Attracting New Clients

[UKSEOagency]

As an SEO agency, things rely heavily on rankings - if you demostrate good rankings, then you have a fairly good chance of obtaining new clients to keep you busy.

However to try increase our cashflow, we are also providing website design & development, again keeping our target market to the small companies, focusing on keeping costs low to win some initial business.

However how do you attract this form of business, as so far most of the work I have done, The clients have loved, but i personally would have rejected it, I am of the mindset a small company wants value for money, and not to be paying a premium rate for the developers. I ususally offer up 3 designs, and without doubt on no less than 5 occassions this year, my clients have chosen the design i/everyone I know dislike the most!

[Ray Stewart]

Originally Posted by UKSEOagency

I ususally offer up 3 designs, and without doubt on no less than 5 occassions this year, my clients have chosen the design i/everyone I know dislike the most!

That's why testing is so important. You can never guess what is inside the mind of a client.

That's also why your offer for people to set their own fee is a dangerous precedent. Price resistance - it has been proved by so many people, including me - is in the mind of the seller. NOT the buyer.

Having said that, the price needs to match the posture and presence of your business. You cannot charge a Harley Street doctor fee for a backstreet consultation any more than people would value your expertise if you charged a backstreet consultation price in Harley Street.

As long as you match price with your posture, you set the amount and people will pay.

Asking people to set their own price for your time means that you simply don't know what to charge and are not confident in the service you offer.

That's how it reads to me.

[INDIZINE]

IMO design is a personal thing - what one likes, another doesn't and vice versa. It certainly doesn't always mean the design must be sub-standard simply because you don't like it. I presume we are talking purely from a visual design perspective (in that you wouldn't produce an otherwise crap design i.e. wrong layout, poor images, etc).

[OldWelshGuy]

Unless the client is making a decision that will financially harm them, I would be happy to allow them to go with it.

If on the other hand, the client is asking for luminous pink and acid trippy colours, to sell holiday insurance to pensioners (for example), then I would walk away rather than allow them to make such a mistake.

Way back when, I had a client who thought it would be 'really neat' not to have a formal navigation area. now as we all know, one of the main aspects of uability is easily identifiable links, I told him that it would cost him buinsess. he thought better, we didn't complete. he built his site via AN Other, and within a year had totally redesigned the site (by AN Other), using one of the designs we proposed (I sent him a bill immediately i found that out)