How to get web design clients

You don't need every way to find clients. You need to know which problem you have this month, and that takes about a minute.

Find where you're stuck

Start with people who know you

Everybody hates this advice when they're shy. It still comes first, because the trust already exists. Web designer Ray DelVecchio's first client was a roofer who had worked on his parents' house. He paid $500 for a five-page site.

Your list is longer than you think. Designer Paige Brunton assumed she knew nobody with a business. Then she started talking about her own, and found old acquaintances were starting them too. Write down 50 names: former colleagues, your accountant, your hairdresser, the plumber you've used twice, the friend who sells candles at markets.

Message them one at a time. A Facebook post saying you're available gets a few likes from people who love you and no work. Try this:

Hi Sam, quick one. I've started building websites for local trades, mostly plumbers and electricians. Do you know anyone in that line whose website is out of date or who doesn't have one? An introduction would mean a lot, and I'm happy to return the favor.

That asks for one small thing and names who you're looking for, so Sam can picture an actual person. If you also sell marketing or search work, the same owner is often the buyer. So how to get marketing agency clients and how to get seo clients overlap a lot with what follows.

Build proof before you have clients

Make two demo sites for made-up businesses in the trade you want. Later, you may be able to sell a design like this again as a template. Two home pages and one inner page each will do.

One rule: label them "concept project" on your site. An owner who spots a made-up business passed off as a real client won't call you. Made-up testimonials or results have no place on any of it.

Should you work for free?

Good designers disagree on this. Some say never, because clients who aren't paying tend to reply slowly and keep changing what they want. DelVecchio says one free project at most. Others say to charge something, even a much lower price, because paying clients give real feedback and are likelier to keep to deadlines.

Here's a simple way to decide. Build demos first, because they cost only your time and nobody changes their mind halfway. If you still need a real project, charge a lower price. Put what's included, the number of revision rounds and the deadline in writing. Give a free site only to someone you'd happily help anyway.

If a testimonial came from a friend, a relative or a free site, say so next to it. The FTC's rules on endorsements say getting something free or at a big discount may need to be disclosed. So may friendship and family ties. A reward also can't depend on the review being positive. "Built at a reduced rate while I was growing my portfolio" does the job and reads fine.

Pick one trade

Pick one kind of business for the next 90 days. You can still take other work if it comes along. You're just choosing where your limited hours go.

DelVecchio built for dance studios, tree services and restaurants until he settled on home service contractors. He says that focus sorted out his pitch, his templates and how many deals he won. It also gives you something honest to say when a roofer wonders if a new site will pay off: here's what happened for the last three roofers.

Choose a trade that passes these three checks:

• One new customer is worth a lot to them. A roofer can pay for a site with one job. A coffee shop needs a lot of coffees.
• You can reach the owner. At small local firms, the owner often answers the phone.
• You've got a way in. You've worked in it, you're related to someone in it, or you actually like it.

Local is the easy place to begin, but it isn't the limit. A trade too small for your town can be plenty big worldwide.

Find who needs a site this month

The biggest problem with cold outreach is timing. The odds of catching someone at the exact moment they need a designer are low if you're picking names at random. So stop picking at random. Look for signs that a business is ready to spend:

• Good reviews and no website. Search Google Maps for your trade and town. Look for listings with plenty of reviews and no website button.
• They're hiring. A business with job ads up usually has more money, and more reason to look good to applicants.
• Something has changed. A new location, a new service, new owners, a new brand. Check local news and your chamber of commerce's new members.
• They're paying for clicks. Search your trade and town and look at the sponsored listings. Someone buying ads that lead to a weak page is already spending money on the problem you fix.
• The site fights the customer. On your phone, is the number tappable? Can you ask for a quote without pinching and zooming? Does the footer say 2017?

Put 20 businesses in a spreadsheet with five columns: business, owner's name, the sign you spotted, last contact and next contact. That's your whole sales system for now.

Write a pitch nobody else could send

Cold pitching has a bad name, because most of it is random. A pitch works when you've researched the business first. Here's the test: if you could swap the business name and send it to someone else, delete it.

Subject: Your quote form on phones

Hi Dana, I looked up Northside Roofing after seeing your 140 Google reviews, which are excellent. On my phone, your quote form runs off the side of the screen and your number doesn't tap to call, so someone with a leaking roof has to work quite hard to reach you.

I build sites for roofers around Columbus. Happy to send a two-minute video showing what I'd change first. Want it?

This is a sales email from my business: Tom Reed, 12 Mill Lane, Columbus, OH. If you'd rather not hear from me again, just say so and I won't write again.

The business, the address and the numbers are made up to show the shape. Yours must be true, which is the point. "Want it?" is easier to say yes to than a 30-minute call with a stranger.

If they say yes, or if you'd rather open with it, record a short video: two or three minutes on their actual site. For numbers, run their page through PageSpeed Insights, which checks it on phones and computers. Turn whatever you find into what it costs them. An owner has never once worried about Largest Contentful Paint. They do care about the customer who gave up and called someone else.

Once you've done this by hand ten times, you'll know what owners respond to. Then you can turn that format into a website audit lead magnet on your own site.

If you want to go further, you can redesign a business's site before they've agreed, and offer it to them. Keep it to a home page, in a trade where you can reuse most of the work on the next pitch. Ten free pages for one roofer is how you lose a week.

What to expect

DelVecchio has done this for 15 years. He gets 2 to 3 replies per 100 cold emails, and perhaps one meeting per 20 calls. He says about one of those 2 or 3 replies may become a client. At the five minutes of research he suggests per business, 100 emails is about eight hours of work spread over two weeks.

