20 – How to Keep Web Design Clients (for Decades)

[00:00:00] What’s up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire, where we share stories and strategies to help you do your web design empire from the side gig to multiple. I’m John. This is Kelly. We’re full-time freelance web designers. Who’ve escaped the real world. We broke up with our jobs, we broke up with our bosses, we broke up with our cubicles and those terrible commutes over 15 years ago, and we haven’t looked back.
We’re also course creators, web design, business coaches, web design store owners. Kelly owns Airbnbs. I’m a touring professional musician. All that to say we are building our empires. Man. I do not miss my commute to work. I do not miss that. Mine was never bad, but, uh, you can’t beat a commute down the stairs, that’s for sure.
No, you can’t. I, I remember. When I was commuting to the job that I only, I only [00:01:00] survived one week at, um, I remember listening to like mo, like Tony Robbins motivational stuff on the drive there and the drive back. Oh, geez. That, that, that’ll, that’s that’ll do it. Way to assimilate to a workplace, you know, when you’re listening to stuff about freedom on the drive there Yep.
And the drive back. How can you. How can you, and you’re stuck in grid luck traffic. Yeah, that’ll, that’ll do it. , In the insurer, I say we broke up with our bosses, well, sort of, we broke up with one boss.
A boss to now to now having multiple bosses called clients. Kind of, yeah. Right. Sort of in a way, way. And this episode today is gonna be, , on how to keep clients. And you probably know a lot of the answers. Part of a lot of the answers are probably gonna be like, well duh.
But it’s, it’s just, you have to put it into practice and you have to commit to it and kind of be, become known for it yes. I have some thoughts. Do you have any, any things you wanna jump into before I jump into this? Yeah. As an intro, you [00:02:00] know, there’s very few things I remember from, uh.
Business classes in my master’s degree, that was kind of useless. But if there’s one thing I remember in like Marketing 1 0 1, whatever it was, it is how much cheaper it is to sell to existing clients than to go out and find new ones or customers. And I would say, beyond just cheaper, it’s just more efficient across the board.
And it’s. It’s a easier sell. It’s a better sell, and even better with the way our businesses are set up. It’s an ongoing, , partnership and , if done correctly. And , if you’re good to your customers, they just don’t leave. Period. And, that generates referrals.
There’s a whole bunch of stuff that happens on the back end of that. But long story short, keeping existing clients happy is by far a better way to spend your time than to, hunt down. The latest sales tactics or to try different sales [00:03:00] methods. If you have a set of clients already, just knock it out the park for them always.
And that will pay off over decades. So that’s my intro. But yeah, as far as, yeah, like John said, this isn’t rocket science here. A lot of the things we say are kind of common sense, however. The reason we’re saying them and the reason they have worked for us so well is because so few people do them.
Mm-hmm. And so especially in this industry, whether it’s web design or just online, digital marketing in general, there are so many crappy companies that. That kind of spin up and then disappear. I would say half the clients I get are coming from a situation where. They either got ghosted by their previous website person or they never hear back from ’em. I hear that constantly, constantly, constantly.
And so, the number one thing I would say is , just be [00:04:00] responsive, you know? Mm. Don’t ghost people. Get back to them, call them back, text them, email them back, whatever. Like, just the simplest you guys, it is customer service. Yes, but I’m not talking over the top customer service.
I am talking. Bare minimum customer service is now like the new high bar. It’s true’s true. Especially in service. Non ai. non-AI businesses. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s sad, but it’s true. So I’m not even talking over the top customer service. I’m talking just bare minimum, will get you.
So far, and if you do go even just a little bit , above and beyond, your customers will never leave you. They will be loyal to the end. Yeah, and I have lots of stories about that, , but yeah, customer service is the big answer.
I think we’ll get into more details and some stories, but I assume you agree, John. Yep. Communication was my first one. But you talking about, what the majority of [00:05:00] clients, if they complain about the previous provider. Yeah. The main one is I just can’t get ahold of them.
