In this article, we describe how following trends can be a sound strategy for your online business. Then we share ten of the top web design trends for 2023. 

Why Following Web Design Trends Is a Good Idea

While being creative and breaking the rules are integral parts of establishing your personal design style, it’s also wise to include some timely trends in your work. If a website looks completely dated, visitors are less likely to trust it and the business behind it. In extreme cases, it may even appear as if your client has gone out of business.

Furthermore, ignoring the latest trends risks delivering a poor User Experience (UX). Visitors may get frustrated if an outdated or unintuitive design makes it difficult to interact with the website.

On the other hand, a website that’s on-trend is far more likely to be user-friendly, attractive, and convey the message that the business is successful and conscientious. As a designer, if you’re familiar with the latest styles, you’re more likely to make yourself stand out by offering new and exciting ideas.

Top Web Design Trends for 2023 (10 Best Trends)

Check out some styles that you might want to incorporate into your next projects.

1. Subtle Parallax Effects

Adding a parallax effect, where a web page’s background moves slower than its foreground, can add a lot of visual interest to a website:

While this trend has been around for a while, more websites are starting to use parallax scrolling in more subtle ways.

While parallax scrolling can be attention-grabbing, it can grab a little too much attention if done poorly. Use this effect sparingly and carefully select a background image that won’t be too distracting. Otherwise, you risk compromising the overall design of the site.

You can use Beaver Builder to add a parallax row to a web page. Start by opening the Row Settings and navigating to the Style tab. Next, head to the Background options and select Parallax from the dropdown menu:

Now you should see a new set of options for your parallax effect:

You can use these menus to set your background image and scroll speed. If you’d like to tone down your background image, consider adding a background overlay.

2. Effective Use of Multimedia

Including sound, video, and animation on a webpage can add a lot of excitement. It can also quickly become overwhelming if you try to add too much, so you should try to strike a balance:

Consider using visual media when you need to convey a complicated concept. You could also add subtle animation to page elements that you want to draw readers’ attention to, such as buttons. If you’re feeling especially creative, sound effects or instrumental music are fun ways to set a mood.

There are Beaver Builder modules for just about any type of media you’d like to use, including audio, video, and images. You can find these in the Standard Modules group:

You can also add animation to any module, including the Gallery. These options are located in the feature’s Advanced settings tab:

When adding multimedia elements, try to keep accessibility in mind. If you’re using video, be sure to include captions or a transcript as well as playback controls. Autoplaying a video or music that a user can’t easily stop can be very annoying and may cause them to leave the website.

3. Design in Dark Mode

An emerging trend in website design is based on the dark mode aesthetic. Think black or grey, moody backgrounds with contrasting text elements:

Keeping the background dark and simple provides a compelling backdrop for your text and images. If you want to bring some drama and elegance to a webpage, this is a trend to consider.

Beaver Builder Theme users can easily change the background color of the entire content area. From the theme customizer, navigate to Content > Content Background and use the selector to adjust the shade and opacity:

If you plan to experiment with dark backgrounds, be sure there is enough contrast between them and your text so that the words are still easily readable. For example, you can opt for white or light-colored written content so that it stands out.

4. Asymmetrical Geometry

Geometric shapes can be very pleasing to the eye, but they aren’t always the most exciting choice. Adding asymmetry can help draw attention to important elements and keep a website from blending into the crowd:

You can try varying the size of the boxes in your grids or change the thickness of the dividing lines. In most Beaver Builder modules, you’ll find the border settings on the Style tab:

You can experiment with the style, colors, and thickness of the borders to add some interest to the geometric elements on a website.

5. Eye-Catching Serif Fonts

Serif fonts, which have been frowned upon in web design because they were considered difficult to read. With larger screens, higher resolutions, and better font design, this concern is no longer valid. Traditionally, sans-serif fonts are used for headings and serif fonts are used for text, but here’s an example in which that’s flipped:

We expect more designers to embrace serif fonts this year as they’re beautiful and elegant. With Beaver Builder, you have access to the entire library of Google fonts. You can choose global heading and text fonts in the Beaver Builder Theme, and in the Beaver Builder editor you can choose a font in many of the module types, such as the Text Editor module:

Be aware that loading a font family impacts page load performance, and from a design perspective it’s also a good idea to stick with two or three fonts throughout your site. Pay attention to font readability as well. You should also ensure the text size is large enough to display clearly on all screen types. When you set typography in Beaver Builder, you can create different settings for large, medium, and small devices, and there’s also a choice of measurement units (px, em, rem, vw).

6. Adding Emojis

Emojis are pictograms used commonly to convey emotions in written text. They are now making a move from text messages and social media to web design. Careful use of emojis can help set the tone for a website that can be difficult with text alone.

For example, Semrush uses a waving hand emoji to make its live chat seem a bit friendlier:

One advantage of using emojis is that nearly everyone understands them. You can even create custom emoticons for your web design clients to help improve their branding.

Emojis can be considered unprofessional in specific industries or groups, such as lawyers or business professionals, so ensure this trend is a good fit before using them.

7. Designing Larger Menus

Rather than cramming a menu full of links, you can create high-level categories and reveal submenus in interesting ways.

Both Beaver Builder Menu modules and menus controlled by the Beaver Builder Theme display submenus on hover over the top-level item, but for even more hierarchically complex menus you can easily create a Beaver Builder mega menu in this format:

Beaver Builder also works with a number of mega menu plugins that further enhance the presentation. The third-party MegaMenu plugin turns Beaver Builder rows into various types of mega menus:

Using this plugin, you can turn any Beaver Builder design or layout into a mega menu. These menus are mobile responsive by default and fully customizable.

8. Soft, Balanced Color Schemes

Soothing, pleasant color schemes are definitely something to consider in 2023. These colors can feel more natural and help set a peaceful mood for your client’s website:

Soft color schemes can be particularly suitable for health and wellness websites. The muted color palettes can convey natural and organic feelings, supporting the key messages of many health-based companies.

However, subdued doesn’t have to mean boring. You can still integrate understated textures into your backgrounds to provide some interest without being overwhelming. You can also choose photography with soft tones that compliment your overall color scheme.

9. Large Hero Sections

The hero section is a prominent area beneath the menu that users encounter when they first visit a website. Ideally, it should convey the purpose of the site, including any products or services it offers. The hero section can also express the trustworthiness of a brand and sell the overall benefits of the business.

Hero sections are becoming very popular, and in most cases, there’s no reason not to fill the screen with one:

This section could also be an excellent opportunity to add some of that parallax scrolling we discussed earlier.

To create a large hero section in Beaver Builder, be sure you’re using a theme that enables you to edit the entire width of the screen. Start by adding a row and setting it to Full Width:

Next, click on the Advanced tab and ensure that you set all margins to zero:

Back on the Style tab, choose your desired background type from the Background dropdown:

Finally, add whatever kind of module you’d like. You can even use a combination of modules for your hero section.

10. Engaging Landing Pages

Engaging landing pages are essential to conversions, and there’s a lot that goes into designing them. Make sure the landing page design is interesting enough to hold visitors’ attention without distracting them from the page’s copy. Also, consider using photos of real people as they perform better than stock images:

Beaver Builder is a powerful tool for building landing pages. You can start with one of our landing page layout templates and add or rearrange modules to add more functionality.

The Call to Action (CTA) module is particularly beneficial for landing page design. It enables you to customize every aspect of a CTA, from buttons to surrounding text:

Take advantage of this feature, because customized CTAs convert around 202 percent more than generic ones.

That’s the end of our 2023 web design trends roundup! We bet you’ll find plenty of ways to embrace these top trends the next time you’re working on a website for your clients.

Conclusion

Thoughtfully incorporating trends into your designs can result in great websites and satisfied customers. It’s also a sound business strategy because you’ll always have something new to offer potential clients.

For maximum visual impact, try using serif fonts and parallax effects. If your client is going for an elegant minimalist vibe, try a dark mode aesthetic along with some geometric grids.

The post Top 10 Web Design Trends (What Makes a Great Website?) appeared first on Beaver Builder.

The best CRM software helps marketing agencies capture valuable insight into what your clients want so that you can provide them with better services. Since managing customer relationships is crucial to business success, it’s no surprise that a study by Grand View Research found that over 91% of companies with more than 10 employees use CRM systems. 

With dozens of CRM tools available, figuring out which one can take your small business to the next level can be difficult. In this article, we discuss the most important elements to look for in a CRM and then share with you our picks for the best CRM software for marketing agencies in 2023. Let’s take a look!

What Is CRM Software?

CRM software is a customer relationship management tool designed to help businesses build better relationships with their audiences and offer customers a seamless and unique experience. CRM software analyzes customer data such as contact information, purchases, service requests, and quotes/proposals. 

The system then allows you to access the data and understand what occurred at each touchpoint. As a result, you can develop a complete customer profile and build solid, lasting relationships.

Most Important Elements To Look For in a CRM

Choosing the right CRM for your marketing agency isn’t always straightforward, but it’s easier if you know what you’re looking for.  Here are the most crucial CRM features to check:

Collaborative Features

A good CRM solution must have three core collaborative features: Contact management, interaction tracking, and lead management. It should also simplify workflows and processes through organizational hierarchies and structures. 

A CRM system with collaborative features can help you interact and exchange concepts, workloads, and ideas with employees and superiors. 

It should also automate client interactions, back-office operations, and business management, resulting in greater transparency across organizational teams and the ability to scale your agency.

Great User Experience and Design

CRMs can sometimes get cluttered with a lot of information. For example, you might have CRM software with all the features you need, but it’s painfully slow and requires too much clicking to get anything done. 

Before buying CRM software, make sure it’s user-friendly. Can you use it effortlessly? Can you find features quickly?

If you’re having difficulty using it, your marketing and administrative team will have a more challenging time. It’s better to have a CRM with significantly fewer features but a simple interface.

Integration With Other Agency Tools

CRM tools are all about tracking and managing customer information, and integration is one of the crucial features to look for. 

Some crucial integrations a CRM software should have include:

• Email marketing
• Web analytics 
• Social media management 

Look for CRM software that integrates with other agency tools like time-tracking apps and invoicing software. That’ll help your team do everything in one place.

That said, here are nine of the best CRM software for marketing agencies:

1. Best Overall: HubSpot

HubSpot is a free and powerful CRM software with a centralized database that lets you organize valuable details about your leads, partners, and clients. 

