who share templates, tricks and advice on how to build better websites with Elementor.
Simply put, if you use Elementor, this should be one of the top groups you hang out in.
While Elementor is the most popular choice among all the WordPress page builders, Beaver Builder focuses on the more technical audience (developers rather than designers).
So if this is your page builder of choice – we highly recommend joining their official Facebook group so you can get help if and when you need it or come across something you haven’t seen before…
The owner of the Web Creators Community, Davinder Singh Kainth, is well-known in the industry for his weekly WordPress newsletter, the Smart Web Creators podcast and his blog that specifically focuses on Beaver Builder –Pro Beaver…
We’re lucky to be able to call him a friend – and had the opportunity to meet him at the 2020 WP FeedBack Virtual Summit! ?
The owner of the Web Design & Branding Community is Mor Cohen – the founder of FlixFrame. FlixFrame is Mor’s design consultancy where she helps businesses across the globe design and build high-performing websites.
We highly recommend joining this group if you’re interested in getting Mor’s direct help as well as advice from the others in the group so you can design & build better websites…
Summary – Community Is Everything
Online communities are one of the most powerful ways to connect, learn, and grow in the web design and WordPress industry. Whether on Discord, Slack, forums, or social media groups, finding the right space to engage with fellow professionals can open doors to new opportunities, insights, and collaborations.
However, not all communities are created equal. Some are filled with valuable discussions, support, and inspiration, while others can be unproductive or even counterproductive. That’s why we’ve put together this list of the most valuable online spaces for web designers—places where real conversations happen, professionals support each other, and you can truly level up your skills and network.
Be intentional about the communities you join. Pick the ones that complement your goals, engage meaningfully, and don’t hesitate to leave any group that doesn’t align with your values or energy. The right online community should empower you, not drain you.
What online communities do you find the most valuable? Let us know by joining the discussion in our Discord community!
10 Time Management Tips To Actually Finish Projects Faster
Effective time management is essential for both professional performance and personal satisfaction, on an individual and corporate level. Essentially, it represents how skillfully we devote the hours of our day to our different goals and obligations.
Time management is a challenge for everyone.
However, freelancers face a particular set of obstacles when it comes to making the most of their time. Freelancing is like juggling several jobs with a couple of different supervisors and requirements. All while in the meantime, you’re also constantly trying to pursue additional work.
Evidently, this makes time management even more difficult than for the average employee, as every day or even every hour of the day may not be the same as the last.
The solution is to establish good time-management routines.
This means automating repetitive tasks, minimizing procrastination, and having a wider picture of the progress you’ve made. Getting the most out of your deep work time and managing personal time is crucial.
For any freelancer struggling with time management, in this article we’ll cover some of the best time management tips and strategies we use to do work in a way that makes us all-round happier and more productive…
Plan Ahead
Our Tasks Board makes it easy to plan ahead >> Learn More
Planning ahead doesn’t necessarily seem like a top priority, but it is.
The further ahead you prepare, the more efficient you’ll be in checking tasks off of your to-do list because you’ll have an end in sight and not have to worry about missing anything.
We know that not all of us are planners. Many people like to go with the flow, be spontaneous and dynamic. Taking a prepared, organized approach may feel awkward or limiting for some. Proper plans, however, when formulated in advance, allow individuals and companies to carry out projects, accomplish their objectives, and fulfill their bigger-picture visions…
When you start a project, you’re tempted to start working right away. It could be because you’re overflowing with ideas, or maybe because the project is already familiar to you. In the long run, though, taking your time to prepare first can be far more efficient. It makes it easier to:
Establish priorities,
Avoid missing deadlines,
Prioritize key tasks,
Minimize the risk,
And achieve the desired results.
Before starting a new project, you should prepare by making a list of all the steps you will need to take to get to the desired result.
Organize the tasks by priority and type;
Make sure that you have a good understanding of your final goal;
break down what needs to be accomplished to reach those targets;
then define the desired goals and objectives.
Whether you’re working with a team or alone, strategic planning is a must. When it comes to teamwork, the strategic planning process gives everybody something to focus on and lets you grow and improve as a team. It eliminates uncertainty about deliverable dates and goals, which can simply make the project go smoother, quicker, and be more cost-effective.
Planning ahead saves time, money, and a lot of tension by setting specific objectives and goals that everyone agrees on, and specifying what exactly will be performed in the project.