Can’t get ahold of ’em. And then the second, or it takes one weeks to get back. Yeah, that’s the other one. The second one is it took them two weeks to update my phone number on my website, right? Yes. And so it’s like, okay, , we get those more often than we get.
I just don’t like the design of it, or , it doesn’t have all the features that I want. Yeah, get those first two way more , and those two are the easiest to solve. Those are easy. If a client doesn’t like your design, that’s a harder thing to solve then. Well, it took, it took you two weeks to update my phone number.
Well, that’s an easy solve right there. Or, or i, I email you and I don’t hear from you for three days or a week or whatever it is. So the big one for me for sure , communication, that’s number one. Yeah. Communicate well, and I feel like communication is a very broad term, but that really does cover a lot of it.
It’s being responsive, but it’s also, communication in that you’re setting clear expectations and just being really clear, from day one and not [00:06:00] wishy-washy and not promising the world like the worst thing. And I, I think a lot of. A lot of newbie web designers maybe do this is to like over promise and underdeliver.
And I think, I think SEO companies especially are really mm-hmm. Really, known for that, you know, flip that, do the under promise, over deliver that. I agree. Don’t ever over promise, be very clear in what’s included, what’s not included.
Just be upfront and straightforward and honest. That all goes in , with communication, but , I once sent out a survey to my clients because I was redoing the messaging on my site and, I was following some guide and the guide was like, , do this survey, ask these questions.
So I did it. I think one of the questions was why do you continue to work with me? What is it? What’s the one thing about working with me that is the best? And every single one of them said something to the effect of honest, straightforward.
No bs no sugarcoating. It’s just, it’s so simple. And I think a lot of people, especially if they put their sales guy hat on, they feel the need to over fluff or, or bs. You know, in [00:07:00] general, , just be straightforward. Don’t inflate anything.
It’s really simple. It really is. And people appreciate that. Especially with something where in with web design I get a lot of clients a lot of times that’ll say I’m just not very tech savvy. Like they’re making excuses for why they haven’t made their own website.
And I’m like, yo, you’re not supposed to know how to do this. But in, in that kind of arena where there is technical stuff that gets a little, mumbo jumbo, e. Yeah, to be as straightforward as possible , and clear. They super appreciate that as opposed to, making it seem even harder than it is.
I’m always super honest with what I’m doing to fix a problem. When I say, Hey, I’m going into the DNS records, I’m fixing this, whatever, you know, I don’t say that. So that they can do that themselves. I say that so that I, I’m taking the, kinda the magic out of it so that they realize, oh, this is real stuff. They are professional. They know what they’re doing. Why am I even trying? Yeah. Along that line a big thing that Jake says is have a heart of a teacher. And I would add, I, I’d say educate. I [00:08:00] said, I, I tell ’em educate simply like don’t, yes.
Don’t, not too advanced. Don’t get too far in the weeds. Right. You’re gonna overwhelm them, but just educate ’em enough that, that they’re like, okay, I trust you. You know? Right. You know what you exactly like what you just said, you know? Right. Um, I always say what I’m doing, and I, I make it very clear you shouldn’t understand it.
You’re not supposed to know how to do this. It makes you the go-to pro as opposed to, this magician behind the scenes just pulling strings and they’re like, what are they charging me for? You know? I think the education piece is big for sure.
Since we’re on communication, I have a few more subpoint , part of communicating is listening. Like, listen. Mm-hmm. Listen to them. Let them feel heard. Let them feel seen. Yep. You know, collaborating with them and along that same line and you’ve pointed this out in a previous episode, is to treat them like a person.
Get to know them. What are they into? Remember their kids’ names. Ask ’em about the vacation. They just went on, you know, just treat ’em like a friend. And [00:09:00] not this. This tool to make money. Well, and, and psychologically it’s hard to let a friend down, like we just shot this music video and in a pinch , I had to find this. Male actor, that had to be above a certain age and a certain heights and whatever. And so in a pinch, I found this guy from my church, who’s a friend of mine.
Now, we’re not close, but we’re acquaintances. And he helped us out like two days notice. And then, , after the first day of shooting, I was told , by the other people in the video and the director that, hey, the chemistry here isn’t working.