HubSpot CRM allows you to create email templates and tags, schedule calls, and more. You can use the platform as a communications tool and a data warehouse.

Since HubSpot has a marketing hub, you can keep data at the forefront of everything you do. You can use this data to segment and target specific audiences, create consistent content, nurture contacts, and maintain consistent brand messaging across all marketing channels. 

As a result, you can align your marketing and customer service efforts to offer best-in-class experiences to clients.

Key Features

• Over 1090 integrations to get more functionality from the tools you’re already paying for
• Marketing automation tools to track results with built-in analytics reports
• Live chatbot to connect with website visitors in real-time

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $45 per month per 1000 contacts.

2. Best for Creative Agencies: Monday.com

Monday Sales CRM is a highly customizable, robust platform that helps you streamline your workflows and monitor all aspects of a client’s interaction with your agency — from lead generation to post-project support. 

The dashboard is divided into folders and boards — with up to 50 columns for managing groups such as projects “To do” or rejected leads, for example. 

You can also create custom pipelines for your projects based on your specifications and develop workflows to get the most out of your data.

Key Features

• Has everything laid out to quickly identify any potential problems in your client’s sales cycle
• Easily customizable to monitor all elements of the sales process
• Has native integrations with tools and apps you already use, such as Gmail, Excel, and DocuSign

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $10 per user per month.

3. Best for Managing Opportunities: Capsule

Capsule CRM enables users to manage opportunities in the sales pipeline and organize their projects and client-facing activities.

It gives you a quick summary of opportunities through the sales dashboard. These opportunities include potential values, where they are in the sales pipeline, and what you need to do next.

Capsule is reliable if you want robust integrations with accounting tools like QuickBooks, Xero, and FreeAgent.

Key Features

• Stores and monitors all contacts, including opportunities, vendors, leads, and customers
• Offers a complete view of the sales pipeline and manages sales opportunities
• Allows users to create teams and opportunities and assign new leads to chosen sales reps for easy project management

Pricing: Free 30-day trial with limited features. Premium plans start at $18 per user per month.

4. Best for Pipeline Management: Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a sales-focused CRM that automates repetitive tasks and manages client projects and leads. It’s an excellent CRM solution for companies that need a good visual sales pipeline with data visualizations and at-a-glance information.

It also has the Smart Contact Data feature that pulls known work and social data for contacts with a single click. 

Pipedrive also has a powerful mobile app that helps you engage with team members and customers on the go.

Key Features

• Sales and lead management capabilities to track sales and leads from chatbots, forms, and other sources
• Communication tracking to set your schedule in real-time
• Visual sales pipelines to create custom stages by team members or project managers

Pricing: Free 14-day trial with limited features. Premium plans start at $9.90 per user per month.

5. Best for Businesses on Google Workspace: Copper

Copper CRM helps users track client interactions, automate core operations, communicate with employees, and manage leads. It’s ideal for businesses that already use Google Workspace tools and want a CRM that can integrate with those apps and processes.

Copper also has an excellent user interface and seamlessly captures and connects all project tasks, files, and calendar invites so that you don’t miss any details.

Key Features

• Lead management to capture leads and nurture them to become clients
• Workflow automation to help managers focus on managing leads and opportunities
• Task management to improve team collaboration and create automatic to-do lists

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $29 per user per month.

6. Best for Analytics and Reports: Insightly

Insightly CRM gives you extra control over sales and project management operations by offering a unique relationship-linking feature. 

The CRM platform offers a dynamic and customizable solution for small teams that can’t manage all aspects of the sales process. You can build your ideal personal dashboards to highlight specific contexts, workflows, and metrics.

Key Features

• Lead routing to track the most relevant lead information
• Third-party integrations with applications such as Gmail, Dropbox, and Outlook
• Pipeline management to help you track client pitches to identify where they are in the sales funnel

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $29 per user per month.

7. Best for Work Communication: Podio

Podio is a CRM platform that helps users track leads and clients easily. Use its integrated webforms to capture contact information, monitor who’s responsible for each lead, and understand key touch points like when the lead was last contacted.

You can integrate the platform with Citrix content collaboration tools to add context and conversations to files. In addition, you can also integrate with third-party file-sharing modules such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Evernote.

Key Features

• Attach files, assign tasks, and discuss details within the CRM platform
• Project budget tracking and automation of your sales pipelines and workflows
• Visual dashboards that offer an overview of your business

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $7.20 per employee per month.

8. Best for Marketing and Sales Automation: Keap

Keap is a CRM tool for businesses starting out with CRM software. It has a user-friendly interface and a simple setup.

The Keap CRM platform centralizes all of your client’s activity and automatically adds all customer interactions. You can automate contact management from customer activities across multiple platforms to improve your team’s ability to offer efficient support. 

Key Features

• Email marketing tools to nurture leads, generate revenue, and keep clients in the loop.
• Reporting and analytics to improve marketing effectiveness and customer engagement
• Customizable dashboard to manage the sales pipelines and track leads and existing customers

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $129 per month per 1500 contacts.

9. Best Value for Large Teams: BenchmarkONE (Formerly Hatchbuck)

BenchmarkONE is a cloud-based CRM solution enabling users to automate many business processes surrounding customer relationships. Notably, it’s best suited to large marketing teams due to its affordable pricing model and deployment availability.

With this CRM, you can easily boost retainers, build campaigns, and duplicate processes across client accounts to fast-track work.

Key Features

• Robust integrations with Gmail and Zapier to enable access to over 1,000 different services and applications
• Built-in analytics to score campaigns and analyze progress 
• Email marketing tools to send personalized emails using customized templates

Pricing: Free with limited features. Premium plans start at $29 per month per 500 contacts.

Final Thoughts: 9 Best CRM Software for Marketing Agencies

We hope the CRM software options above will help you determine the best solution for your business needs. Most importantly, choose a CRM software that fits your budget and helps you build solid relationships with your clients.

Which solution do you consider the best CRM software for marketing agencies? Share the post with your answers!

The post 9 Best CRM Software for Marketing Agencies appeared first on Beaver Builder.

Fortunately, tools such as Canva and Beaver Builder enable you to create consistent and professional branding without breaking the bank. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of visual branding, the basics of using Canva, and how to find the right high-quality theme. 

Why It’s Important to Build a Cohesive Visual Brand

Your visual brand creates a sense of identity for your company, informing potential customers what they can expect. It can also enhance your business recognition and appeal to a specific target market. People should be reminded of your brand as soon as they see your logo and colors.

For example, Google created its branding many years ago to be friendly, approachable, and simple. The colors used in its logo aren’t random; the designers selected them very intentionally. The idea is that the Google logo would someday be just as distinguishable as a child’s color chart:

Your visual brand is the first experience that most potential customers will have with your business, so it’s a great chance to build a positive first impression. However, a brand is more than just a logo.

Your brand should be consistent across all of your media: websites, social profiles, email campaigns, physical mailers, and more. You need to create a brand kit that includes all the building blocks of your visual identity and ensure that everything presented to your target audience conforms to it.

The Building Blocks of a Visual Brand

Let’s explore the nitty-gritty details of building a visual brand. Companies can spend millions of dollars developing a strong identity and producing hundreds of pages of documentation about how to use every single element. However, that level of extravagance isn’t necessary for most brands.

With the right tools, anyone can establish a clear visual brand quickly. Here’s a checklist to help you get started:

1. Identify your target audience. Consider who your core demographic is. What appeals most to them? A florist might want to focus on families and relationships, while an HVAC company might want to target business owners and commercial enterprises.
2. Establish your mission. Think about your business’s values and what is most important to your company. For example, transparency, consistency, and equity may be core values you want to represent in your brand.
3. Choose a color palette. Start with two or three prominent colors, then branch out into more complementary colors. It’s important to make color choices intentionally. (There’s a reason so many tech brands use blue.)
4. Select two fonts. You need at least two primary fonts: one for titles and one for content. It’s best to keep these consistent throughout your online and offline designs. Make sure that the fonts you choose mesh well with your overall vision. Some fonts are perceived as more or less modern, traditional, or even unprofessional.
5. Consider a designer. Hiring a professional early on can help you maintain a consistent visual identity. A professional can also assist with more complex elements that are beyond your team’s scope. For instance, they can offer advice regarding photos, illustrations, videos, and even infographics.

It’s important to remember that your brand is going to evolve over time. Even Coca-Cola changes its branding regularly. Nonetheless, you need a foundation to build on.

Once you’ve developed the most essential elements of your brand, put them together in a consolidated brand kit. You and anyone creating content for you can refer to this resource as you scale and create new content.

How to Get Started Using Canva for Your Brand’s Designs

To create a strong brand, you need the right tools. There are a lot of design solutions out there, but Canva is one of our favorites. It’s an all-in-one image generation tool for ads, infographics, logos, and other advertising media.

You can easily sign up for free with just an email address. From there, choose either the free version or the premium version. When you log in, you can select the type of image you want to create:

Canva uses a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to create compelling graphics. With this interface, you’re able to make changes to your image in real time so you can see exactly how it looks:

All you have to do is select elements, move them around, and replace them with your own content as needed. You can also use and edit a variety of templates. Additionally, you can export your designs in JPG, PNG, PDF, and other file formats.

Canva also provides some advanced tools, such as the option to remove the background from an image or add animations. We recommend using animations sparingly because too many moving elements can be distracting for your audience.

3 Ways You Can Use Canva to Build a Strong Visual Brand

Canva is a great brand-building tool because you can create all of your media on a single platform. This also makes it possible to color match existing images and save your brand palette for future use. This way you can create a controlled, uniform look with ease.

If you’re not quite sure how to get started, here are three ways to get the ball rolling.

1. Build Logos

You can build a strong logo in Canva by selecting one of the many available logo styles. Simply use the search function and type in logos. Your search results will include a list of templates, as well as an option to create a blank logo:

Creating a blank logo means you’ll be starting from zero. Unless you know exactly what you want, it’s easier to select one of the prebuilt designs to use as a starting point. 

After you’ve selected a template, you can alter the text, fonts, colors, and images:

For example, if you select the text in the above logo, an editing bar appears with various formatting options:

As you edit, remember to follow the principles of basic logo creation. Keep it clean, readable, and unique. In addition, try to incorporate something unique about your brand in your logo – just looking at it should give potential customers an idea of your brand’s style and tone.