Focus On A Single Task At A Time (Pomodoro)
The Pomodoro technique was invented by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, as a time management method. The rules are simple: you break down your work into cycles and then take a quick, timed break.
The technique is based on a feeling of urgency manifested in the timer. Instead of feeling like you’ve got countless hours to get things done and inevitably squander those precious work hours on distractions, you know you’ve just got 25 minutes to do as much work as you can. Once four pomodoro sessions have passed, take a 15-20 minute break.
Steps to implement this technique:
Find out how much work your activity requires and split it into small tasks;
Turn off all internal and external distractions;
Activate a 25-minute timer set;
Only focus on that one task before the timer is over;
Put a checkmark on your list of tasks that show that you have completed one Pomodoro;
Take a five-minute break;
Start over.
Do Work In Batches
We’ve all heard that multitasking is incredibly inefficient, but it’s too easy to slip into it when working on big projects, given that there’s always at least a hundred tasks that have to be completed at any given time.
For these very reasons, you should consider time batching. This productivity method helps individuals work on a group of related tasks during a specified period without interruption. Time batching is designed to minimize workflow disruptions which enhance concentration, attention to detail, and efficiency.
By implementing some of these guidelines around time batching, you can be sure that you’re on the right road to maximum productivity.
How to time batch:
Group your tasks by function or purpose, and assign them to a specific period;
Set easy tasks for low-energy parts of your day;
Set clear goals;
Set alarms or reminders that will hold you up-to-date with the time periods you have scheduled for the assignments;
Use the right tools to help you batch your time.
Avoid Perfection
A lot of people have very high standards. Seeking perfection can be good because it means that you appreciate quality, but the anxiety of failing to deliver something less than ideal can be paralyzing. You end up spending too much time on some minor details, and eventually, you don’t have time to work on the most important parts.
There is a big difference between perfectionism and high achieving. Although the intention of perfectionists might seem fine at first, it can have a negative effect on productivity, which is why it’s always a better idea to be a high achiever.
High achievers are more focused on completing the goal and feel proud of what they’ve done, even though the details aren’t perfect. The most important thing is to look at the large picture and spend a small amount of time on things that are not crucial.
You really can’t afford to waste infinite amounts of time on tasks of low importance, just to make sure every detail is perfect. Always make a daily schedule with a few tasks per day and set priorities for your tasks.
You must learn to balance your own expectations of your work with your team’s time and standards if you want to actually finish projects faster.
Delegate & Outsource
Delegating to your team is so easy with WP FeedBack PRO
It feels like some days, no matter how hard we try, we can’t get ahead of our schedule.
When you work on your own, there is only a limited amount of what you can do in one day, no matter how hard you work.
The most common way to solve this limitation is to learn how to delegate the work to others. If you do that properly, you can build a successful and effective team of people. After that, you can start thinking about how to use the time you’ve freed up by effectively delegating the task.
How to delegate:
Be direct and define tasks clearly;
Make periodical (daily, weekly) check-ins ;
Give constructive feedback and make corrections.
Outsourcing is another great way to eliminate the tasks you don’t have to do yourself. A basic rule of thumb for outsourcing is that anything that is not linked to your core expertise should be outsourced. Spend your time doing what you’re best at and feel free to outsource everything else to someone else.
The Software That Actually Helps You Be More Productive
Technology can have a significant impact on your ability to be productive and manage your time. By incorporating the right software into your stack, you’ll find it a lot easier to concentrate, manage your time and no longer feel like you’re trying to keep your head above the water.
Given the important role of time management for both people and businesses, unsurprisingly there are a number of software companies out there that build software to make peoples’ lives easier & more productive. In fact, we at WP FeedBack are a team that has the same vision – in our case, specifically for web design agency owners…
So, in this section we’ll review some of the best software available to help you manage your time when working on a project.
Eliminate Distraction With Brain.fm
Living in a world that is borderless and virtually connected gives us many advantages, such as talking to friends all over the world, quickly accessing any kind of information, etc. But hyper-connectivity comes at a high price, making it nearly impossible to concentrate and be present in our work.
Fortunately, there are apps that can eliminate distractions, helping you do your job without wasting precious time.
One of these apps is Brain.fm, a website, and a smartphone app that offers two-hour soundtracks created to help you concentrate, relax, or sleep.