We need to find someone else. And so we found someone else for the video, but I haven’t told the first guy yet that he’s not gonna be in the video. Now I have a few weeks. You’re fired. I have a few weeks because he wasn’t at church this last Sunday, I was gonna pull him aside and say, Hey, just FYI, but I’m kind of, I’m, I’m kind of dreading that conversation.
Whereas if it would’ve been just like we paid him for his time. If it had been somebody, I don’t know. I’d have no problem sending them an email. Like, Hey, thanks again. Actually, I wouldn’t even tell them. I wouldn’t be like, I don’t even have to tell ’em [00:10:00] because we paid them for their time. Yeah, yeah.
And whatever. But , since it’s somebody I know, it’s a little harder for me and this is not great. We don’t wanna, I guess we don’t wanna like. Trick our clients into staying with us, but I put down here mixing some personal life touches, because it’s harder to break that bond if they do wanna leave.
Yeah. Then it’s like, well, but I really like John though, you know? Right. Yeah. Like, as opposed to, I mean, that’s some nameless, faceless, web design company where Right. It’s easy to leave, yes. Well, I feel like that’s something that just kind of happens in the background , because we do focus on customer service.
It’s not like we’re, like you said, it’s not a we’re tricking you to, into liking us, so you stay. That’s just what happens because we treat people. Well, , we do things when we say we’re gonna do ’em again. This is, this is so simple. You know what I used to, , the way I used to bond with most of my clients early on it was a lot of smaller businesses. It wasn’t these. Mid-size companies with more than 10 employees. Most of the time [00:11:00] it was a solopreneur or someone that had like them, a secretary and like three to five people.
And so I’m talking to the owner. And I would ask them a lot like, well, how’d you, did you start this business? Or, you know, how’d you become the owner? And, I would just ask ’em the origin story and try to identify with them as a fellow entrepreneur. Yes. Yeah, we see connections.
Yeah. Well, what I always do, I, and typically my clients come from referrals, so we already have that person in common, and we’ll talk about, that situation. But I always am trying to find people we have in common. Oh, did you go to school here? What school did you, you know.
Just silly stuff like that, but just having those connections increases that know, like trust factor on both ends. It makes them stick around. Again, not because we’re tricking, it’s just establishing relationships. The goal with clients is to, create that partnership as opposed to this, one and done service. You know, here’s your website later. And the other [00:12:00] way we establish those partnerships and continue with ongoing.
Relationships is, we have ongoing services. We have these maintenance plans, that include the hosting and security and whatever other stuff you wanna build in there. We have, hours of time. We’ve talked about it, I think every single episode. So you guys know about that. But that’s another piece of that keeping clients happy. Puzzle is you have ongoing services and the other part of that is, knowing when the appropriate time is to, approach them for a redesign or a refresh. Mm-hmm. Websites aren’t.
Forever. They should be constantly evolving and I make that clear with all my clients. You know, if you don’t touch this for five years, it’s. It’s not gonna be working very well for you. , And so , having some sort of gauge , on that , ’cause if you’re not pitching them, redesigns, refreshes some other company is, I mean yeah, probably weekly in their spam folder.
So that’s something to stay on top [00:13:00] of. ’cause you want them to keep coming back to you. Yeah. That was the last note I had under. Communication was, give them a heads up. We have a site right now that we, they came over to us. They already had a site done by this other company in town, but they wanted us to host and maintain it.
And so we said, sure, yes, we’ll do that. Yeah. And. If we update the PHP on the site, it breaks. But there are a couple plugins that will not update because the new versions aren’t compatible with, their old VHP version. Okay. So we’re kind of stuck here, you know? Yeah. And, and we’ve been stuck like this for several months.
And so several months ago we sent them a message like, Hey, here’s the situation. You know, uh, we could either stop using these plugins, but that’s just a bandaid. The bigger fix would be to do a new site. You know? Yeah. And they kind of said, man, we’d love to, we don’t have the budget right now. And then today I told our support gal, Hey, let’s reach back out to him again.