To create a more robust brand kit, consider creating multiple versions of your logo for various platforms. You might design versions with just an image, an image and text, or even text alone. It’s also smart to create versions with transparent as well as solid backgrounds so you have adaptable design options for any occasion.

2. Create Ads

Canva makes it possible to create and use many types of ads. You can make Instagram ads, Facebook ads, Google ads, and more:

Just as with logos, you can create these promotional materials from scratch or start with templates. It’s important to pay attention to the dimensions of each ad, though, since the requirements are different for each platform.

Let’s look at a simple Facebook ad. You can edit it however you want, such as changing the background colors and even the featured image:

Canva’s libraries have unique templates for different types of ads. A premium license gives you access to lots of custom templates:

Paid advertising is often the fastest way to start developing brand recognition. By creating paid ads, you can grow your following on social media and direct traffic to your company’s website.

3. Enhance Your Site’s Graphics

Canva has an array of designs that you can use to improve the visuals on your website. This includes elements such as slide shows, header graphics, and featured images.

If your website has a blog, for instance, you could create a new Blog Banner:

Simply select a blog banner you like and edit it as desired:

You can use colored borders and logos to customize your graphics. That way, when people visit your site, they immediately identify that it belongs to your business.

Another method of branding your site is to produce infographics that can be shared on your landing pages as well as on social media platforms:

Infographics are a fun way to extend your brand because they’re so uniquely shareable. They can also be easily repurposed. You can create an infographic, write a blog post about it, and share it on social media too.

How to Select a High-Quality Theme for Your Site

Content and marketing are typically designed to get customers to visit your website. Even if they initially connect with you through social media or offline, your website is likely where the majority of conversions happen. Therefore, your website should echo your brand as much as your marketing materials and ads do.

This requires choosing a strong theme, one that provides a solid foundation and is also highly customizable. In other words, the right theme makes it easier to build and maintain a cohesive brand.

The good news is that Beaver Builder provides a fully-adaptable starting point for the design and development of any WordPress website, using almost any theme. With Beaver Builder, you can use your branding kit to customize your site quickly and easily.

If you want to give yourself even more of a head start, you can pair our page builder plugin with our Beaver Builder Framework Theme:

This streamlined theme gives you just the tools you need to create a unique and well-branded website, without excess ‘fluff’ that would only complicate the design and bulk up your site. It features:

• Intuitive settings: Plenty of customizable options that are understandable at a glance.
• Prebuilt skins: These starter templates can help kick-start your designs.
• Mobile and performance optimization: Branding isn’t the only thing that matters on your site – you also want it to look and perform great on all devices.
• Built-in WooCommerce support: This helps ensure that your storefront’s design matches the rest of your website.
• Developer support and easy extensibility: While you can customize this theme without using code, it’s also extremely developer-friendly and can be adapted to suit all kinds of projects.

You can get this theme via the Pro and Agency Beaver Builder plans. To take your branding even further, check out the Beaver Themer add-on, which gives you the ultimate power in branding and styling headers, footers, archives and posts, and even 404 pages. Using these products together, you can create a highly branded website that looks like it’s been customized from scratch.

Conclusion

Without a clear visual brand, it becomes much harder to effectively market your company. Cohesive branding doesn’t just help your business or product remain distinct – it also ensures that your marketing appears organized, professional, and consistent.

While establishing a strong brand takes some time and effort, the right tools can make it a lot easier. For example, you can use Canva to develop your logos, ads, and other compelling graphics. You can then add these elements to your WordPress site using Beaver Builder and the Beaver Builder Framework Theme.

Do you still have questions about creating a strong visual brand? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Build Your Visual Brand appeared first on Beaver Builder.

In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of maintaining relationships with your clients over the long term. We’ll then share five ways to keep the lines of communication open and perhaps even earn some additional revenue along the way. Let’s get started! 

Why It’s Important to Maintain Your Client Relationships With a Post-Launch Checklist

The relationship you have with your web design clients evolves over the lifespan of a project. However, it doesn’t need to end just because you’ve completed your initial goal of designing an amazing website. 

Post-launch is your opportunity to change the relationship and set yourself up as a long-time business partner. A checklist is often crucial for staying organized and securing follow-up work. By keeping the lines of communication open, you might even be able to create additional work. In the same way you push prospects further down the sales funnel, you can nurture your current clients.

For example, you might notify the customer about a new service that would be the perfect fit for them. Many companies also offer their clients exclusive discounts:

Securing a new project with an existing client is often far easier than converting new prospects. According to Marketing Metrics, you have a 60-70 percent chance of selling to an existing customer. In contrast, the likelihood of converting a new prospect is 5-20 percent.

Because you already have a relationship with your client, you can eliminate many of the costs associated with securing new work. You can also generate the maximum revenue from the investment you’ve already made in that particular customer. This is great for your bottom line. 

In this scenario, the client is already familiar with your agency, but you’re also familiar with the customer. Therefore, you’ll be in a strong position to deliver a great website without spending time researching the client’s needs or experimenting via trial and error.

Furthermore, partnering with an existing client enables you to deliver your projects faster. This is essential for minimizing your costs while maximizing your profits.

The Post-Launch Checklist: 5 Ways to Maintain Your Client Relationships

The job doesn’t end just because the client is happy with their finished website. If you’re going to secure follow-up work, it’s vital to keep in close contact. With that in mind, here is a post-launch checklist with five ways to maintain your client relationships.

1. Provide WordPress Training

WordPress is designed to be an intuitive and easy-to-use platform. However, this doesn’t mean your client won’t benefit from some training. After building and launching their website, you can teach them how to use it:

It might take the form of paid training. For example, you may create a series of instructional videos and charge for access. You could also offer your client a one-on-one guided training session. Alternatively, you might take a more informal approach and offer to walk them through the WordPress dashboard over Zoom.

Training can ensure the client gets the most out of their new website. Additionally, it will reflect positively on your work as a designer and developer.

By teaching clients how to work with their new sites, you can help them avoid making mistakes, such as deleting their content. These errors may not be your fault, but they will still result in poor customer experiences. You might have to struggle to secure subsequent work if your clients are unhappy with their sites post-launch. 

Effective training can also present you as a WordPress expert. Assuming that the client gets genuine value from your coaching, you’ll be at the top of their list if they ever need to arrange more WordPress training. 

For the best results, you may want to tell the client to contact you if they have any questions or issues. Alternatively, whenever WordPress releases an update, you might reach out to your customer and offer to teach them all about the new features.

2. Create a Range of Support Packages

Running a successful WordPress website is an ongoing commitment, so clients often appreciate a helping hand. Since you built their sites, you’re in a strong position to offer ongoing support.

Most support packages are lengthy arrangements and often run for a full year. Therefore, offering them is an effective way to maintain long-term relationships with your clients:

Since you have a pre-existing relationship, you’ll already have a good idea of the client’s requirements. As such, it can make maintaining their site a breeze.

You also have a proven track record with the customer, which makes you an attractive option compared to taking a gamble on an entirely new and unknown company.

If you decide to branch out into support, it’s important to be realistic about what you can provide. It might be tempting to commit to around-the-clock care. However, you’re setting yourself up for failure if you can’t make good on that promise. 

Overpromising and underdelivering can destroy even the most positive client relationship. The last thing you want is to undermine everything you’ve achieved so far. Although a support contract extends your relationship with the customer for another year, it can also irrevocably damage your professional connection and destroy your chances of securing follow-up work.

3. Offer Regular Site Refreshes

When it’s first launched, your client’s website will be at the cutting edge of design and development. However, trends evolve, and people have a frustrating habit of changing how they interact with sites. This means that your client’s page will almost certainly become dated over time. 

To help keep those conversion rates high, you might want to inspect the client’s website routinely. Then, you can recommend any changes necessary to bring it into line with the latest web design and development trends:

You might offer this site refresh as a complimentary service or as an added extra that the client pays for. Both of these approaches have their advantages and disadvantages.

If you offer a site refresh as a complimentary service, very few people will turn down a freebie. It can be a surefire way to keep in contact with your clients. It can also reinforce your reputation as a genuinely helpful agency. 

However, complimentary services can be bad news for your bottom line. Crunch the numbers and decide whether it makes more sense to charge for this service.

If you ask for payment, some of your clients will inevitably choose not to purchase a site review and refresh. As a result, you might need to resort to alternative tactics to maintain relationships with these customers. 

An alternative is to take a mixed approach. You could offer a complimentary site review but charge a fee for implementing your recommendations. It can be an effective way to keep in contact with your customers without working for free. 

4. Provide Routine Maintenance 

Every WordPress site requires ongoing maintenance. Whether it’s protecting your site with regular backups, installing the latest version of WordPress core, or scanning for malware – running a WordPress website takes a lot of work.

You can offer to shoulder some of this burden. By providing ongoing maintenance, you can make yourself indispensable to busy website owners and businesses.

Even better, maintaining a website is an ongoing commitment. If you impress your client by keeping their site in tip-top shape, you might have a long-term or even permanent partnership with that person.

By making yourself responsible for the day-to-day running of the client’s site, you automatically become the go-to person for any related work. For example, you could end up working on redesigns, adding new features, installing extra software, or even authoring content. 

As always, it’s essential to be realistic about the level of support you can offer. It might be tempting to promise a complete maintenance service. However, this is not always feasible. Consider the availability of your staff and the time zones where you operate.The good news is that there are tools to help you maintain multiple client sites. Some software can even automate important maintenance tasks, such as the ManageWP platform:

Using suitable software, you can offer ongoing maintenance without increasing your day-to-day workflow. The result is that you can maintain positive relationships with your clients without putting your staff under additional pressure.

5. Run Targeted Email Marketing Campaigns

Many companies use email marketing to convert prospects into paying customers but this tactic can also keep existing clients engaged over the long term.

According to the 2019 Adobe Email Usage Study, Americans spend over five hours per day checking their emails. This is a huge window of time where you could be building a post-launch relationship with your clients.

Since you’ve previously worked with your clients, you already know a lot about them. You can use this insight to create segmented campaigns. This targeted messaging has been shown to generate over 100% higher click rates than non-segmented strategies.One study has shown that companies experience a 760 percent increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. Many of the popular email marketing tools support segmentation, including the Mailchimp platform:

Be aware that marketing to an existing customer is entirely different from nurturing a prospect. Your goal is to maintain a relationship over the long term rather than bombard your valued clients with generalized marketing.

