1-on-1 with Patrick is a series of web design coaching sessions for wannabe web designers.
In this episode we have Scott McKenzie from London, Canada! We discuss:
- Where Scott is at in his web design journey
- Why images mean everything for ecommerce websites
- How to choose the right web design niche for you
- Where I get most of my clients from these days
- Pricing your web design services and productizing them ASAP
- Scott’s plans for world web design agency domination
- How I’ve scaled my web design business over the past 6 years
- What is the point of my YouTube channel?
- Building websites for “free” that actually pay you back over years
- My best advice for improving your web design skills faster
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Tools & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Weebly
- Figma
- Webflow
- Canva
- Glorify
- How to price your web design services
- Building passive income into your web design business
- My Canva review
Episode Transcript
Where Scott is at in His Web Design Journey
Scott: Hey, how’s it going?
Patrick: Hey, Scott, how you doing?
Scott: Pretty good.
Patrick: Is that the university?
Scott: Not the university, just my backyard.
Patrick: Okay. Sorry. I thought I recognized. What part of Toronto do you live in?
Scott: Actually don’t live out in Toronto, actually live in London. I just say Toronto, most people you say London, they have no idea what you’re talking about. They just assume it’s England.
Patrick: Gotcha. I lived in Toronto for eight years.
Scott: Oh, nice. Yeah. I love Toronto. Been to a couple of concerts there. Stayed overnight.
Patrick: Cool. So yeah, maybe you could tell me a little bit about where you’re at with your web design journey.
Scott: So I’m pretty new. So I just started Five months or four months. I think I started by designing the website just for a family friend. They run like a antique shop, like clothing decor. Just showcase a bunch of vendors, so hoping to get that as a portfolio piece, and then use that to get into working with paying clients and scale that up to hopefully $1,000 per client eventually.
Patrick: Okay. Cool. So this is your first website you’ve toyed around with.
Scott: Yeah.
Patrick: What are you using to build the website with? I noticed you sent me a link through Figma.
Scott: Yeah, so I was using Webflow, but then I found Figma was a lot easier for designing. So Figma than Webflow is my stack.
Patrick: Interesting. I don’t know, like I’ve ever seen anyone use Figma before. I didn’t even, I’ve never heard it.
Scott: Oh really? Yeah.
Patrick: Yeah. What made you choose it?
Scott: I follow this guy on Youtube and that’s what he would recommend. So I just thought, test it out. I’m curious. What do you use? A WordPress or code CSS?
Patrick: I use WordPress. Yeah. I started out with a, I started out with Weebly, but I use WordPress. I’ve used WordPress for the last three years or so now. So Figma. Okay. So what can I help you with? What are you currently struggling with the site then?
Scott: So I guess like a couple of questions I had is like, when you’re working for like a company that showcases like so many different products, like, how would you pick like a single hero image to show? I tried just showing like a picture of the store, but was that a good choice?
Patrick: So this is an actual in-person store, like a retail store where they sell clothing, correct?
Scott: Yes.
Patrick: Okay. But you’re also building, like you’re building an e-commerce store for them so people can buy their stuff online.
Scott: Yeah, that’s right.
Patrick: Okay. And they still have this store even with like COVID and everything that they’ve been able to stay open.
Scott: Yeah. Curbside pickup.
Patrick: Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah, I don’t, without knowing too much about the products or the store, I like the image that you chose. It is a fairly good summary of some of the products that are available there, but it’s a little low quality.
That’s the only issue I have. When it comes to online stores, really 90% of the sale, it’s going to be in the quality of the image. Did you take this picture of yourself?
Scott: This is from them because we have to social distance. So they’re taking the photos.
Patrick: Okay. So they’re just taking photos of the stores and sending it to you because I noticed there aren’t any images for the individual products.
Scott: Yeah. I just started with like the design and then getting it approved before actually showing the products.
Why Images Mean Everything for Ecommerce Sites
Patrick: Oh, okay. Yeah. The product images are going to be everything. There’s a really cool tool that I came across a while ago. Let me see if I can find it real quick specifically for. When you’re selling products in an online store, making the images look really good.
Scott: Okay.
Patrick: I haven’t used it, but I came across it, it looked promising. Here you go. It’s called glorify. Have you heard of it?
Scott: Does it like sharpen the images or make them?
Patrick: Based on what they claim, it does a lot more than that. It’s like uh you ever use Canva?
Scott: Oh yeah, for sure.
Patrick: So it’s Canva specifically for website product images. Like it’s a full graphic design editor. And they just have a lot of automated features, like the background removers and smart resizing and stuff like that. But I would be curious, I mean they have a free trial like everybody else does, but you might want to give that a try.