Because now there’s another plugin that won’t update because of the, and we’re just warning them like, Hey, this site could last two more months or two years. Right. We [00:14:00] don’t, we don’t know, but we’re just trying to help. We’re just trying to guide you here and Yeah. And let you know, and so I’m a big fan of that.
I’m a big fan of telling clients when the time comes. Kind of leading them into it and not just outta the blue being like, oh, you need a new website. Like that’s, that’s a, you know, there’s, you gotta prime ’em a little bit, you know, you gotta prep ’em. Yeah. And then, and then make a lot of ’em have to budget for that.
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And what I always do, is , I give my existing clients, like a 15% discount on those redesign refreshes. I was gonna ask that because that’s, I think the same thing just because. They’re just like, oh, sweet. Again. Like how are they gonna turn that down?
Well, , it’s not a trick, it’s not a tactic. It’s just me being like, thank you for being my client for this long. I’m gonna give you a break on this next. Ah, but it’s a situation. Great tactic though. It’s a great tactic because, but it is, it is. Everyone, everyone else is pitching them a new site build, you know?
Right. Which, which is more than just with, if you stay with us. Well, you’re already in Divi, right? [00:15:00] Right. You’re already in Divi. It’s gonna be way easier. And your content’s already here. It’s already there. We’re, we’re already familiar with all the plugins and all the things, and the hostings already all set up all that stuff, so, yeah.
So it does make it easier Yeah. On us as developers as well, for sure. So, yeah, sticky, sticky, discounts. Sticky, I know. And yeah, you’re gonna get that done way quicker than a total redesign by another company. Of course. Well, let’s get into, let’s get into a tiny bit of detail here. So I’m one of your clients, and I email you right now, something like, I mean, obviously if it’s a, Hey, my website’s down, that’s okay, whatever. But let’s say it’s not that. Let’s say it’s just, Hey, Kelly, I’ve been thinking, I think I want to add a shop to my website. What does that look like?
Whatever. And I hit send, and you get this email right now at, at 12:40 PM on a Wednesday. When do I hear back from you? Typically, you will hear back from me within 24 hours. Yeah. If not, if not one hour. Gotcha. I, I, here’s the thing, I, [00:16:00] I have spoiled my clients so hard that it’s almost backfired on me.
And so if I don’t get back with them within a couple hours, they’re almost like, oh my God, did she get that email? So I’m trying to like. train them. Give me, give me 24 hours. Again, that’s for existing clients, for prospects. If I’m getting like a new mm-hmm. Inquiry from my website, you guys, there is a, I think the statistic is a nine times higher chance of closing that deal if you get back with them.
Is it within the hour and then , it goes even higher if it’s within 10 minutes, it’s insane. And so, because again, that’s a piece of that customer service that you’re giving them a taste of like, oh my God, I haven’t heard from my last web designer, took them six months to update my phone number and they got back to me in five minutes.
So, especially with the new ones, with the prospects, I’ll get back to those intentionally very quickly. But yeah, for an existing client, it’s gonna be, I tell them in general, gimme [00:17:00] 24 hours to respond, 48 hours for like simple updates. ’cause I’m sending those off to my person and she knows she has 48 hours to do ’em.
And, yes, that is quick. And so if, if you’re like, oh my gosh, it takes me a week to get my client’s stuff done, I mean, that’s unacceptable in my book. Again, if they wanna store, obviously that’s gonna take a while, but if they’re sending. Update my phone number. Like you get that done in two days or you’re fired.
I’m sorry. I like it. I’m, I’m in an agreement and as web designers, we sometimes we try to overthink, well, if I respond within five minutes, I’ll just look desperate. Like, no, they don’t look at you like that. They look at you like, no. Wow, this is amazing. Yeah, I gotta, can’t, I can’t you, how many emails responses I’ve gotten when I get something done within God, even within a half an hour or an hour, and they will respond all caps.
Thank you. With 16 exclamation points. You’re so fast. You’re the best. That’s that teeny tiny. If you can get it done, I, I have this rule with my inbox, if I see [00:18:00] something in my inbox that will take me less than two minutes, I just do it. So if. If you can, if there’s something you can do, the quicker you can get things done, they will appreciate the heck out of it. And , they will never leave you. They just won’t that little tiny thing. This took me five minutes.