There are various kinds of music that influence your brain in different ways. If you’re trying to concentrate, there’s a particular scientific rhythm you can listen to. After subscribing to Brain.fm, you have three options: Focus, Relax, or Sleep. After choosing one, you choose between a number of different themes, such as Beach, Forest, Night sounds, Thunderstorm, and then hit play.
If you work in a loud environment or have difficulty concentrating on your work, Brain.fm is the right choice for you.
Organize Your Projects With WP FeedBack PRO
It’s essential for businesses to stay organized, which is why we as a company set out to systemize and improve the lives of web design agency owners with our software.
So, we recommend WP Feedback PRO, the best way to manage your agency – software specifically designed to get feedback from clients, manage requests and collaborate with your team at scale. Better yet, it comes with built-in time tracking so you know how long each task takes you which makes it incredibly easy to identify bottlenecks in your process.
WP FeedBack PRO enables you to:
Turn every comment into a task:
Define a task’s priority;
Evaluate how long it would take to solve the issue;
Assign it to a member of the team.
Know exactly what the client is thinking when they report an issue:
Where exactly the issue is;
How urgent it is;
See exactly what they saw as they were commenting.
Have all your clients in one place:
All their websites;
All their feedback & requests;
All the team’s tasks.
Prioritize
Time management is just a way of handling priorities. Setting our priorities helps us determine which task we really need to concentrate on and which can be skipped or delegated to someone else.
When you prioritize, make sure you perform the most important and urgent tasks first. But there is a difference between these two types of tasks you should be aware of:
Urgent tasks need immediate attention and are the ones we focus on because the effects of not dealing with them are immediate;
Important tasks help us to achieve our goals and are not always immediate.
Block Out Distractions
Even the most productive workers know that it takes time to build focus and a second to lose it. When you need to work for hours, staying concentrated on tasks is far from easy.
Sources of distractions:
Mobile phone and internet;
Noise;
Overthinking.
Tips for avoiding distractions:
Focus on your main priorities first;
Turn your mobile data off;
Find ways to prepare your mind for work and control internal distractions (you can try meditating before work, for example);
Get away from things around you that make you distracted.
Create New Habits
The most successful people practice a few key time-management techniques every day. Doing daily routines helps us build new habits.
Some steps on how to build new habits that actually stick:
Take action for the goals you want to accomplish;
Start working at the same time every day – this will set your mindset to productivity mode;
Interruptions are one of the biggest obstacles to your productivity, try to eliminate them;
Stop multitasking, as this is a productivity killer;
Get enough sleep.
Conclusion – Don’t Forget To Take Breaks
When people look at someone who’s really productive, it sometimes doesn’t seem like they’re working that hard. The point is that productive people know when to work and when to take a break.
Working 10 hours straight is alright, especially when you’re working hard for a goal, a dream, or even a deadline. But it’s hard for anyone to concentrate and produce high-quality work without giving themselves a chance to relax and take a break.
If it’s hard for you to stop working (something you should never feel guilty about), I find it can help to schedule midday breaks away from a screen so that when you come back you’re really able to focus.
You need to take breaks if you want to be able to do great work.
Over to you – what’s your best practice for finishing projects faster & managing your time? Feel free to let us know in the comments below. ?
How Daniel Immediately Started Saving 3 Hours Every Day With Atarim
Daniel Todd is the founder of Proactive Code, which started around 5 years ago with a few clients which have grown from companies with a handful of employees to some that now have a headcount of more than 100…
His agency is growing fast and is taking a friendlier, more casual approach with clients that allows them to see projects through to completion in a much shorter time period – part of the reason they rely on Atarim.
How Did Daniel Approach Web Design Before Atarim?
Hundreds and hundreds of emails. Just too many to speak of.
Before Atarim, Daniel would usually start his day by going through emails. At first, when he was working with a very small client base, it took just half an hour to do so. Then it eventually got to the point where he’d still start his day by going through emails and would only finish at 10:30 PM at which point he’d already had more emails requiring his attention, so it was essentially an infinite process.
Although he did try to use a tagging system that would help us categorize which emails were in relation to which client and which website, it simply wasn’t a sustainable system that would grow with his agency…
How Has Atarim Changed Daniel’s Agency?
From Daniel’s point of view, there has been an overdependence on him in his agency which is very common among web design agency owners
Increasingly he felt that he was becoming a bottleneck.