For this reason, it’s a good idea to create different messaging for prospects and clients or even to email your clients individually. This personal touch can help convince customers that you genuinely care, which is vital for the success of your post-launch checklist.

Email marketing can be used to demonstrate a deep understanding of your client’s needs. You could suggest a service that’s the perfect solution for whatever issue they’re currently facing. Then, they’re likely to view this as good customer care rather than marketing.

Conclusion 

While it’s exciting to secure a new client, working with people you already know is often easier. If you complete a project and never contact that customer again, you’re almost certainly leaving money on the table. 

Let’s quickly recap how to maintain healthy post-launch relationships with your clients:

1. Provide WordPress training.
2. Create a range of support packages.
3. Offer regular site refreshes.
4. Provide routine maintenance.
5. Run targeted email marketing campaigns.

Do you have any questions about creating a post-launch checklist? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!

The post The Post-Launch Checklist: 5 Ways to Maintain Your Client Relationships appeared first on Beaver Builder.

In this article, we’ll start by discussing a few reasons why portfolios are so essential for web designers. Then, we’ll take you through seven key tips to help you craft the perfect one for your site. Let’s dive right in!

Why Web Designers Need Attractive Portfolios

If you’re in the web design business, appearances can be everything. After all, you’re probably responsible for creating stunning web pages. That means that a traditional written resume may not be convincing to your clients.

That’s why using a visual portfolio can make a lot more sense. It is a collection of your completed work, displayed online:

Instead of trying to tell potential clients about your skills, you can show them what you’re capable of instead. In other words, portfolios enable your designs to speak for themselves.

Furthermore, portfolios can also act as archives. Clients might be more inclined to hire you if they can tell you have a lot of experience. As such, compiling a collection of work that spans your career can be an effective way to demonstrate your proficiency.

However, portfolios are essential even if you don’t have years of web design experience under your belt. If you’re starting your career as a freelance web designer, you may not have any real-world examples.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean you should wait to create a portfolio. In fact, having a collection of your work can be vital to launching your career.

If you don’t have samples, you could try creating sites for imaginary clients. Even if nobody hires you to build it, the results won’t lie. A well-designed web page can show off your abilities regardless of why you made it.

Finally, portfolios aren’t only for enticing clients. You can also use one to control your image to clients. Social media can be a helpful marketing tool. Still, it’s hard to beat the spotlight of a tailor-made website dedicated to your work.

Given these factors, most web designers should have portfolios. However, it’s not always as simple as compiling examples. There are other elements that you might want to consider to optimize your portfolio’s impact.

How to Create a Web Design Portfolio That Attracts Clients (7 Key Tips)

As you build your portfolio, try to keep the following tips in mind to maximize its effectiveness.

1. Include Examples from Different Niches

From ballet studios to tattoo parlors, most businesses need websites to survive. If you’ve done web design for many clients, don’t be afraid to show that versatility in your portfolio.

Various niches can demonstrate different web design abilities. For example, designing a photography website will probably involve showcasing the pictures to their fullest extent.

On the other hand, a writer’s website may have minimal media elements. You might have to find different ways to make the content stand out.

Furthermore, no two sites are the same. Therefore, showing your proficiency in wildly different niches can be a powerful testament to your adaptability.

For example, here’s the varied portfolio of the Web Design Yorkshire agency:

As you can probably tell, each item is unique. This agency displays websites with different color schemes, layouts, and tones. However, the overall focus on media across the examples shows a cohesive style.

This portfolio selection has two distinct benefits. Firstly, each unique page demonstrates the agency’s ability to address a client’s needs regardless of their industry. Nevertheless, the consistency among the samples can give customers an idea of what their tailored websites might look like.

As a bonus, including a wide range of niche designs can help add diversity to your page. Unique layouts and color palettes can keep your website from looking too uniform.

However, we recommend that you avoid cluttering pages with clashing elements. Doing so can result in a chaotic-looking portfolio that distracts from the substance. Spreading the samples out instead can obtain the same results with less confusion.

2. Feature Testimonials from Happy Customers

A web design portfolio will likely give clients an idea of your technical skills. However, that’s only half of the story.

As a web designer, you probably work closely with your customers. As such, demonstrating that you can fully and professionally address their needs can go a long way toward convincing potential new clients to work with you.

One reason for this is the customer’s expectations. Even the best-designed webpage would miss the mark if the client wanted something different from you. Glowing reviews can show your ability to direct your skills towards specific goals.

Furthermore, reviews can speak to your professionalism. Nobody likes working with a difficult business partner. That’s why you may want to showcase testimonials that highlight your collaboration capabilities, such as:

• Promptly finishing tasks on an agreed-upon schedule
• Working through any creative disagreements with grace
• Maintaining clear and consistent communication with customers

You can collect reviews by asking your clients directly. If you use this method, try to do so immediately after finishing projects. That way, your work will still be fresh in their minds.

On that same note, you may also want to consider white labeling your services. Removing external branding can help keep your agency at the center of attention.

You could also use Google reviews. The Charley Grey agency provides an example:

When you’re picking reviews, try to focus on comments that highlight how your services are unique. There are tons of web designers out there – standing out from the crowd can help you land your next job.

3. Make Your Web Design Portfolio as Easy to Find as Possible

No matter how well-made your web design portfolio is, it won’t help you land new clients if people can’t find it. That’s why we recommend that you take a few crucial steps to get as much exposure as possible.

For example, try to link to your portfolio wherever you have a web presence. If you use social media to promote your work, you might like to use this strategy – directing clients to a complete portfolio can take them one step closer to hiring you.

Another tactic to consider is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Using the right keywords can go a long way toward boosting your place in the search engine rankings. As a result, you may be able to increase your portfolio’s organic traffic.

If you’re unsure how to best improve your SEO, consider using a premium search optimization tool. Think of it as an investment: with the proper software, you’ll also be able to improve your clients’ sites.

For example, you could invest in the premium version of Yoast SEO. It audits your content in real-time and provides suggestions on how to optimize your posts and pages:

Finally, try to keep your domain name short and sweet. Long, complex URLs may discourage clients from clicking on links. They may also make it harder for people to remember your brand name.

However, the process doesn’t end once a user has reached your website. You should also consider a few ways to make them stay on your page too.

For example, you can make navigating your site easier with clear menus. Optimizing your website for mobile devices is also essential in the age of smartphones. Changes such as this can help ensure that you don’t frustrate high-paying clients after attracting them to your portfolio.

4. Organize Your Web Design Portfolio into Relevant Sections

As we discussed earlier, having samples from different niches can show off your versatility. However, you may want to make sure there’s a method to the madness.

For example, some clients may come to your site looking for a specific style. If all the niches are randomly lumped together, they might have to hunt through dozens of examples before finding the ones that are relevant to them.

You probably don’t want this to happen – chances are that your clients won’t appreciate starting a business partnership with a scavenger hunt. That’s why we recommend that you use categories.

A few simple categories can go a long way toward an orderly portfolio. You can divide your work by niche, layout type, or other groupings that make sense to you.

You can consider the drop-down filter menu from Grain & Mortar as an example:

Regardless of how you decide to format these sections, we recommend that you limit their numbers. A massive list of categories can intimidate your clients. You also risk getting too specific, which could make your organization lose its overall focus.

However, it’s also worth mentioning that every portfolio is different. You don’t have to include categories if you don’t think they’ll help. If you’re not sure, we recommend that you keep it simple and trust your web design instincts.

5. Add Links to Encourage Networking

This tip may seem obvious, but it’s also important. You can’t get new clients if they can’t reach out to you. Thus, it’s wise to make it as easy as possible for potential customers to contact you.

Furthermore, your contact details should also be obvious. You could put them in the header so that clients can reach you before they hire you.

You can use Trent Walton’s web design portfolio as an example:

Casual contact links such as these can help increase the odds of getting a message. This is because users may feel intimidated by the formality of an official quote.

Try to include as many contact methods as possible. If you’re active somewhere, link out to it if you can. As a bonus, this approach will also give your clients the freedom to each you through their preferred channels.

However, we also recommend making a dedicated quote contact page. After all, there will always be clients who are eager to skip the small talk and get straight to business.

For these quote pages, you might want to link them to a single landing page. That way, users won’t get distracted by other URLs when they’re reaching out. In turn, this may help increase your conversion rate.

6. Prioritize Your Best Work

Let’s be honest for a second: not every website you design will be of equal quality. It’s nothing to be ashamed of – varied results are facts of life that nearly every professional deals with.

However, you probably want to use your web design portfolio to put your best foot forward. Therefore, you likely won’t display any examples you aren’t proud of. Still, there’s a strong chance that some samples will shine brighter than others.

While you’re picking your top-tier examples,  try to vary the niches as well. That way, you can show that you always rigorously apply your skills regardless of the client’s needs.

You may even want to make your most impressive examples into case studies. For instance, you might offer a short article that explores your creative process and shares how you arrived at the result.

For example, the Dogstudio company provides a detailed case study of its work on the MSI Chicago website:

This type of walkthrough can emphasize how seriously you take your responsibilities. It can also highlight your greatest strengths as a web designer. For example, you can showcase your big-picture thinking or focus on even the most minor details, such as font choice.

Focusing on a single web design sample such as this puts a heavy spotlight on one project. Nevertheless, it’s not your only option.

Another strategy is using more subtlety. Instead of a deep dive on one part of your portfolio, you can put your highest quality work at the top of the page. That way, even clients who only glance at your site will see your full potential.

7. Include Context for Each Sample

In the last tip, we talked about the advantages of laying out your design process for a single project. However, your best work isn’t the only content that deserves context.

Every project in your web design portfolio should give at least an overview of the brief. Without understanding the goals you wanted to achieve, it may be hard for clients to gauge how successful you were.

Even if it’s brief, we recommend that you always try to answer a few vital questions with your context:

• What did the client want?
• How did you accomplish it?
• What was unique about this specific design?

Moreover, don’t be afraid to shy away from any difficulties you conquered! As with any other job, there will always be challenges with web design.

Speaking openly about how you approached a project shows that you’re flexible. It can also help assure clients that you can handle any issues that come up with their websites.

You may also want to mention if you still provide any maintenance to the sites you created. If this feature is a big part of your agency’s services, it’s essential to include it in your context.

Conclusion

A web design portfolio is a vital tool for landing new clients. When you craft it with care, it can help you show off your skills and stand out from the crowd. Fortunately, following a few rules of thumb can help you optimize the effectiveness of your professional website.