I saw it in my in-depth box. They hit me at a good time. They will be mine forever. Yeah. Yeah, I tell like a vampire, I tell students the seven out of 10 designer with 10 out of 10 communication will beat the 10 out, 10 designer with seven. Dude, that’s me. That’s me all day.
I would say I’m a five out 10 designer and it’s only my customer service, which i’m not even 10 out of 10 customer. That was a great, I would say I’m, I’m like five out of 10 customer service. Whatcha talking about? It’s still, I, it’s just, it’s, it’s it’s basics.
It’s not over the top stuff. Oh, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t have, yeah, I got you. Yeah. I’m a mediocre designer and a mediocre, like bare minimum customer service and you will [00:19:00] keep customers for 20 years. You know, that’s a good point. There is there is a limit. Like I, I don’t know if you remember, for Break in to Web for a while, we tried this service called Bonjour, and basically it was like for each Oh yeah.
Lead that came in, you could send a personalized video to them. Uh, yeah. And it didn’t really change. It didn’t, it had no effect on, on, on signups. And so it was like, huh. I, I wonder if, if I got a new client inquiry today through email, let’s say through the contact form. And let’s say I email ’em back within 10 minutes.
Hey man, , looking forward to hearing more about, here’s our strategy questionnaire. Let’s get rolling. Versus let’s say I took, an extra 30 minutes on top of that , and made a video.
I might be too much. That’s, that might be, I don’t know. That might be a little. That might be the desperate part, you know? Yeah, that might be a little like, you’re setting yourself up. High expectations then, like when you first get in a relationship and you spend like all the time together, and then later it’s like, Hey, what happened?
Anyway,
but maybe the video’s a step [00:20:00] too far. Well, I feel like the videos, when that first came out, I felt like, man, this is a really cool concept. Agreed. But now, my middle schooler’s principal will send video newsletters. And I’m like, don’t you dare, this is so unacceptable. Like, you write that out and I will scan it.
Don’t you dare make me watch a video. It’s funny how that’s flip has switched in my head. Yeah. Even the social media stuff. It’s like, I wanna pick what videos I’m watching. Don’t you dare make me watch something. A few other, that’s why I hate webinars.
I wrote down here, sometimes go the extra mile even when it doesn’t make business sense. And I have a couple examples . One of them we talked about before, if I see that a client has , three months ago they’re hosting payment
it wasn’t auto paid for some reason, but the last two months have been auto paid. Right. I just don’t even, you just deleting that. I just, I just delete it. It’s not worth it to, yeah, it’s not worth it. But even though a business three months ago, you forgot to Yeah. But even though an accountant or, or, or a business [00:21:00] finance person would be like, what do you, that’s crazy.
Yeah. Why are you doing that? Like, no, you, you provided the hosting service, you need to get paid for that. And by not getting paid for it, if they find out you, they didn’t pay for that month, you deleted it, now you’ve just devalued your monthly hosting costs. You know? ’cause now they know you’ll do it for free.
No, I don’t think so. I think it’s a nice little gesture. Number two, speaking on, I just actually just thought of this one. Because I was thinking about this the other day. I was like, we don’t charge the extra 3% for a credit card. So it’s like, Hey, client, if you pay by credit card, you get the points, we’re not gonna charge you extra.
Yeah. Which is always the little nice, it’s a little nice cherry on the top of the sundae. You know what I’m saying? I mean, there’s, there’s very few places that try to get that extra 3%. I know you’re trying to make fun of me for doing that. No, I’m not. A few summers I’m not Well. But there’s very few places that, that will force you to do that.
As far as, you know, my HOA does it and it annoys me. Medical billing does it, you know? And I get that. Yeah. It’s like, yeah, they get away with it, [00:22:00] but they get Yeah, it’s true. Uh, and the last, thing I wrote down for sometimes go to the extra mile.