And thanks to implementing Atarim, working to mitigate this and pull himself out of the day-to-day of the business is becoming a reality…
He can now get clients to submit their own tickets and have his team handle those on their own without him getting involved unless really necessary.
Why Did Daniel Decide To Use Atarim Over The Other Tools Out There?
Over time, Daniel eventually built out a spreadsheet solely for internal use where he would manually paste in tickets/emails so he could categorize them and decide in which order he would have to work through them.
Yet that also kept growing at an infinite rate and he was looking for a system that would allow him to formalize the process. Specifically, though he was looking for a system that would also automatically email a client to let them know when a ticket had been completed as this was something really unnecessary that just needed to be taken out of his plate.
When coming across Atarim, he was really impressed by the fact that this system would allow clients to actually create the tickets themselves so he wouldn’t need to do so anymore which on its own saves 1-2 hours of his time per day for just one client…
He tried to get his custom spreadsheets to work for a while but eventually realized that every time he would onboard a new team member, he’d also have to explain how his system works and trust that they’d do everything the same way he did. Originally, he came on board with this system for clients but quickly realized that in addition to that, the fact that Atarim made it easy for new team members to acclimate to working as a part of his agency’s team and required much less training was another huge benefit…
Would Daniel recommend that others use Atarim?
Atarim saves us at least £500 GBP per week only taking into consideration my time. Calculating the ROI beyond that isn’t even worth doing anymore, it’s so clear to see…
After spending ages trying to figure out the way other ticketing systems work, Daniel found that none of them come close to how easy & intuitive Atarim makes it for clients to create tickets and give feedback.
Daniels #1 advice for other web design agency owners out there is not to try to do what he did and use emails or spreadsheets to manage a growing number of clients and requests. While it might feel like it’s working initially, the moment you start growing you won’t be able to scale. He regrets not having Atarim in place sooner because not being prepared to scale actually costs his agency money and stress which nobody needs…
A Step-by-Step Web Design Process – Made To Impress Clients
Having a clear, structured web design process you can execute repeatedly is what sets apart the average agency from the type of agency that can justify their higher prices and clients truly enjoy working with…
Web design clients often won’t be entirely familiar with what the web design process looks like. They often imagine it as the simple technical process of developing a site, while quality web design really is a lot more than coding and putting a number of elements on a page.
Simply put, having a user-friendly site that looks sleek and modern is important as the end result, but ensuring that you get there by following certain processes is equally important. Experienced web designers know that the foundation of any successful project is not only understanding their clients’ needs but also understanding their clients’ customers’ needs and ensuring that the end product – the website – caters to its intended audience…
Here are 8 simple steps that are absolutely fundamental to a web design process and workflow that is enjoyable for you and your clients:
Identifying the key goals: Where you work with clients to determine what they would need for them to say that this project was a great success. What is the goal of the site? Do they really know what they need?
Defining a clear project scope: Once you know the site’s goals and what it absolutely needs to do for your client and their customers – ask yourself, what is this going to take?
Leading with sitemaps & rough wireframes: Once the scope is well-defined, start digging into the sitemap, defining how the content and functionality will help the website accomplish all of its goals.
Writing content: Now that you have a wireframe, it’s time to either start working on content for the site or start collecting this from your client. Delaying this will lead to more revisions, it doesn’t need to be perfect but you should have an idea of what you want on every page…
Designing the website: With a clear idea of site architecture and some initial versions of content in place, start building out the brand’s identity + start designing the site itself. If you are prototyping/designing in something like Sketch first, then you don’t need to do every single page. Do some of the key pages so that the client can review and approve the general approach before you dive into developing the site.
Develop the site: And naturally, now that you know the client is happy with the mockups you’ve presented them, it’s time to start developing the site. If you chose to design right in the browser, then you’ll have skipped right over step 5 to here…
Testing: Make sure absolutely everything works, test on multiple devices, and perform an initial crawl to ensure there are no broken links, etc.
Launch MVP: Once the initial version of the site is ready to go, it’s time to launch your clients’ site!
The 30-Day Post-Launch Period: Don’t just leave your clients hanging once they sign off on a project. Include a 30-day post-launch period where you can address some of the minor changes and other things that come up after, this also acts as a trial of what a care plan from you would get them.