In this article, we covered seven key tips to help you create a web design portfolio that attracts clients:

1. Include examples from different niches.
2. Add testimonials from satisfied customers.
3. Make your web design portfolio easy to find and use.
4. Consider using categories to organize your samples.
5. Link to your contact information liberally.
6. Prioritize your highest-quality examples.
7. Include context for each featured web page.

Do you have any questions about creating a world-class web design portfolio? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Create a Web Design Portfolio That Attracts Clients (7 Key Tips) appeared first on Beaver Builder.

Fortunately, there are telltale warnings of a doomed professional relationship. In this article, we’ll go over five common signs that it’s time to fire a bad client. Then we’ll walk you through a simple three-step process for doing so. Let’s dive right in!

Why Firing Bad Clients Is Critical

Let’s be honest: it’s not easy parting with a paying client. Part of running your own agency is considering the financial future. This is even more crucial if you’re freelancing on your own.

Given these pressures, it’s not unusual to feel like you need to grin and bear bad clients. However, it doesn’t need to be that way.

Firing ill-fitting clients isn’t a professional faux-pas. On the contrary, it’s an essential skill for any web professional. Learning how to gracefully part ways can be key to your organization’s success.

One reason for this is basic time management. Web projects can be extensive undertakings. If you spend hours crafting the perfect project for a client who can’t pay or returns endless edits, your time is losing value.

It’s not just about the money, either. Constructive criticism is a necessary part of any job. However, when that starts to turn into verbal abuse, team morale is likely to dip. It can be hard to produce quality work when it always ends in a roadblock.

Furthermore, a current bad client can affect your future choices. If you spend enough time in an unhealthy working relationship, you could lose the ability to set professional boundaries. It can lead to you taking on more clients who don’t meet your expectations.

Perhaps most importantly, you deserve fair treatment! Clients pay you for your work, not for putting up with their unreasonable demands. Thus, feeling confident in ending bad partnerships is critical for both your business and your mental health.

5 Signs It’s Time to Fire a Bad Client

If you’re not sure about firing a client, consider how often they display any of the following signs of a doomed professional relationship.

1. Payment Is Late, Inconsistent, or Missing

Let’s start with a big one: payment. We probably don’t have to tell you that money matters. If you’re not earning your rightful pay for a hard day’s work, you could run into financial problems.

Firing a non-paying client probably seems obvious. After all, it’s pretty unlikely that you’d keep working with a person who refuses to compensate you at all.

However, it’s not always that simple. The tricky part comes when the paychecks aren’t missing but are inconsistent.

For example, let’s say a client is very behind on completing your invoices. They always pay you in the end but the payments are never on time. This lack of reliable income can be extremely stressful. Nevertheless, you might not be willing to part with an (eventually) guaranteed paycheck.

One resolution is to pause the partnership instead of ending it. You could explain to your client that you’re happy to restart your work as soon as they resolve all of their outstanding payments. Using overdue balance fees can also be effective.

If you use this strategy, be sure to keep your professional invoices simple and organized. That way, you can clearly demonstrate what each client owes you. Microsoft Office, for example, has a wide variety of helpful templates:

Nevertheless, you might prefer to do away with financial uncertainty altogether. If a client pays you inconsistently and you’d rather not constantly hound them for your fair share, it might be time to say goodbye.

2. Expectations and Compensation Don’t Match Up

As a web professional, you’re probably intimately familiar with the value of your work. This applies to both the price tag on your tools and the cost of your time.

However, not all clients understand these costs. Someone may have sky-high expectations of a gorgeous web page but not the means to pay for it.

This situation can happen because the client doesn’t fully understand web design or development. As such, the associated charges may also be a mystery. If it’s not their area of expertise, they may just be experiencing sticker shock.

If you think this is the case, we’d recommend waiting to fire them. These types of clients may be more receptive to your prices if you can explain them. Consider carving out time for this task during client onboarding.

This is also a convincing reason to establish a solid pricing structure for your services. That way, you can set a policy for your payment expectations.

However, sometimes a partner is not convinced by these measures. You might even run into those who claim that other professionals would do the same job for much less pay. The Twitter parody account A Bad Client pokes fun at this concept:

Try not to get sucked into the competition. If a client is constantly haggling for unreasonably lower prices, you may be better off letting them go.

3. There Are No Successful Compromises

With any client, there’s bound to be some back-and-forth with web design projects. This can be a healthy system of feedback for all involved.

However, striking a balance between your professional opinion and the client’s thoughts can admittedly be tricky. It’s normal to run into a few workplace disagreements from time to time. The real problems arise when compromises become more common than agreements.

A constant inability to compromise can put the whole project in jeopardy. The entire process could stall, remaining unfinished and leaving everyone in limbo. If you don’t want to abandon a project halfway through, keep an eye out for this sign right from the start.

On the other hand, you may be able to push through and finish the work with begrudging compromises on both sides. However, this situation isn’t likely to produce a result anyone is happy with. As such, it can be a huge waste of time for all involved.

Nevertheless, sometimes a lack of compromise is no one’s fault. You can have professional differences with even the most friendly, cooperative clients. However hard it may be, firing them can be the best decision for all of you in this situation.

If you’re trying to avoid these issues altogether, consider brushing up on your client communication skills. Prompt, clear messages can go a long way toward preventing creative mismatches before they become problems.

4. Constructive Criticism Is Replaced With Verbal Harassment

You’re probably used to constructive criticism of your projects. Clients may reasonably disapprove of some of your work. If they can respectfully communicate their concerns, it usually doesn’t pose an issue.

Unfortunately, not all customers understand this concept. Their emotions may get the better of them, leading to full-scale insults. This can be especially true if they’re emotionally invested in the project. Some examples of potential verbal abuse include:

• Attacks on your character
• Valid criticism that’s communicated through insults
• A disproportionately large reaction to a small mistake

Nobody likes to be harassed. However, the experience can be particularly confronting in a professional relationship. When you rely on someone for a paycheck, it can be hard to stick up for yourself.

Nevertheless, remember that it’s essential to defend yourself. While it might not be easy, you need to be your own advocate. Try to address any issues of ill-treatment as soon as they pop up to help prevent escalation.

You can start by stating that you understand the client is upset. Then, follow this up by firmly telling them that such treatment is flatly unacceptable.

If this doesn’t change their behavior, feel free to fire that customer. There’s no shame in walking away from a toxic work environment and finding other high-paying clients.

5. The Client Doesn’t Know What They Want

When we say that a client “doesn’t know what they want”, we’re not necessarily talking about someone who has questions. It’s normal for a customer to be curious about how a project will develop. In fact, a degree of flexibility might make them easier to work with.

However, a lack of clarity can be an issue if it applies to everything. A client who has no clear goal for their website can be a real headache – it’s nearly impossible to provide the right result to someone who doesn’t know what that looks like.

This, in turn, can lead to a wide variety of complications. If a client only figures out what they wanted after the final product is done, you could be forced to redo the same work.

Unsure clients might also request several pieces of spec work. Spec work is any creative effort sent to a client before payment is guaranteed.

While some creative opportunities are legitimate, you risk guiding a client for free. There may also be ownership issues with any work produced. For more information on these potential pitfalls, check out the NO!SPEC website:

To avoid an uncertain client, try to establish concrete goals together early on. If they can’t vocalize what they need from you and aren’t responsive to your advice, ending your working relationship is reasonable. As a bonus, it can also help streamline your development projects.

How to Fire a Bad Client (In 3 Steps)

If any of the above signs hit close to home, it might be time to fire that bad client. Here are three steps to help guide you through the process.

Step 1: Fulfill Any Remaining Contractual Obligations

Before you fire a client, ensure that any contractual obligations have been fully met. Try to double-check that you haven’t forgotten even the smallest promise.

This step serves a few purposes. Perhaps the most obvious is that it prevents any legal repercussions from breaking your agreement.

However, it also makes sure you’ll get the agreed-upon payment for your work. Moreover, your reputation as a freelancer is valuable – holding up your end of the contract even under stress demonstrates your reliability to future clients.

To complete this step successfully, you’ll have to be on top of your document organization. One powerful tool for generating, customizing, and storing client contracts is Bonsai:

Bonsai will help you stay on the same page as your clients every step of the way. If you neatly lay out all expectations from the beginning, it’ll be easier to ensure that you meet all contractual requirements.

While you’re finishing your projects, try to avoid taking on any extra assignments from the client – no matter how small or well-paying. If you’re having a hard time resisting, try to remember the reason you’re firing the customer in the first place.

If any issues prevent you from meeting a contractual obligation,  reach out to the client as soon as possible. Situations with legal parameters can be tough to navigate, making open communication critical.

Step 2: Make Direct and Professional Contact

Now comes the hard part: firing your client. You probably don’t need us to tell you that this situation can be uncomfortable for everyone involved. As such, it’s important to keep your message direct and professional.

Firm and decisive communication prevents misunderstandings. If you’re ready to fire a client, you probably have gone past the point of resolution. Being direct can make this message clear to your customer and avoid dragging the situation out.

However, it’s equally important to be as professional as possible. It may be difficult if you’re firing a verbally abusive client. Still, it’s no less essential: staying calm can prevent any further escalation or bad feelings.

As for the format, an email may be the best choice. The fact that it’s written can help you address multiple issues. You can also edit the content before you send it.

If you’re struggling with the exact wording, consider keeping it simple. Feel free to limit the message to a few explanatory sentences and confirm that you’ll address any outstanding work.

Finally, be prepared for a few follow-up questions. Clients may want to understand the process for the future. Respectfully addressing them to the best of your ability can ease the transition for both of you.

Step 3: Set New Boundaries to Avoid Similar Future Situations

Some bad clients are simply impossible to work with. There are no effective strategies to deal with them, and all you can do is fire them and move on.

However, this is far from a universal truth. Sometimes, placing a few boundaries early on in the partnership can prevent roadblocks. Use your outcomes with clients to reassess your client-facing policies before starting a search for more business.

For example, let’s say you just fired a client who didn’t pay you on time. If you want to avoid another mountain of unread invoices, consider refusing to take on new projects until the previous one is fully compensated.

If there was confusion after the firing process, that could also be a learning experience. Consider writing your next contract with specific instructions on what the client can expect when and if the relationship ends. With a clear reference to point to, you can cut down on miscommunication.