When I was doing support, if something took me just a few minutes, I wouldn’t even. I wouldn’t round it up to 15 minutes. I, I just, yeah. I would just do it and, and not even charge them or, and if they emailed back, Hey, send me a pill, I’d be like, Hey, I just, I just did it quickly. It didn’t take that long.
Got it. Yeah. But a business guru would say, well, you now, you’re, you know, you’re, but it’s like, no, no, no. I co completely agree with you. I do the same thing. Especially like the scenario I’m thinking of. Is clients who I never hear from, and they, they don’t have an hourly plan with me.
It’s just the hosting and security maintenance plan. And I, I hear from them maybe twice a year. And so for those updates, even if it takes me half an hour. I’m not charging them for that. It’s not worth it. They don’t need to see another invoice from me. They’ve been paying their invoices every month without complaining.
So yeah, those kinds of things I won’t charge for. But , that’s a client by client [00:23:00] basis there. I do have clients that would absolutely take advantage of that, and so I won’t do that for them. But the ones that have been with me for a decade and barely ever reach out. I’m just not gonna charge ’em for that.
Yeah, yeah. Now obviously you gotta have quality work and you gotta be on time and on budget like that, that goes without saying. But yes, I still think the, everything else we talked about, the communication going the extra mile, that definitely outranks the, the, I mean, oh man, I’d almost rank it the communication piece that we spent the majority on.
, And then I would say on time. Then I would say on budget, and then I would say the actual work design. Yeah. You know, I’m with you a hundred percent. That’s what I would actually say. So, are there any things that haven’t really worked that you thought would work? For example, we talked about the Bonura thing.
An email newsletter has never really worked for, yeah. For artillery , and we’re trying to reboot it right now. Jake wants to reboot it. Yeah. And it’s like, cool. Do it. And of course they’re longer and [00:24:00] they’re designed well. But it’s like, okay, look at these open rates and look at the call to action place.
Well, it’s really, see if it’s really hard to, hard to justify. Yeah. It’s really hard to justify sending something because truly what you need to be sending in an email newsletter like artillery, orrc, key design, what we need to be sending , is upsells. Hey, have you considered adding this to your website?
That’s what makes sense. Yeah. But instead what we’re gonna send is, Hey, check out this new website I just launched. Hey, have you heard of this company? We’re working with them now. I mean, it’s just stuff they don’t care about. And so even the upsells are really hard. To justify, like, is this person gonna care about it?
So I think a better, solution than a email blast newsletter to all clients is, you know, once a quarter just going through, , a chunk of clients and reaching out to them individually like. Hey, here’s a feature that I recently implemented on this website.
I think this particular feature makes a lot of sense for you. Is this something you might be interested in? And again, they will appreciate the [00:25:00] heck out of that. Even if they’re not interested, they’re gonna be like, holy cow, you, thought of me, when working on this. And so , it’s little things like that that I think go way further than, yeah, I agree that the, the email newsletters are, are just a, they don’t, they don’t make a lot of sense for web design industry.
And you know what, if you do, I wish they did. If you do send a feature, i’ve seen people in the email newsletter send out like a, Hey, here’s a new feature we can add to your site, and they’ll link to the Divi. Blog post that shows how to use the thing and, and it’s like, no. ’cause now it’s like, Hey, here’s how the sausage is made.
Now we’re gonna, right, we’re gonna charge you for the sausage. Like, no, I like your idea better of. Hey, check out this feature we implemented on this person’s site.
Right? Right. And here’s the end result. Right. Don’t show them how the thing is made. ’cause then it’s, it’s harder to. It’s harder to charge for it then, you know? Yeah. Because it looks like something that, it looks like, oh, I just installed the module, and boom, here we go. Like that. That’s it.
You know? Right. It’s like, mm. Don’t, don’t send them to the elegant things. [00:26:00] Blog post about it. No. Uh, your, your clients if done well, they shouldn’t, they shouldn’t know what Divi is. You know, like, they, they shouldn’t care. That’s true. They shouldn’t. That’s true.
