Two nerdy website designers, Jacob Harmon (Website Squirrel) and Nicolas Reed (253 Media) discuss website agency secrets. They talk about competition, LinkedIn, growth measurement, sales, trust, and our favorite website design and development platform: Webflow.

Start a friendly regular conversation. The goal isn’t to jump on a call. It’s to create genuine relationships.
If genuine conversation leads to a call, it will be successful, but that should never be the goal.

Competition

It is important to talk to other people that do what you do…make connections!
The cake is big enough for everyone - bounce ideas off of and learn from each other
Don’t burn bridges.
Every client needs something different
Every business can only handle so many clients anyway
Competition is a good thing. It encourages us to perform at our best.
Think of business as a sport. You’re competing against yourself.

How do you measure growth?

Look at payroll. Bigger payroll means bigger team which means more growth. Goal is to pay it.
Closing rates. How often are you getting new clients?
Project completion. Amount of projects? How many completed? Were they completed on time?
How much are you working? How much are you needed day to day? As an entrepreneur, if you can step away from the business you are doing a good job.

Inbound Sales Vs. Outbound Sales

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.
You need to find the perfect balance between inbound sales and outbound sales.
Inbound sales are better because they want to work with you and they’re warm.
You have more control over outbound sales though. Outbounds sales are needed for growth.
Lots of business comes from referrals. The more clients you have the more referrals you’ll get.
Always make your next project your best. Your brand being there signifies your stamp of approval.
Putting name at bottom of website is great for SEO.

How can a website build trust?

Have a beautiful website. If your website sucks, they’ll think your product does too.
Have great, personal, NOT generic, testimonials.
Are there typo’s on your website? That will break trust. If you don’t pay attention to your website.
Don’t have too many pop ups or annoying animations.
Educate customers on why product is great, and worth it. What is it about your product that makes it better?
Put some thought into you website’s content
Put in content that will answer customers questions, without having to go to FAQ section

Webflow

Webflow is the perfect web development platform. Everything else is either way too simple or too complicated. Webflow is perfect for simplicity versus complexity.
Some of Webflow’s built in elements aren’t great. But you can literally build everything with it.
Webflow creates incredible, clean, semantic code.
There’s no apps or plugins. This is good because it keeps things clean and free of bloat, but it can make it harder to integrate with other tools.
There are a lot of incredible features coming to Webflow. Logic, memberships, blending modes and more.
They are gonna take over internet! More and more, people are requesting that we build sites in Webflow.
One complaint we have is that the company needs to be more transparent about their roadmap and future features.
Webflow Ecommerce is still lacking. It’s missing shipping integrations, email integrations, multiple payment processors, and more.
If your core business is selling products use Shopify. If your core business is getting leads use Webflow.
Do SEO blogs about Webflow…and attract customers looking specifically for a Webflow site.
Make blog topics very specific, and share secrets. That’ll make people read and learn.
Being more specific in blog posts… the right person will find it, and you won’t be competing with big SEO terms.

Connect with Nicholas Reed

Website: 253media.com

Instagram: instagram.com/nreed253

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nreed253/

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