Finally, try not to get discouraged. Almost every web professional needs to fire a client from time to time. It doesn’t mean that all clients are challenging – it simply shows that you understand the value of building positive working relationships.

Conclusion

When it comes to customers, the difference between “challenging” and “impossible” can be hard to spot. The decision is ultimately subjective. Fortunately, there are a few hallmarks of bad clients that you can keep in mind to guide your choices.

In this article, we covered five of the most prominent signs that it’s time to fire a bad client:

1. Inconsistent or missing compensation
2. Unrealistic expectations given their budget
3. An inability to reach a successful compromise
4. Verbal harassment instead of constructive criticism
5. A lack of any clear project goals

Do you have any questions about firing a bad client? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post 5 Signs It’s Time to Fire a Bad Client (And How to Do It) appeared first on Beaver Builder.

In this post, we’ll reveal nine tools you can use to grow your web design business. These applications can help you automate and streamline your processes, scale up your operations, and ultimately increase revenue. Let’s dive in!

1. Beaver Builder (For Building Beautiful Website Pages)

Beaver Builder is our WordPress plugin that enables designers to build beautiful website pages quickly and efficiently:

This page builder plugin has a range of features that are useful for web designers, including:

• A drag and drop front-end builder
• Landing page templates
• Content page templates
• Multiuse capabilities
• Prebuilt rows

Beaver Builder can be useful for creating website pages and landing pages for your marketing efforts. You can also use it for client-facing projects. You don’t need to spend hours custom building simple pages for them to look professional. Instead, you can drag and drop elements to create your templates. This can streamline your processes and save a lot of time.

To get started, head over to our website and sign up. Pricing plans start at just $99 per month. You’ll then be prompted to download and install the plugin. Once this is done, you’re ready to start building beautiful website pages.

2. Trello (For Team Collaboration)

Trello is a collaboration tool that can be perfect for busy teams working on various client projects:

With Trello, you can create a new board for each client and assign tasks to different team members using its innovative card functionality. This platform makes it easy to manage and visualize the timeline of your projects. You can also share boards with your clients so they can keep track of your progress.

Additionally, you can use Trello to streamline tasks like:

• Communicating with team members
• Sharing documents
• Setting and managing deadlines

Seamless team collaboration is essential for a fast-paced web design business. When managing a range of projects at one time, things can easily become disorganized. Handling all of your communication in one effective tool like Trello can help your operations run more smoothly, and make all areas of your business more efficient.

You can start using Trello for free by simply signing up for an account on the website. As your team grows, you may need to scale up to one of the paid plans, starting at $10 per month.

3. InVision (For Design Prototyping)

InVision is a popular tool for helping clients visualize their designs. It can also improve the ideation process for both clients and designers. It enables users to create complex user interface prototypes, animations, and more:

A few of InVision’s helpful features include:

• Seamless integration with collaboration tools like Slack
• Project planning tools
• Sketching and annotation tools
• A digital canvas

The standout feature of this design tool, however, is the collaboration element. InVision makes it easy to share prototypes with clients and team members, so you can use it to exchange ideas and feedback on a single platform.

To get started with InVision, sign up for a free account and test out some of the features for yourself. If you’d like to upgrade to allow your full team to access the tool, you can do so by opting for the Pro plan ($7.95 per user per month). For larger businesses, you can contact InVision to create a custom enterprise plan.

4. Proposify (For Creating and Submitting Proposals)

Proposify is proposal creation software that makes it easy to create professional client plans that help your team close deals:

This tool helps you manage every detail of proposal submission, from creation and management to progress tracking. Some of the key features of Proposify include:

• A content library to streamline the proposal creation process
• A design editor that enables you to put your business’ unique stamp on each proposal
• User roles functions to help you to manage who has access to your proposals and when
• Customer relations management integrations, such as HubSpot and Salesforce

Submitting proposals to clients is a necessary but time-consuming task for web design businesses. Tools like Proposify can help simplify the process, and ensure that your team creates consistent and professional plans for every customer.

You can try Proposify for free. If you want to allow access to your team, consider one of the paid pricing plans that start at $49 per month.

5. FreshBooks (For Invoicing)

Keeping up with your financial obligations is important, but it doesn’t have to take priority over your design and creative processes. If your business is still scaling up and you don’t have a dedicated team member to deal with finances, FreshBooks may be just what you need:

FreshBooks is invoicing and accounting software that can help you manage a range of tasks, including:

• Invoicing
• Estimates
• Time tracking
• Proposals

FreshBooks can be a great choice for your web design business because it can help you manage all areas of your company’s finances. Not only will it help you stay up to date with your client invoicing, but it lets you time-track freelance employees so you can make sure that they’re paid fairly for every hour they work.

If you’re interested in trying out FreshBooks, you can sign up for a free trial. After that, there is a range of pricing options available, starting from $7.50 per month.

6. Google Analytics (For Website Analytics)

Google Analytics is the gold standard for web analytics, and it’s something that almost any digital business can take advantage of:

You can use it to track website traffic and inform your marketing strategy. For web design businesses, optimizing your website to generate new client leads is very important. If you’re using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to reach new clients, Google Analytics can help you to understand how successful your marketing efforts are and how you can improve them.

These are a few of the best features of Google Analytics:

• Campaign management tools
• Custom, detailed reports
• Goal tracking tools

You can also use Google Analytics to help you plan new designs for your clients. The platform helps you gain a deeper understanding of how sites can be improved from a user experience perspective.

Google Analytics is free and very simple to use. It’s a tool used by website owners worldwide, so there are many online guides to help you learn the ropes.

7. Mailchimp (For Email Marketing)

Mailchimp can be an essential tool for businesses that rely on email marketing to connect with new clients:

Email marketing can be a sustainable way for web design businesses to find new clients and nurture relationships with current ones. Mailchimp can make these important tasks a lot easier. It offers a selection of features that can help with this, such as:

• Audience management
• Creative tools
• Marketing automation
• Insight and analytics

Using Mailchimp, you can optimize your email content and set up automated schedules. Then, you can analyze the open rates and click data to see which of your marketing strategies are most effective. As such, the platform can be invaluable to keep your business relevant and promote your web design services.

You can get started with Mailchimp’s free plan, which offers customer relationship management and email marketing tools for up to 2,000 contacts. For larger businesses, you can choose a paid plan that starts from $9.99 per month.

8. Buffer (For Social Media Marketing)

Social media marketing is a great way to build brand awareness and find new customers. However, it can be time-consuming trying to manage different accounts and create content. With Buffer, you can streamline many of these digital advertising tasks:

Buffer offers a range of useful solutions that help web design businesses make the most of social media, such as:

• A single dashboard to plan, publish and schedule your social media content
• Social media insights to improve your marketing strategy.
• A space to manage comments and engagement with your followers

Using Buffer can transform social media from a hassle for your business into an essential marketing asset. You can design targeted campaigns and track their progress to see which strategies gain you new clients. Additionally, you can build a better relationship with your followers and hence improve your brand’s image.

You can get started with Buffer by signing up for the free plan or you can try a free trial of the Essentials plan, which costs $5 per social media channel per month.

9. Unsplash (For Free Images)

Content such as blogs and social media posts plays an essential role in marketing for many web design businesses. However, it’s important to manage the cost of this content creation to ensure the highest possible return on investment. That’s where Unsplash comes in:

Unsplash is an extensive database of free images that you can use in web design-related content. They can be easily downloaded and used to create professional content. With this platform, you don’t need to pay for licensing rights or attribute the photographer in many cases.

Here are some more advantages of using Unsplash:

• Categorized images
• High-resolution photos
• One-click downloads

To use Unsplash, you don’t even need an account. Head over to the website, search for a keyword related to the image you want, and choose your favorite. You can download the graphics in a range of sizes to suit your needs. Then, you can use them when designing client pages or promoting your own company.

Conclusion

Successfully growing a web design business to six figures doesn’t happen overnight – it takes a lot of time and effort. However, using the right tools can make it easier. Investing in useful software solutions can help you streamline your operations and acquire new clients.

Here’s a recap of the nine best tools to grow your web design business:

1. Beaver Builder: Our drag-and-drop plugin enables you to create beautiful website pages for your clients with minimal effort.
2. Trello: This collaboration platform enables your team to keep abreast of client projects and communicate easily.
3. InVision: With this solution, you get multiple sophisticated tools to create prototypes and communicate with your customers.
4. Proposify: This tool enables you to create professional client proposals that can land you more contracts.
5. FreshBooks: It has multiple accounting tools to help you stay on top of your business’ finances.
6. Google Analytics: This free tool enables you to monitor website performance and optimize your digital marketing strategy.
7. Mailchimp: It offers powerful email automation tools and a user-friendly interface to perfect your email marketing strategy.
8. Buffer: This platform has social media marketing tools to help you reach and engage with new clients.
9. Unsplash: It has a database of high-quality and free images that you can use when designing web content and marketing materials.

Do you have any questions about how to grow your web design business? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post 9 Best Tools to Grow Your Web Design Business appeared first on Beaver Builder.

In this post, we’ll look at a few factors to consider when shopping around for design software. We’ll then share eight essential tools for crafting eye-catching websites and wowing your clients. Let’s get started!

An Introduction to Web Design Tools (And What to Look for as an Agency)

Web design tools can help you streamline the creative process and create stunning websites. There is a huge variety of free and premium web design products to choose from. These range from complete platforms right through to specialist software such as design frameworks and wireframing tools.

When shopping for any software, it’s important to consider factors such as ease of use, the level of support available, and the cost. However, as a successful agency, you’ll design multiple client sites. This means your needs will differ from a designer who only works on their own website.

As an agency, the key to maximizing your profits is to create beautiful designs, fast. For this reason, you should prioritize tools that offer time-saving features such as prebuilt templates and themes.

The ability to re-use your designs can boost your productivity – and your profits. For example, you might create templates for different categories of websites, such as ecommerce or portfolio sites. You can then start each new project with a template, rather than a blank slate. 

The perfect web design tool varies depending on your agency’s unique needs and your target clients. It’s a good idea to create a wish list before you start exploring the available options. This makes you less susceptible to marketing and advertising claims and gives you the best chance of finding your ideal web design tool.

8 Essential Web Design Tools for Agencies

We’re not going to pretend that creating wow-worthy websites is easy. However, the right tools can help you bring your creative vision to life. With this in mind, here are eight essential web design tools for agencies.