Again, those are the ideal clients. This next one might be a little controversial ’cause I know some web designers that love this idea and I, I don’t like it at all. We don’t send monthly hosting maintenance reports to the client reporting to our, our clients.
But I know some folks like to the problem was, well, now I don’t care if they do it or not. If artillery, if Jake wants to, if the team wants to do it, fine. But when I was like, slammed with work, I was like, well, number one, why do I wanna remind them that they’re paying monthly?
I don’t wanna remind them of that, even though they know, but it was just like an another way to remind, well, it’s not an invoice, it’s just a report. I know, but it’s still, it’s like a, Hey, here’s a, here’s what we did on your site last month. So the counter argument would be, well, John, you’re explaining, look at all these things we did on your site, and you’re only paying 59 or $99 a month.
Like, you’re not saying that, but like, maybe they’re making that [00:27:00] connection. But for a while though, when we had like time built in. To the plants. Oh, yeah. It, it was a reminder of like, oh yeah, I haven’t used any time this month. Let me go invent a reason why I should hit them up on, or they’d be like, Hey, since I haven’t used my hour support time, does it roll over?
Well, can, well that, or can we just hop on a call for an hour and brainstorm some new ideas from my site? And it’s like, no, that’s not. That’s not support. That’s not it. That’s, that’s why you say, yeah, I, I have mine very clear. I call ’em small tasks, you know, anything under a half an hour. That’s considered a small task, a consultation call.
Sure. 500 bucks. The reporting I’m indifferent on, I do do that. I actually don’t anymore for the new ones that I set up on managed wp, i’d say I have two or three clients that like will look at those. And then , if something’s off, she’s gonna reach out to me and be like, oh, what was this here?
And then I have to go into the report ’cause it’s all automated. I don’t look at ’em. And then I have to figure out what she’s [00:28:00] looking at. But yeah, for the most part, I would say 90% of my clients don’t even open those. But I do think that they’re like, oh yeah, Kelly’s still doing stuff for me.
Sweet. Like, I, I, I don’t ha I have not seen the residual of. Oh yeah, I gotta use my hour. I haven’t, I haven’t noticed anything like that. But my one beef with the report that managed WP sends out is they also add Google Analytics report in there for, I don’t know what reason, I can now turn it off, but it used to just shove it in there.
And so that would be the only thing the clients who did look at it would focus on. And then they’re just asking questions about, you know, SEO stuff. And I’m like, I don’t, I don’t do that. So it, that was a little confusing. But anyway, I’m indifferent to reports. I, I hear you. I hear you. So to recap, communication with a smile, friendly communication, with a friendly communication.
So simple, friendly, curious, communication that’s assuring, that’s really of the secret sauce, you know? That’s it. , I know this copywriter we work with, she always hates it , when a [00:29:00] company puts us a core value customer service.
She just thinks so cliche and surface level. But I’m like, yeah, but so many people do it poorly though. Like so bad. If someone were to say what differentiate artillery from a web design company, my first thing would be customer service.
And I know you don’t like that. But that’s that, because it sounds, well, every company could say that. Well, no, they can’t. They could, but they’d be lying. They don’t fulfill on that. That’s how you get the, my last web designer dropped off the face of the planet.
Or it takes them forever to update things. When I reach out to them, I never hear back like, oh, it’s so simp. It’s just so simple. Why is it so hard? Yep. Why is it so hard? Why is it hard? It’s not. It’s not, but it’s kind of realizing that you’re more so a customer service company than you are a design company’s.
True. And when you make that switch’s and you’re like, you know what? I’m gonna be as good at customer service Yes. As I want to be at design. Well now you’re gonna win. Absolutely. Now you’re gonna win. Alright y’all. Well, [00:30:00] thanks for tuning in today for joining us on the Web Design Empire.
Also, keep in mind our coaching two on one coaching to help you grow your business. Take your business from six to multi. We’ve done it. We’ll help you check it out for next time as we talk about client.
Cool. Well, you got another call? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Only thing I didn’t get to that I, that I had on my list was, just pointing out that sometimes it’s worth letting clients go, but that’s like a whole nother episode, so it’s fine.