Identifying The Key Goals
The very first stage is the one where you’ll need to work 1:1 with clients to determine what they would expect for them to be able to consider this project a great success. In order to do this effectively, questions you should ask could include the following:
What is the main goal you want this website to achieve?
What is this site’s primary target audience?
What is wrong with your currentwebsite? (if they have one)
What is your product or service’s uniquevalueproposition?
Are there any design elements that you’re certain you want?
What similar or competition-ownedwebsites exist (if any)?
It is very crucial to have an answer to these questions before you even start working on the website. Not doing so may create confusion further down and lead the whole project in the wrong direction. Once you have all of this information, it’s also your turn to do some research into competitors and your clients’ business. Knowing the market you’ll be creating a website for is really going to help you understand why you’re doing certain things and how exactly you can reach certain goals…
This is also the part of the client engagement where you’ll start to realize whether the client really knows what they need. Oftentimes, they think they do but lack the proper research/objective data to support why they think something, in particular, would work really well on their website. This is something that you need to keep in mind for defining the project’s scope, which we’ll cover next…
Defining A Clear Project Scope
The next and perhaps one of the most important parts of running a highly profitable agency is agreeing on the scope of the project.
Any web agency that has worked with clients knows that one of the most challenging aspects of this cooperation is dealing with scope creep. To put it simply, scope creep is what happens when your clients come up with extra work requirements that were not agreed upon in the initial plan.
Adding small bits here and there can really help improve the project’s overall quality. However, when all of these small and seemingly easy-to-make changes do seem like they will take you little to no time at first, they can become an actual problem if your client keeps them coming. By the time you know it, you could have so much more work on your hands, it will take you a couple more weeks (and sometimes even months) to finish it.
Nobody wants projects that drag on for months.
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This is why setting a clear scope from the very beginning should be a priority. If you don’t have these things sorted out with your clients on time, the project may become unrealistic at some point…
Leading With Sitemaps & Wireframes
Now that you’ve defined a clear scope & know what’s going to be included in the project, it’s time to start dissecting every individual piece of work. What pages is the site going to have? What does the client want on each of those individual pages, etc?
We recommend using Octopus.do, a lightning-fast visual sitemap builder for this that allows you to roughly track what each page is going to include as well…
Figuring out everything that you’ll be doing from the page-level using sitemaps ensures you not only have a general picture of the site’s architecture but also have a clear start and endpoint in mind.
Next up, create a draft wireframe. Wireframes are basic blueprints of what your end result site should look like. The goal of a wireframe is simply to plan the basic layout of your page (the frame without any visual design or content – i.e. Hero area, image, three-column row, etc.)
Far from being a final version of your site’s design, wireframes give you a general idea that you can refer to when actually designing so you don’t need to keep referring to emails from clients about each page.
Writing The Content
Having all of the above set up, it’s time to talk about the creating of the actual site content. The content on the site’s key pages should be the driving force behind all user interactions. It turns visitors into readers, moving them closer towards fulfilling the goals you’ve set up for the page.
Simply creating content is not enough for user conversion, though. You should also have a plan of what and how you write. Abandon long text that goes on and on in favor of keeping it short and simple. In some cases, web design clients will be responsible for providing all of the content for the website. A quick workaround that is great, is to use Lorem ipsum text while you wait on your client and then using Atarim on the final WordPress website prior to launch so they can send over all of the content for the site.
Designing/Prototyping The Website
Now that you have rough wireframes of what needs to be done, it’s time to start designing mockups of the website in your preferred software, such as Sketch for your client to approve. At this stage, you’ll typically focus on a few key pages that have certain important visual elements and will go through a few rounds of revisions with clients until they’re happy with the overall brand style.
The point of this is to create a few (5-10) mockups solely for key pages so that when you start developing, the chances that the client asks for changes to the navigation, footer, homepage’s hero area are significantly reduced. They know what your vision is for the site and agreed to go in that general direction.
Developing The Actual Website
Once the client has approved the mockups/prototypes you presented, the next step will be to start building the site in. How you choose to build your WordPress website entirely depends on what your page builder and WordPress theme of choice are, so this will definitely vary from agency to agency.
The key to exceeding your clients’ expectations at this stage is opening up for feedback from day 1 using Atarim’s Visual Feedback feature. That way, instead of sporadically visiting the staging URL and sending you a couple of screenshots of what they like and don’t like, they can communicate with you right on the website you’re building, simply by clicking on the elements they want to make a comment on.