1. Better Proposals

Writing web design proposals is often the first step to winning new customers and securing follow-up work. Here, Better Proposals can be your secret weapon. This tool promises to help you create professional-looking proposals in minutes, thanks to its library of over 200 customizable templates:

After crafting the perfect proposal, you can save the best bits to your content library. This enables you to build a portfolio of reusable elements that you can use to push prospects further down the sales funnel. 

Knowing when to follow up on potential clients can be tricky. However, Better Proposals will notify you when a prospect reads your submission. This insight can help you time your reminders and follow-up communication to perfection. 

Better Proposals also gives your prospects an encrypted web link so clients can sign off on your submission and pay your fee directly from the proposal document.

Features:

• A seamless, all-in-one editor
• A range of ready-made cover designs
• Instant communication with your prospects, via the live chat integration
• Detailed analytics, including conversion rates by template
• Support for various payment gateways, including PayPal and Stripe
• The ability to reduce document turnaround time with legally-binding digital signatures 
• Integration with popular project management tools including Trello, and Salesforce

Pricing: Subscriptions start at $13 per user per month when billed annually. A 14-day free trial is also available. 

2. Basecamp

Basecamp is an online collaboration tool that you can use to organize and execute your projects. You can set up a “basecamp” for each project, then track all of the deadlines, documents, discussions, and tasks associated with that project:

Basecamp is ideal for organizing your team. It can also be used to promote transparency between your agency and the client. By tracking your activity in Basecamp, your client can follow the design process every step of the way. They can even post their feedback on the project. 

When you’re collaborating with multiple people, it’s easy to get into a situation where important information is scattered across multiple email threads and documents. Basecamp provides a single location where you can store all of the data and content related to your project.

Features:

• The ability to share files, documents, images, and spreadsheets with ease
• Real-time group chat
• Automatic check-in questions to help you save time
• Quick access to upcoming deadlines, overdue work, and other important events
• The ability to create a schedule for important tasks and then subscribe to those events in Google Calendar, iCal, or Outlook

Pricing: Basecamp Business is priced at $99 per month. At the time of writing, they are also offering a 30-day free trial. 

3. Balsamiq

If you’re going to really wow your clients, then you’ll want to design websites that are beautiful, engaging, and easy to use. This means putting User Experience (UX) at the heart of your agency.

Wireframing is an essential aspect of UX design. If you skip this step, you may end up with a site that looks nice but delivers a poor experience. For example, the navigation may be confusing, or the interactive elements may be positioned in awkward locations.

Balsamiq is a rapid low-fidelity wireframing tool that aims to reproduce the experience of sketching on a notepad or whiteboard:

By encouraging you to focus on structure and content, Balsamiq helps you avoid unnecessary discussions about the finer design details. This is essential for delivering a wireframe for client feedback and approval in a minimum amount of time.

After you’re happy with your design, you can share it as a static image or even as an interactive PDF. This is ideal for soliciting client feedback or getting client sign-off on your design.

Features:

• An intuitive drag-and-drop editor
• The ability to create interactive prototypes for demonstrations and usability testing
• Hundreds of built-in and community-generated UI controls and icons, accessible via Wireframes To Go
• The ability to re-use your designs by creating template, masters, and component libraries
• Integration with Atlassian Confluence and the Jira issue tracking software

Pricing: The Balsamiq cloud app is available from $9 per month. Annual subscriptions start at $90. 

4. Sketch 

As a successful design agency, you’ll likely spend much of your time sketching different ideas for various clients. Sketch is a vector graphics editor that can help you create these early drafts more quickly, and bring your rough ideas into sharper focus:

Sketch makes it easy to reuse common User Interface (UI) assets and components, via its Symbols feature. If you’re working on multiple designs for the same client, then Symbols can also help you maintain a consistent UI across all of your designs. 

As an agency, you often collaborate with your co-workers and clients. Sketch can keep everyone on the same page with a shared libraries workspace so you can share components. You can collaborate on the same document in real time and access a browsable version history.

Features:

• The ability to create your design in a powerful, native macOS editor
• The option to invite unlimited viewers to test your prototypes, and provide feedback via the Sketch web application
• Fine-grained control over the updates and document versions that you share with external stakeholders
• Quick downloads of production-ready assets with a single click
• The ability to export your design as an interactive prototype

Pricing: Sketch is priced at $9 per editor per month, with unlimited free viewers. If you require additional features, you can contact Sketch about their Business plan. 

5. UXPin

UXPin is a UX platform that aims to bridge the gap between designers and developers by enabling them to use the same components. These items are all synced to the same Git repository, so you can be confident that your entire agency is using the same components.

When it’s time to pass your design over to your programming team, UXPin boasts a seamless developer handoff tool:

UXPin places an emphasis on creating designs that feel like the finished product. Some of its more advanced features include the ability to dynamically update text elements, add animations, and even use code to validate user input. These features can help the client evaluate your designs more effectively.

If you used Sketch during the early design phase, then you’ll be pleased to learn that UXPin is fully compatible. You can import your Sketch files into UXPin and immediately continue working on your design.

Features:

• A single location where you can collect feedback, share specifications, and get stakeholder sign-off 
• The option to create conditional interactions
• The ability to store user preferences to use in your prototypes
• Easy previews of your prototypes on iOS and Android by scanning a QR code
• The ability to create computational components using JavaScript

Pricing: Various UXPin plans are available, ranging from $24-$83 per editor per month. Alternatively, you can contact the sales team to discuss their Enterprise plan.

6. Adobe Photoshop

If your agency specializes in creating digital artwork, then Adobe Photoshop may be the perfect solution. This powerful platform is ideal for a wide range of design tasks, including digital painting, animation, and photo editing:

Despite all of its enterprise-grade functionality, Adobe Photoshop also strives to be user-friendly. With its system of simple sliders and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered tech, Photoshop enables you to perform complex design tasks, fast. This includes removing a background, banishing imperfections, and even changing someone’s facial expression. 

As with many of the tools on this list, you can invite other people to edit your Photoshop documents. This is ideal for collaborating as a team and provides an easy way to share drafts and finished designs with your clients.

Features: 

• Unlimited layers for creating complex and stunning web designs
• An easy way to cut distracting parts of your images with Content-Aware Fill
• A wide range of artistic effects with Photoshop Brushes
• Smart features such as Object Selection and Select Subject, which enable you to combine and refine your visuals
• The ability to work on the same design across the web, desktop, and even your iPad

Pricing: Photoshop for desktop and iPad is priced at $31.49 per month when paid monthly. A prepaid annual subscription comes in at $239.88 per year.

7. Beaver Builder

Beaver Builder is a drag-and-drop page builder that you can use to create world-beating websites without having to write a single line of code. Using this tool, your designers can build entire websites, potentially without the help of a specialist development team:

As a successful agency, you want to create stunning and eye-catching designs. However, a website’s design can also impact its performance.

With 40 percent of people unwilling to wait longer than three seconds for a website to load, it’s essential that your designs are fast and responsive. The good news is that Beaver Builder has no issues generating layouts and designs that load quickly and perform well. 

To help meet the specific needs of design agencies, Beaver Builder offers a dedicated Agency package ($399), which includes the Beaver Builder Theme. You can use this framework to edit your theme via the familiar WordPress Customizer. This gives you total control over your design and puts you in a strong position to meet the client’s exact requirements.

The Agency package also supports white-labeling. This enables you to replace all of the Beaver Builder branding with your own agency name and logo. This way, you can provide a more consistent and professional experience for your clients.

In addition, as an Agency it’s worth investing in the add-plugin Beaver Themer. This tool uses Beaver Builder to create custom layouts and templates for the portions of WordPress websites normally controlled by the theme: headers, footers, archive and single post layouts, 404 and search pages, and banners.

Features: 

• Mobile-friendly, responsive layouts
• A flexible set of ready-made content modules
• Prebuilt layout templates
• The ability to design your own full-page layouts, rows, and modules, and then save them for easy re-use
• The option to build your own custom modules. 
• Designed to work with “almost any” WordPress theme

Pricing: You can download Beaver Builder Lite for free. Professional licenses for Beaver Builder range from $99-$399 per year with a 40% discount on renewal.

8. UpdraftPlus

Sometimes a client wants you to redesign an existing website. Even with extensive planning, you can encounter unexpected errors when rolling out a new design. Your client might even want revisions and request that you restore their website to its original design.

A backup plugin can help you ensure that you’re prepared for every eventuality. By creating a backup before editing a live website, you’ll be able to quickly restore that site to its original state, if required.

UpdraftPlus is one of the most popular backup plugins for WordPress. You can use the free version of UpdraftPlus to back up directly to popular services including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon S3. If you upgrade to the paid version, you’ll get some additional options, including Microsoft OneDrive, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Storage:

As an agency, you may also want to take a look at the UpdraftClone feature. This enables you to easily create a cloned site. This is perfect for testing new designs and sharing them with your clients.

Features:

• The ability to restore your backups with a single click
• An automatic backup schedule
• Database encryption (Premium)
• Incremental backups (Premium)
• An easy way to duplicate and migrate websites, thanks to the premium Migrator feature

Pricing: You can download the core UpdraftPlus plugin for free. Alternatively, you can purchase an UpdraftPlus Premium Agency subscription for $145 the first year, then $87 in subsequent years.

Conclusion 

When inspiration strikes, the right tools help make your creative vision a reality. You can also use these tools to share your designs with your development team and the client. This makes feedback and revisions a breeze. 

If you’re in the market for web design tools, then a page builder such as Beaver Builder is a great place to start. After creating your designs using our intuitive drag-and-drop editor, you can make secure backups of your work with the UpdraftPlus plugin. You can also gather valuable client feedback via project management tools such as Basecamp. 

Do you have questions about any of the web design tools mentioned in this post? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post 8 Essential Web Design Tools for Agencies appeared first on Beaver Builder.

In this article, we’ll discuss why consistently offering fresh content is essential for audience engagement. Then we’ll give you three key tips to help your next automated campaign succeed. Let’s jump right in!

Why You Should Consistently Post Content (And Automate It)

Let’s be honest: blogging isn’t always easy. Crafting quality content that’s tailored to your audience can be difficult. Doing so on a regular schedule is even harder. However, providing a steady stream of recent posts is a worthwhile investment.