Cause you can take whatever images your client sends to you. And then just make them look a heck of a lot better because that really is going to be the sell. Is in the quality of the image. So the header image is it’s good, but I would like to see something higher quality and ideally some pictures. Maybe like a collage of a few different products, all into one header image, surrounding the heading.
Scott: I thought about doing like a flat lay. A product photo just from like above, like on a white background. That might be good.
Patrick: Yeah. So that’s the thing. If they’re going to be taking pictures of their products for you. Absolutely. What’s going to help you out is if they, yeah, they take a picture of it was just nothing in the background.
So if they take a picture of a, t-shirt just flat out, laid on a table. Ideally the table would be like one consistent color. Cause that’s going to allow it to make it a lot easier for you to then edit that picture and make it look really good online. If you can do that with individual products that would be awesome.
How to Choose the Right Web Design Niche for You
Scott: Okay. Yeah. I guess another thing I’m wondering about picking a niche, but I’m not quite sure, like what niches, like actually like care about the websites like. I noticed in your last video, like you mentioned, like lawyers, like they really care about their website because like it’s a professional career and like they care like how people perceive them.
I’ve also heard about like online fitness trainers now. There’s e-commerce like, what are some other niches that would be good to try and get into? That would be like stable pay.
Patrick: So you’re looking at getting into a web design niche.
Scott: Yeah.
Patrick: Stable pay. Yeah. I think you have to do some research into, going local, generally speaking will help a lot.
So if you’re in the London area, you can either target clients locally in London. And then you would go further niche down even further. Let’s say, just do gyms in London. Not sure how big the market would be. I know London is a smaller city, but because it’s a smaller city, you might have less competition stable income, stable niches.
Immediately what comes to mind are things like lawyers, dentists, anything in the healthcare industry, therapists, gyms, actually, I’m not even sure gyms are that stable now with COVID and everything and them having to move things online. That kind of depends more on what their online strategy is because a lot of gyms or trainers have moved to like zoom classes and stuff.
And they’re doing quite well. Actually, it’s quite the, I bet there’s a lot that aren’t even going to bother opening up physical spaces again, once this is all over, because there it’s just so much more profitable to do it online. But yeah, anything lawyers, dentists, most things in the healthcare industry, therapists, doctors.
I would say those are the most stable because those, the kind of people or industries we’re always gonna need, they don’t really suffer the roller coaster ups and downs that many others do. Like restaurants is always going to be a risky niche. Restaurants come and go constantly. And frankly, restaurant website design is not nearly as crucial as it used to be because of the stuff like Uber eats and just eat or skip the dishes and all this stuff, or these restaurants just sign up to these other platforms. They don’t even need their own branded website. Really. You’re only going after like high luxury restaurants, high end restaurants.
Those will be a little more stable, even though they can still go under just as much, but they generally will need their own website. Whereas like a lot of smaller restaurants, they’re not even going to bother. They’ll just sign up for, skip the dishes, Uber eats all this stuff and have the customers come directly to them through the platforms.
Scott: Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Patrick: Do you have anything that you’re any particular niche that you’re passionate about or do you have any interests, like specifically that you’re into that might be able to translate into a web design niche?
Scott: I’m not sure exactly at the moment. I also like just really like practice. I built like a construction website, so I think I don’t know. I think I enjoy web design, so I think I’m not too picky with niches, just as long as it’s like, there’s actually a market for it. So I think maybe I think lawyers could be interesting
Patrick: Lawyers would definitely be stable. You’ll end up dealing with some more challenges with lawyers because they’re lawyers. So they’re going to be oftentimes a little more nitpicky about the little details depending. But yeah, I mean it’s stable and they’re good paying clients.
So the thing is in order to target a niche, you have to have a proof of work. You have to have a portfolio. So whatever niche you do decide on you have to make sure you start building a few out a few websites for either. Probably gonna have to do them for really cheap or even for free, just to have something to show on your page, your landing page for that.
I found early on that a lot of my small business clients ended up being consultants of some kind, usually like financial consultants. I don’t know how that ended up that way, it just did, and it was taking off and I had enough of a portfolio to have a proof of work.
So I had targeted that niche. I have a dedicated landing page and niche of my business towards consultants specifically and still does really well.
Where I Get Most of My Clients From These Days
Scott: Okay. Is that your current niche, like at the moment?
Patrick: No. At this point I’ve grown my business to the point where I don’t need to niche. As much as I did in the beginning, the idea of niching is you start small and you work your way up.
So if you pick one niche in the beginning, or two, it doesn’t have to, oh, you don’t have to limit yourself to one, pick a couple, few. And you focus all your energy on those. You build up enough of a client base that. You start to naturally branch out to other issues because those clients that are happy, they’ll inevitably talk to their friend or their uncle or their business partner and say,
Hey, they did my website. They did a great job. And then you’ll start getting clients that just don’t fit within those current niches that you’re doing. And you’ll start to expand out a little more. All of my business comes from SEO. All my leads come from searching for me. So that means I would, at this point, I’d say I’ve maybe 60, 60, it probably only about half of my clients fit within one of those initial niches I was doing.