Testing
One of the final steps, before you can launch the client’s site, is making sure that everything works. Ensure it loads fast, renders properly on all devices regardless of viewport size, etc. the list goes on.
Make sure you get the final go-ahead and approval from clients so you can start making all of the necessary preparations for the launch of their new website.
Launch MVP
After the tests, it is time to finally launch the site. However, you’re not done yet simply because the site is live!
Now that the site is ready, approved by the client it’s time to set an official launch date. Migrate everything from the staging URL to the primary domain and announce that the new site is publicly available.
Before doing this, we think it is absolutely essential to have a website launch checklist with all of the steps you need to run through and things to double-check to ensure no stone is left unturned. That way, you can rest assured that once the site launches things don’t start going sideways a few hours later…
The 30-Day Post-Launch Period
Of course, once the site is live – you will have hopefully accomplished 100% of the clients’ core needs but that’s really not it. A website isn’t just launched once and then left alone, clients will still want changes and, in general, once the site is live it will essentially be a whole other level of testing since real users will start landing on the site.
This leads us to the next step – maintaining a launched site. In some cases, this phase may not be that important to freelance web designers especially if clients don’t really want any further help. However, we always like to build what we refer to as a 30-day post-launch period into the scope of our work.
This is a period of time which we account for in our budget where we won’t just leave clients hanging or bill them additionally so we can address any minor changes or other ideas that they want us to implement. Think of this as a trial of your website care plan – it’s the absolute best way to sell them on a monthly recurring retainer…
Conclusion – Solid Processes Help Speed Up The Design Process Significantly
The actual web design process can take a lot more time and be a lot messier if you don’t have a solid approach and software (like Atarim) to keep clients in check from day 1. If you’re interested in trying out Atarim, the software that web design agencies use to cut project completion time by up to 50% – which now powers over 10,000 websites – get started here.
What’s special about your web design process? Let us know in the comments! ?
Andrew Doubled His Agency’s Monthly Capacity & 10X’d Revenue With Atarim
Andrew Palmer is the founder of Elegant Marketplace, which is what he’s mainly known for but he also runs the web design agency, Somebody’s Hero.
He has made huge waves in the WordPress industry with Elegant Marketplace and has been an advocate for Atarim since we started.
So, let’s dive right in and see how Atarim has changed the way he works…
How Did Andrew Approach Web Design Before Atarim?
When Andrew first started out, he used to talk to clients on the phone to discuss amendments – a hangover from his print days.
Over time, they then progressed to email and a lot of customers still liked to use other mediums like text, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
We’re all too familiar with those annoying short messages like – I don’t like the blue, could it perhaps be a bit blue-er?
How Has Atarim Changed Andrew’s Agency?
Well, we’re completing more websites on time, all of the time than ever before.
As far as his web design business was concerned, he was planning to stop building websites altogether. His agency is now capable of shipping far more websites than they ever could before…
We’ve probably built this month 5 projects already and it’s only the 19th. So the average number of projects has approximately doubled. And since we’ve implemented Atarim into our web design process, we’ve 10x’ed our profitability.
Beyond project turnaround time and profitability, Atarim has also made it a lot easier to encourage people to sign clients up to maintenance plans as well because it’s literally support built right into their website.
People know that if they need to get a hold of Andrew or his team to fix or edit something they can easily do so without ever leaving their website.
“I also play golf 3 days a week, again.“
Andrew’s administrative tasks were massive. People used to print out the website and write their feedback on there or you get an email with a JPEG with annotations and you’d have to decipher that.
While now with Atairm, he’s no longer required to interface with my team and understand what clients are saying since my team can safely correspond with them. When people use Atairm he now no longer has to do anything.
The Central Dashboard now acts as his project manager so he doesn’t even need to tell people what needs to be done anymore…
The real result of this which is what matters is that Andrew now only gets emails like “Hi, how are you?” or “Can you give a bit of advice on this?” which are great. Since his time is no longer consumed by task-based work anymore, Andrew can focus on helping clients with work that truly does require his attention to maintain & build deeper relationships with them (rather than get bogged down in the day-to-day of running an agency).
Why Did Andrew Decide To Use Atarim Over The Other Tools Out There?