One reason for this is simple opportunity. Every piece you publish gives your readers the chance to learn more about your brand. Whether you’re exploring an industry trend or unveiling a new product, frequent updates increase your odds of finding leads.

However, it’s not just about finding new readers. It can also be hard to build a loyal fan base without updates. If you’re not regularly producing content, your users may seek a more consistent experience elsewhere rather than wait for your articles.

Of course, even your biggest fans might not visit your home page as a part of their daily routine. That’s where automated email marketing comes in. This can help you regularly send relevant posts directly to your users’ inboxes.

There is no need to curate a unique weekly message – just enter your parameters and let your chosen tools do the rest. With this powerful strategy, you can easily streamline your published content.

How to Streamline Your Published Content via Email (3 Key Tips)

Here are three ways to make the most of automated email content marketing:

1. Account for Automation When Planning Your Content Schedule

Using automated emails can be an effective way to maximize your content’s reach. However, varying the topics and formats of your posts can make these regular messages even more dynamic. As such, we suggest that you create a posting plan with your automation schedule in mind.

For example, let’s say you send a regular email containing the past week’s posts. If they’re all articles, your users could be intimidated by the wall of text. As such, you might consider including at least one media post per week to break up the longer articles.

You may also want to maintain a reserve of ‘evergreen’ content in case of posting disruptions. Evergreen articles don’t rely on current events, so you can share them at any time. As such, you can have a few on hold without worrying about fading relevancy.

Finally, you may also want to plan your subjects ahead of time. The streamlined nature of a mailing list means that your readers will be able to consume several posts at once. Therefore, you might want to include various topics to give them more of your content to choose from.

2. Research Your Audience to Optimize Automated Content

Automation can be powerful, but every audience has different tastes. You might find that certain post parameters produce more successful email campaigns for your brand. Consider making the most of your automation by testing content for your unique viewers.

For example, let’s say you’re trying a new email strategy to drive traffic to your sales page. You can use A/B testing to see how successful your efforts are as compared to a control group:

Your results may even reveal two distinctly successful strategies. If this is the case, you might consider setting up a second automated mailing list to take advantage of both approaches.

Finally, we also recommend that you make a habit of checking your email analytics. This can help you understand how your users’ opinions change over time. If you see any significant decreases in traffic or engagement, you can quickly correct them with targeted audience testing.

3. Choose Automation Solutions That Simplify Sharing Content

Your automation tools will likely play a key role in your marketing plan. As such, you’ll want to choose effective yet easy-to-use programs. For instance, the popular MailOptin plugin comes with a handy Posts Email Digest feature.

This feature comes with a variety of parameters to customize. As such, you’re in complete control. You can send out a list based on criteria as broad as your most recent posts or as specific as a single tag:

Once you’ve set it up, the plugin will send regular emails that fit your chosen settings. You can also create more than one mailing list. This segmentation can help you achieve specific marketing goals, such as regularly sharing web design examples with potential clients.

Of course, it’s important to note that Posts Email Digest extends your existing content. As such, it (or any similar tool) will be most successful when your posts are properly published, categorized, and tagged. To do that, you can consider using a publishing checklist.

Conclusion

Consistent content is a must for most websites. However, delivering it effectively can be a challenge. Fortunately, you can set your posts up for success by streamlining them via email automation.

In this article, we gave you three tips to help you nail your next automated email marketing campaign:

1. Take automation into account when you’re mapping out your site’s posting schedule.
2. Conduct frequent audience research so you can fine-tune your approach.
3. Choose automation solutions that simplify sharing content.

Do you have any questions about streamlining content via email? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post How to Streamline Your Published Content via Email (3 Key Tips) appeared first on Beaver Builder.

In this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the best tools for freelance web designers. Our goal is to cover different types of services that can reduce time spent micromanaging parts of your work, so that you can focus on actual web design. Let’s get to it!

1. Assistant Pro

Being organized and establishing systematic workflows is a crucial part of running any business. Assistant.Pro is like a filing cabinet for WordPress assets. You can use it to store and organize media, WooCommerce products, page content, color libraries, code snippets and prebuilt assets from a variety of different popular page builders like Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Divi. The cloud storage interface connects easily with any WordPress site using a plugin.
Price: The free plan is an awesome solution for most sole proprietor WordPress developers. Upgrade to a Personal or Team account to gain access to private libraries, team accounts and team libraries.

2. Harvest (For Time Tracking)

As a freelance web designer, you’ll likely get paid by the hour for a lot of your projects. This means that you’ll need to track how much time you spend working on each task. However, you may not always remember to do this.

This is where Harvest comes in. This time-tracking app enables you to set up different tasks and track the time you spend working on each one. You can track time across days or weeks, and the app will even send you reminders if it notices that you’re not using it.

What makes Harvest one of the best tools for freelance web designers is its seamless integration with a lot of other programs. For instance, you can invoice hours worked directly via PayPal or Stripe. Moreover, the app integrates with invoicing software such as QuickBooks Online, and Xero.

Price: You can get started with Harvest for free, or upgrade to the Pro version for $12 per month.

3. QuickBooks (For Invoicing)

One of the most challenging aspects of being a freelancer is that you’re in charge of your own finances. For instance, you’ll need to keep track of which client owes you for what project. You’ll also need to send invoices and ensure that you complete your tax returns accurately. If you work on a lot of projects at once, managing your finances can eat up a lot of your time.

QuickBooks offers a suite of tools that enable you to easily generate invoices and keep track of pending payments. It will also help you simplify your tax records. The software can even sync with your bank (depending on your location). Thus, it can also help you track expenses if you need a bit more help with your finances.

As your roster of freelance clients grows, keeping financial records by hand can become too cumbersome. If you’re just starting out, getting into the habit of using accounting software such as QuickBooks will pay off in spades over the long term.

Price: QuickBooks plans start at $8 per month.

4. Trello (For Project Management)

There are a lot of project management tools that you can use. However, Trello is our favorite service if you’re working as a freelance web designer. The main reason why is that Trello enables you to create multiple workspaces and share access with whomever you want.

You can use that functionality to set up unique workspaces for projects or clients. For example, you can create Trello boards to track your progress, see what tasks you have left to do, and keep clients abreast of how projects are moving along.

Trello is also one of our favorite picks due to its ease of use. As a freelancer, you shouldn’t have to spend hours learning how to use complex project management software when you could be working on your next web design. Trello’s interface and its board system are so intuitive that it should only take you a few minutes to start organizing your projects.

Price: Trello offers a free plan as well as premium options, which start at $10 per month.

5. Cushion (For Project Planning and Forecasting)

As a freelancer, you may find yourself dealing with a very unpredictable schedule. For instance, you might be swimming in work one month, only to face a drought the next one. On top of that, payments will vary depending on the type of project. This means that typically your income will vary from month to month.

Cushion helps you manage your workload more efficiently. It does this by enabling you to see upcoming and current projects from a bird’s eye view. That way, you can see if you’re able to take on more work. You can also determine whether you’ll need to hustle to find more clients, especially if you can see that your schedule will open up soon.

Moreover, Cushion lets you “forecast” how much money you might earn over time by assigning values to projects. You can also use this service to generate invoices and accept credit card and ACH payments (via Stripe). The app even lets you keep track of client’s behavior (such as how long they take to pay), so you can take that into account in future forecasts.

Price: Cushion starts at $10 per month.

6. Bonsai (For Contract Management)

As a freelance web designer, contracts will become your best friends. Contracts are your cover when it comes to defining the scope of a project, your rates, payment terms, what you’re expected to deliver and when, and pretty much everything else.

If you’re new to freelancing, you might want to wing it and skip contracts altogether. However, take our word for it – these legal documents are necessary. Setting up contracts doesn’t mean you need to hire a lawyer, though. That’s where Bonsai comes in. This service enables you to generate contracts and proposals using comprehensive and easily customizable templates.

Bonsai asks for details about your project and the work that you do, and then helps you create a contract that you can send to your client. On top of that, you can use Bonsai to store information about clients and send invoices. Thus, this is a powerful all-in-one platform for freelance web designers.

Price: Bonsai plans start at $19 per month.

7. Zeplin (For Collaboration With Web Developers)

Depending on what project you’re working on, you may end up collaborating with different web developers at the same time. It’s often hard to adapt your vision to what web developers want or for them to understand your designs. Being able to collaborate with fellow professionals efficiently is an important skill.

Zeplin is one of the best tools for freelance web designers, as it takes your designs and shares them with developers on your team. It also provides information such as what colors you use, what text styles you’re working with, and individual specs for each element.

In a nutshell, Zeplin can take your finished designs and tell developers: “Hey, here’s what you need to translate that design into code”. By doing so, you can eliminate a lot of back-and-forth with developers and spend more time working on your projects. Zeplin also integrates with your favorite design software, including Photoshop, Sketch, Adobe XD, and Figma.

Price: Zeplin offers a free plan and premium options, which start at $6 per month.

8. Beaver Builder (For WordPress Web Design)

WordPress is everywhere. In fact, this popular Content Management System (CMS) powers 40% of the web. As a web designer, that means that statistically speaking, you’re going to end up working on a lot of WordPress projects.

One of the best things about using WordPress is that you get access to powerful page-building plugins such as Beaver Builder. Page builders basically enable you to combine the design and development processes into one task. You can design a full website using pre-built modules that you can easily customize and move around within pages as you wish, without needing to write a single line of code.

If you plan on focusing on WordPress sites, knowing how to use page-building plugins such as Beaver Builder will enable you to level up your services. On top of offering web design services, you may actually be able to build entire websites from the ground up, which can make you a highly sought-after freelancer.

Price: Beaver Builder licenses start at $99 per year.

Conclusion

When you think about tools for web designers, your brain might instantly go to Photoshop or Sketch. In our experience, every web designer has their favorite graphic design tool. As a freelancer, what really matters is that you have access to tools that will enable you to tackle all of the aspects of the work, beyond web design.

In practice, that means knowing how to use accounting software such as QuickBooks or time-tracking apps like Harvest. You might also want to use a project management tool such as Trello. Moreover, you could learn how to use page builder plugins like Beaver Builder. If you’re just starting out, we recommend that you check out all of the tools mentioned in this post in order to find the ones that you think can benefit you the most.

Do you have any questions about the best tools for freelance web designers? Let us know in the comments section below!

The post Best Tools for Freelance Web Designers (When You’re Just Getting Started) appeared first on Beaver Builder.