3 Ways to Raise Your Website Design Prices
As a web designer, there are 2 main ways to make more money in your business. One, get more clients. Two, raise your prices. This video is about raising your prices — I’ll cover 3 things that you can do to charge more for website design.
How my prices have changed over the years
For my first-ever client website, I charged $1,500 USD. That was almost 4 years ago. Since then, I’ve created websites for:
$4,000
$5,000
$8,500
$10,000
$12,000
Here are 3 things that I’ve done over these last few years that made it possible for me to raise my prices and still get clients who are happy to pay to work with me.
1) Offer additional services
This is pretty straightforward. You add value by offering additional services that your clients are looking for, and you increase your prices to reflect the increased value.
For me, the most obvious service was copywriting. My clients found it difficult and time-consuming to write their own website copy, even when I provided workbooks and other resources. Even when they put a lot of effort into writing their own website copy, I still had to do a lot of work to turn that into something that I could use. So it made sense for me to take care of the copywriting and charge them for the work.
I created a new package that included copywriting, so I had 2 packages, one with web design only, and the other with web design and copywriting — and charged double for this new package.
Besides copywriting, other services you could consider offering include:
Brand photography so that your clients don’t have to provide their own headshots or stock photos
Custom illustrations if your clients want something really unique
Blog article writing if content marketing is important for your clients but they don’t have the time to produce all the content
Packaging design for clients who sell physical products
Stationery design for clients who use physical business cards, flyers, etc.
Just make sure that you’re adding services that your clients are looking for, not just what you want to offer.
2) Highlight client success stories
Your clients are not paying for a website. They’re paying for a marketing tool that will help them achieve their business goals. When someone is thinking about working with a web designer, they want to know that the money they’re investing is going to get them results.
Of course, you can’t guarantee results for your clients. You’re not in control of whether or not your clients’ businesses succeed.
But you can show them what’s possible for them, by showing them your track record. What results have your past clients gotten from working with you? Talk about that. Because when a potential client sees that other businesses like them have found success working with you, they’re more likely to also work with you.
This is how social proof works.
Screenshot of my portfolio page, which you can find on my website.
My favorite way to do this is by creating case studies. The image above shows the case studies in my portfolio, which is on my website.
A case study is an analysis of one specific web design project, and it highlights the information that potential clients are looking for — including the results that this project made possible for your client.
(If you want to learn more about how to create effective case studies, designed to help you sell your design services, check out my course, Case Study Recipe.)
You can also write a shorter summary that’s much simpler than a case study and include a single sentence describing the result and a testimonial from the client. These are great for including in your pricing guide if you use one, your proposals, and of course, your sales page. You can find examples of these summaries from my Work With Me page.
3) Create a better client experience
Lots of web designers with really great design skills neglect this one, so getting this right can also help you stand out.
I like to compare selling websites to selling vacation travel, and I’m going to tell you a story about a holiday from a few years ago. It is a little braggy, but I promise there’s a point.
I arrived at the destination airport, where I’d meet my friends — and it was a smaller international airport where you had to get off the plane by walking down the steps onto the tarmac. Everyone in front of me and around me was walking across the apron toward the airport terminal building, but I spotted a man holding a sign with my name on it.
He took my carry-on trolley and drove me in a fancy car to a part of the airport where the doors just opened directly into a comfortable lounge. The driver showed me to a private area where my friends were waiting, then asked for my passport and baggage ticket.
As soon as I sat down, a server showed up with a glass of champagne.
All I had to do was sit and chat with my friends, and a short while later, the driver came back with my big suitcase from the cargo and my passport, all stamped — no waiting around at the baggage claim or going through passport control or customs. I literally walked out of that lounge through a different exit, to the outside area where our taxi was waiting.
I’m usually exhausted after a long flight and the last thing I want to do is go through the whole arrivals process. But this was actually fun, and I enjoyed myself.
I tell you this story because this is what I think of when I’m thinking about improving my client experience. I think about how I could create that sense of fun and ease for my clients.
How can you make your website design process that easy and enjoyable for your clients?
You can start with just one small part of your whole process — in my example, that experience of arriving at the destination airport is just one part of the trip.
Consider your client’s experience when:
They make payments
You lead them through the process of setting project goals, scope, and schedule
They see the website you’ve created for them for the first time
They give you feedback on your work and get revisions back
You launch their new website, and it finally goes live
You can charge more for a better client experience. The right clients will pay you more to make their lives easier and to take good care of them and their businesses.
Recap and next steps
To recap — if you want to increase your prices, here are 3 things you can do:
Offer additional services
Highlight client success stories
Create a better client experience
If you’d like to learn more about creating a better client experience, check out this post: How to Charge $10k for a Website Design Project.
If you want to go even deeper and get my complete client process, check out my signature course, Fast Track.
In this course, I share every single step that I take each time I sell and deliver a website design project. I created Fast Track to give you the tools to build a successful website design business while showing up as your whole self.