Andrew Palmer primarily uses WordPress, apart from a few eCommerce stores where Shopify is a better fit…
Other project management software like Asana, Basecamp, and Trello are great for little updates but they’re a terrible experience because you have to log into another system that is completely separate from your actual website to try and explain what’s going on over there. Getting granular in the way that you can do in seconds with Atarim just isn’t possible…
Would Andrew recommend that others use Atarim?
100% as soon as I could get a hold of the first version I knew I wanted this – I knew it would change the way I work with my – circa 300 – clients…
It’s really turned projects around entirely. Installing Atarim on a live client site that had pretty much failed due to the lack of content from a totally non-responsive client of around 6 months – I emailed him to say use this and within ten working days all of the copy, amendments, and images were uploaded, proofed and approved.
And even for clients who are somewhat technically-challenged, they’re able to familiarize themself with the tool in around 5 minutes and encourages them to leave feedback when they have specific comments/changes to request (only).
If you are struggling with getting content out of your clients – please, please, please make use of this tool, it will pay for itself on the first project.
Dealing With Difficult Clients The Right Way
Difficult and potentially even unsatisfied clients can be a great source of feedback for software companies. But in an agency, they can be detrimental to your profitability, personal happiness, and business as a whole.
In this article, we’ll cover how we managed some of the most difficult client scenarios we were presented with when running our own agency and why this eventually led us to create Atarim.
Master Client Communication & Encourage Proactive Sharing
The biggest takeaway of growing from a 1 to a 12-person agency was that effective client communication was singlehandedly the core of why clients enjoyed working with us and we were able to consistently exceed expectations…
That being said, we weren’t great at this from day 1. It took time to spot potentially problematic clients and learn how to minimize the effects if one of them slips through. So, without further ado – let’s save you ~ 5 years of learning and experimentation by sharing everything we learned…
The Step-by-Step Process for Dealing With Difficult Clients
1. Identify The Problem
At the root of every difficult situation with a client, there is a fundamental explanation. No matter how great your process is, it can’t account for everything that some clients will do.
When we asked one of our agency’s clients to send over the content for their website (prior to the launch of Atarim) we were expecting everything to come in the form of an email or Google Drive folder.
To us, that was pretty much implied and no other client had done anything differently. But just imagine – this particular client decided to write up their content in a Microsoft Word document, print it out, and send it to us in an envelope.
It almost sounds unreal. We honestly couldn’t believe it when it happened.
This is just one of the thousands of experiences we had with clients over the years that led us to build Atarim to fill a gap that existed for agencies in the WordPress industry…
One of the worst experiences we’ve had with a client which is one that many agencies will be able to relate to is a client that was never happy with was being done. They would suggest something different about the design, I would then go on to describe why I disagree and it wouldn’t be a change for the better…but they didn’t want to hear it. So we’d waste our internal resources doing a design we knew they would end up not being happy with again. This would happen over and over again. And better yet, according to the client, this was our fault even though we did warn them.
A web design client telling you how to do your work is the equivalent of the average person walking into a Gordon Ramsay restaurant and telling him how you’d like him to cook your meal.
This scenario though is fairly simple to resolve because it’s the result of the absence of a proper feedback system; when clients are just emailing you to discuss their website in general instead of leaving feedback on the individual elements of the site. With Atarim, because they are led to leave comments by clicking on a certain area of their website, this inherently results in much better feedback.
Instead of clients thinking about elements in isolation when they jump back and forth between tabs to compose an email – they’re led to view the website as a whole and leave actionablecomments on what to change instead of just trying to convey what they’re imagining in words.
You absolutely need to have boundaries in place with clients. These boundaries are what turn running an agency from scrambling to decode what clients are trying to say to make it easy to consistently deliver exactly what they want.
Not only that, if you don’t keep clients under control you’ll end up burning yourself and/or your team out in no-time. Before we built Atarim to help us with this, clients wouldn’t just compile a list of everything they want us to change and send it over in an easy-to-read format. Instead, they’d send separate emails for each individual changes – some of which contradicted each other and then suggested to do something else instead.
The end result of this was complete confusion.
Before any of us were able to jump in and make a single change a client requested, we had to go through the entire thread to make sure they hadn’t changed their minds or mentioned something about this specific page/section of a page somewhere else. This wasted an endless amount of time that we could have reinvested into our business and doing truly meaningful work.
