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Business

Starting Web Dev Business

Hi, I am wanting to start up a web development business for my local area. I am mainly looking to target those small businesses and mom n pop businesses that need a simple 5-10 page responsive website made from solid but fairly simple HTML/CSS/JS.

My question is, say I get someone interested in purchasing a site, how does the design process go down? Do they end up coming to my office, do I go there? Do we even meet face to face? How does the process normally go down when someone goes to a web development business for a website?

I am starting this business up from my apartment and home office and am worried that if they come visit me at my home office I want look as professional, yet I want to portray from my own website that I am a professional and experienced web development business.

1 Answer

Gergő Bogdán
Gergő Bogdán
6,664 Points

Hi,

Well this all depends, but there are some key aspects which you'll need to clarify at the beginning:

  1. Where will the web application be hosted and who will maintain it? - (this has a cost and you have to choose wisely what hosting provider you choose, to have good SLA and support in case something is not working with the deployed website)

  2. The content is very important, the clients need to understand that they need to provide the content.

  3. Most of the times, clients, which have a business have some kind of design (store, decoration, business card, something), this can be a good place to start with. Most of times clients only give you hints about what they were thinking about, but you have to provide some design samples and they will choose. - for this I'd use some website template design service, there are a lot of these on the Internet and the designs are quite cheap. They give you the HTML, CSS, different layouts.

  4. Portfolio - many clients want to see websites which you created before working with them, of course this takes time to build, but keep in mind you'll have to do this.

If something else comes to my mind, I'll add it here...