So 15 emails and no reply tells you nothing yet. After 100 specific emails with no replies, change the trade or the offer.

The legal bit, quickly

In the US, the CAN-SPAM law covers emails to businesses too. Your email needs a real postal address, a clear way to opt out and a subject line that matches the content. It also has to be clear that it's an ad, and you must honor opt-outs within 10 business days. Penalties can reach $53,088 per email. So "Re: our conversation" to someone you've never spoken to is a bad idea on every level.

Writing from outside the US, or to someone outside it? Check that country's rules before you send, because some are stricter about cold email.

Follow up

Keep going until you get a no. An owner can want the site and still not get round to it for weeks, so reminding them is part of the job.

Here's the schedule DelVecchio uses after the first message:

1. Day 3: A short follow-up email.
2. Day 7: A brief phone call.
3. Day 14: Something new, such as a competitor's site or a quick tip.
4. Day 30: A last note leaving the door open.

Put each date in the spreadsheet so you don't have to remember. If someone says no or asks you to stop, stop that day. Patience can pay handsomely, though. His roofer took nearly two years and more than ten meetings to agree to a monthly contract, and a $500 job became over $20,000 in sales.

The other doors, and when to use them

A few details on these:

Groups. One of Paige Brunton's students joined a Facebook group for authors and offered three discounted projects to build her portfolio. She booked all three, and turned other people in the group into paying clients. Note that she was a designer among authors. Read the group's rules before you post.

Rooms. Designer Diane Whiddon's business took off when she moved from attending networking events to speaking at them, including workshops at her public library. Twenty people listening to you beats twenty handshakes.

Upwork. Check Upwork's own fee page before you work out your prices, because fees change. Send custom proposals, and send them quickly. Use it for your first reviews and some cash, and don't let it become your only source of work.

Google Business Profile. Google's rules say you need a location customers can visit, or you must travel to customers. If you meet clients in person around your area, set up a service-area profile and hide your home address. A rented mailing address doesn't count. If you only ever work over Zoom, you may not qualify at all. Get reviews from real clients only, however tempting your friends' five stars look.

Search. After a very quiet 2024, designer Alana Jade put her effort into search. She wrote one post a month and improved her site for a couple of hours a month. It took a few months to show, and she's since hired two designers. Start with the Queries view in Search Console's Performance report to see what people typed to find you. Then write about what your trade's owners actually ask. A post called "What a roofing website should cost" will do more for you than "5 web design trends."

Fix your own site

Don't spend three months redesigning it. That's a lot of work for little return unless you're already sending people there, and one page can do the job for most designers. Your site's job is to survive the moment someone hears your name and checks you out.

That visit usually goes like this. They read the home page until something holds them. They take a fast look at services to check the price. They read the About page to decide whether they like you. Then they go back to services for the details. That's when they might reach out. Build for that order:

• A headline that names the customer. "Websites that bring roofers more quote requests" beats "Crafting beautiful digital experiences."
• A price they can find. "Most sites cost $3,000 to $6,000" (with your real numbers) lets people count themselves in. It also saves you calls with people expecting $400.
• Two or three examples with a before and after. Say what was wrong and what you changed. Record their numbers before you start so you have something to report: calls, forms filled in, page speed. Label demos as demos.
• An About page with a human on it. Your face, why this trade, and how you work.
• One clear next step. A short booking link or form, with a question or two so you know what they need.

Reply to enquiries the same day whenever you can. They've probably contacted someone else as well.

If people visit your site and leave without getting in touch, a form may be too much too soon. Someone who isn't sure whether they need a rebuild or a repair won't fill in a long form. That's what we built Possible to do, so take this with the obvious pinch of salt. It asks each visitor the right question, remembers what they say and guides them toward a booking. It's free to start, and there's more on Possible for agencies. If your site gets a handful of visits a month, leave it for now and get back to the spreadsheet.

Turn one client into three

Referrals are cold comfort if you have no past clients. Once you do have them, keep two warnings in mind. Pester people and you'll put them off. And referrals tend to bring you more clients just like the last one. So if you want a different kind of client, referrals alone won't get you there.

Ask at the moments when they're happiest. That's launch day, and again when the first enquiry comes through the new site. Make it easy:

Really glad the site's bringing in calls. If you know another contractor who's embarrassed by their website, feel free to forward them this: "Tom built our site. He only works with trades and he's easy to deal with."

Ask people who said no as well. A simple "who do you know?" is enough. One contract DelVecchio lost still led to two paying clients.

Then stay in touch. The customer retention strategies your clients should be using work just as well on your own past clients. Offer a monthly care plan for updates and small changes. Each quarter, send every past client one thing you noticed on their site, whether or not they pay you monthly. It takes ten minutes, and you'll be the person they think of when they open a second location.

Your first 30 days

You know the cycle. You market, you get busy, you stop, the work dries up and you panic. So put one hour a day in your calendar and treat it like client work.

1. Days 1 to 3: Pick your trade and write your 50 names. Message ten a day until you reach the end of the list.
2. Days 4 to 10: Build one demo. Fix your headline, add a price and put a booking link on your site.
3. Days 11 to 14: Build your list of 20 businesses, each with a real sign that it needs help.
4. Days 15 to 30: Send five specific pitches a day, adding businesses as the list runs down, and follow the schedule. Message two possible partners a week.
5. Day 30: Count replies, calls and proposals, then go back to the table at the top.

Once clients start coming in, add one slow channel, such as a monthly post or a local talk. Keep the outreach running while you're busy. That's the part nearly everybody drops.

Questions about getting web design clients

Go deeper on conversion tactics.