2. Understand Their Concerns & Show Them The Benefits
Put yourself in their shoes. They just paid thousands of dollars (if not 10s of thousands) for a website and want to get it right.
Stop focusing on yourself. Clients aren’t interested in how easy things are for you, they care how what they’re doing is going to help them.
Make sure you make it clear that you have the common goal of ensuring the best possible outcome (building the best possible website) and that they play a huge role in making that happen. The more they help you do your best work by following your systems instead of emailing feedback or sending long Word Documents, the better you’ll be able to work together to build a website they’ll love.
3. Propose A Solution
This would cause tasks to get lost, and I would miss things, or points would be misunderstood and a huge mess would occur. Which would then necessitate a phone call or meeting in order to discuss the points even further (fixed with the task center of Atarim, miscommunication is gone because of being able to see the tasks, etc.)
4. Minimize The Effects Of A Bad Client
Onboarding a client that is difficult to work with is inevitable. This isn’t even just about bad clients, in some industries, your point of contact is just less familiar with the right terminology to use and technology in general so working with them can be a bit difficult.
That’s why you need to make it clear that you’re taking an active effort to make every part of the process as simple as is possible for them by standardizing it so that the way you work is the same across your entire client base. Not only does this help you understand clients’ needs, but it also helps you significantly improve turnaround time (by an average of 30%).
From the get-go with new clients, you have to show them that your sole responsibility is to design & build them the website they deserve. They are paying for a service, and the reason they are paying you is because YOU are the expert so they need to trust you to work with you how you do things, not how they expect or how the least agency they fired did things.
You did this by properly setting & managing client expectations (the ground rules) from the very start. This is another reason having solid contracts in place is equally important. You need to have a written record of how many revision rounds you are including, what they should expect in terms of time frames as well as when & how much they need to pay upfront and on the completion of the project. Also keeping in mind:
What happens if they want more revision rounds? Do you have a standard hourly rate you can quote for that?
What happens if they want more revision rounds? How much do they need to pay in addition to that?
This way you will find clients that won’t be difficult in the first place. Obviously, some freelancers or agencies need the work no matter who the clients are, but you’d be surprised how many difficult clients will do what you want when you show them the benefits of doing so.
5. Worst-Case – Cut Your Losses
Should you ever fire a client?
This might sound crazy, but we had some great clients that eventually became unprofitable and began hurting our agency in the long term.
We had one of our biggest clients for around a year and a half. Working with them from the start was great. As I evolved from a freelancer into an agency, we already implemented better systems but as time went on, they kept expecting us to do more because they were around in the early days. I even became friends with them which was great because we love having good relationships with our clients but it also turned out to be bad because they used this to take advantage of the fact that we started feeling obligated to do work for them even though they were paying less and less.
When is it time to (very respectfully) bring the professional relationship to an end?
Nobody likes losing clients just like nobody likes losing money – whether it’s self-inflicted or because of something out of your control, it’s just not a good feeling. But getting emotional in a service business can be dangerous. You start treating your clients’ businesses as if they’re your own until one day you realize that they didn’t value you as much as you thought they did.
When scope creep starts to become a recurring theme with a particular client or they’re just no longer your ideal client because you’ve since grown, it’s likely time to find a way to bring the relationship to an end and refer them to someone else that you trust.
On the other hand, for new clients – i.e. going forward, there are so many things that can be done to position yourself to not get these “difficult clients” such as putting out content and clearly profiling the type of businesses you want to work with.
Conclusion – Position Yourself As The Authority So Clients Respect You
From the moment you meet your point of contact, treat your discovery call as an interview the same way they’re using it to interview you/your agency to evaluate whether you’re the right choice.
Ask yourself – will this client use the processes that I have in place?
This is a great time to bring up how you expect them to communicate with you through their new website once the V0.1 is ready – using Atarim’s Visual Feedback feature. Don’t be afraid to talk about your process and be proud of how well you’ll be able to handle their feedback & requests for changes even if they typically find it difficult to identify problems and hated giving feedback to their old developer/agency because they always followed up by asking the client what screen resolution they were using (because Atarim takes care of this all for you)…
And that’s a wrap! Thankfully, all of these seemingly small adjustments to your process and how you position yourself so you can select clients make a monumental difference in how easy it is to deal with difficult clients.
How do you deal with difficult clients? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments! ?
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