And the other half are just random, anything else outside of that niche. So niching the ideas in the very beginning, it’s so important. Cause you’re trying to wedge your way into a very crowded industry, very competitive industry and slowly expand it.
If you’re trying to separate two big pieces of wood that are like nailed together you can’t just take a giant wedge and go at it right away. You have to start with a very small wedge going to gently tap it in and slowly expand it, work your way out. And then it takes, and then gradually separate them. I don’t know if that illustration makes sense or not, but.
Pricing Your Web Design Services and Productizing Them ASAP
Scott: Yeah, that’s a good analogy. So how much, like how much do you charge per client? Having what’d you say five, six years in the industry or even longer?
Patrick: It all depends on the project. I noticed you said something interesting in the beginning though, you said you want to work your way up to charging a thousand dollars a client. Why a thousand dollars?
Scott: I’ve from what I’ve heard from like other like web designers, like on YouTube, like Ron Seagal, like one guy I follow, he charges like 10 grand per website.
So I’m thinking like, if he is considered a professional, I think just as a career, a thousand dollars for a website should be something very achievable. If I’m consistent with learning and picking up new skills and building my niche.
Patrick: So basically it sounds like a nice number, at least four digit. Yeah. It’s a nice goal. Yeah. I get it. So when it comes to pricing, it’s funny because this is probably the most common question I get is how much to charge and talked about it a lot. But what I’ve decided to do is I actually created a website design calculator, and I’ve put it directly on my website so that people can get an instant quote.
Don’t even have to talk to me. They get a custom quote for their specific needs based on this calculator. And I’ve been able to do that because I’ve productized my services. And over the years I found a consistent he’s amongst what people are looking for, what they need. And I’ve built up my processes to the point where I’m very fast with what I do.
You know, I’m following a lot of the same processes for these websites. So I can build these websites and a lot less time now. So the combination of those two things has helped me productize my service and basically be like this cost this cost this feature, like a blog feature will cost this the prices, this many per page.
Do you need a logo design? It’s going to be this cost here. And so then. With the calculator, they can just go through and be like, okay, yeah, I need four pages. Do I need a blog? Yes. Do I need a logo? No. And they go through, it’s only about seven or eight questions, very simple. And that gives them a quote at the very end of price.
And I did that because my. My main clients are small businesses, small business owners, my niche still, if you want to call it a niche is fast and affordable web design. I do specialize in being affordable. But affordable is a very subjective term, but one person considers affordable another consider expensive or outside of their budget.
And I found early on that I was having a lot of conversations with people. We’d have to go back and forth. They’d be like, yeah, I love this. I love your work. Like I gotta do this and that. And then you get to the price at the very end. They’re like, okay, how much? And I give them a quote and they’re like, oh, I can’t do that.
So then it wastes my time and it wastes their time. And by being able to productize my services. We avoid all of that. I get to save my time and they get to save their time because people are not just looking for you. When they’re looking for a website designer, they have to get quotes from so many.
If they’re smart about it, they’ll be doing the research and background with a lot of different web designers. And that takes time. It’s a pain web design pricing is confusing and painful. So I’ve just made it as simple as possible. And now they get a number of price at the very end. And at that point they can decide, yes, I want to move forward. Or if that’s not right for them, then they move on.
Scott: So you try to price just try and get like a agreement like with what they want and what you can provide for that amount of money.
Patrick: Are you referring to a contract or what do you mean?
Scott: I guess I’m just saying you agree on the price upfront or is it just an ongoing…
Patrick: well that’s well, that’s the beauty of the price calculator too, is that the number is there and they can decide whether they wanted it.
I’d take it or leave it. And then it’s clear they know exactly what they’re getting for their price as well, which is something that a lot of people get frustrated with because designers are not clear about what exactly people are getting for their money. So it’s putting a lot of thought and effort into how do I make it, my customer experience as amazing as possible. And as painless as possible for for people that are looking for a website.
So when it comes to someone like was it Ran Segall? Yeah, he’s got a lot of experience in the industry and he’s got a different, he’s targeting a different type of client. You can always charge $10,000 for a website. I don’t know what clients will get for that. When he charges $10,000, it’s just a number. I have no idea how many pages you get. I have no idea if that includes logos, graphics, stock images. Does it include custom illustrations? Does it include a blog, e-commerce features, like there’s a whole list of things.
So $10,000 is just a number until you start getting down into the details. Now, like I do think in general, people overpay for websites constantly. I think a lot of designers overcharge for what they’re offering. I mentioned it a lot, but I had a, I don’t know if you saw my case study about a client that paid $6,000 for a website that basically was within work.
It was garbage and they never could even launch it properly. They gave up about 80% of the job. Then they came to me telling me the whole story about and asked me to fix it. And I did, I basically rebuilt the website. For a thousand bucks and it actually worked properly because it was a well-performing website.
It was functional. It was, it did its job. It was beautiful. And it was, they paid $6,000 for a WordPress website that was over bloated with plugins. I had 32 plugins or something crazy. I had this garbage theme that was bloated with code and it was on a server that was really bad hosts.
It was just a nightmare. And no, I don’t think that’s where $6,000, if they had received a better service and a better product, then does nothing wrong things, a thousand for a website. But for that it’s too much, especially for a small business, you can do a lot better than that. But my business model it’s targeting affordable people looking for affordable web design and small business owners. But then I also make my residual income off of my hosting and maintenance afterwards, the passive income. That’s my that’s always been my focus.
Scott: So when you host the website, like you charge them for the hosting?
Patrick: Yeah, I have my own servers, so I host a maintain the site myself.
Scott: Yeah. I never even thought about that.
Patrick: People don’t and it’s important. Most designers when they’re first starting out. Don’t think about that because Once the site is launched. It’s not over, it needs to be maintained. It needs to be updated. It needs to be backed up. It needs to be protected security.
All these things need to be done but a lot of designers they’ll build this beautiful website, get a nice paycheck and then say goodbye to the client. But that’s, that should be the opposite. It shouldn’t be the beginning of a relationship, not the end. So we should, you should be getting a lot of thought as to, okay, now that the website’s done, what can, what more value and services can I offer them?
How can I keep this going? And everyone, every single person that gets a website made needs hosting. Unavoidable. The unfortunate thing is that most small business owners will go for the cheapest route and, pay four or five bucks a month for hosting on Bluehost or GoDaddy or whatever.
And it’s garbage hosting, garbage support. When things go wrong, you don’t get any of the maintenance like backups and updates and security protection. It’s just bare bones hosting, and it always causes problems. So give some thought as from the very beginning as to when you’re getting your first clients, how can I keep them as a client? So how long have you been getting into this? How old are you?
Scott: 18.
Patrick: Did you just finish high school?
Scott: One month then I’m done. I’m out.
Patrick: This is your last year. Yeah, I guess it’s may it’s not done yet. I don’t even know with COVID and everything. I don’t understand how school works for you guys now. It must be nuts.
Scott: It’s all online.
Scott’s Plans for World Web Design Agency Domination
Patrick: Yeah. So what’s your plans? And building out a massive, a web design agency?
Scott: Yeah, that’s the plan. So hopefully if I like continue doing this, get better and then maybe I can build an agency, get other people, the marketing space. Like maybe like someone with SEO skills or ad-words and build an agency. Yeah, that’s the plan.
Patrick: Resist the temptation to do everything all at once. Make sure you get really good at one thing before moving on to the next and that’s how you’ll scale it properly. Cause I talked to somebody recently who was trying to do everything all at once.
He had web design, graphic design, SEO, ad-words photography, videography. And I was like, whoa, slow down. If you’re good at everything, you’re not an expert at anything. People want experts. They’d rather pick someone that’s an expert at one of those things, then just good at all of them.
And that’s the, that’s the concept of nicheing. And if they need those other services, that’s, it’s okay to offer them. But that’s where you, like you said, you hire someone that knows what they’re doing. That’s where you build your team.
How I’ve Scaled My Web Design Business Over the Past 6 Years
Scott: So as you scaled, like your web design business, have you added people to your team or are you still like solo?
Patrick: No, I added people. Yeah, but all freelancers. I’m not really interested in. I don’t want to build a big agency. I like keeping it small and simple and I’ve actually turned down large clients because
they’re outside of the scope of what I wanted to do. I knew they’d require a large chunk of my time, even though they are very well paying to require a lot of my time. And the reason, the whole reason I got into this is that I could have control over my time. So it’s important to know why you’re doing it.
Cause that’s going to then you’ll get a clear picture of who your ideal client is. So I want to grow it at a more sustainable pace and I want to grow it in a way that makes sense for me. I’m not interested in building a big agency. So when I hire people, I’m not looking at hiring employees I’d rather hire freelancers, contractors.
The pool of freelancer talent is massive and it’s international. So there’s lots of opportunities for people around the world to get hired for their skills. And there’s lots of opportunities for people for entrepreneurs and small business owners, too. To find that talent internationally and at more affordable rates than ever. In that sense, I have a team for sure.
What is the Point of My YouTube Channel
Scott: I’m curious about your YouTube channel. Is that going into another business venture? Is that kind of a funnel to go into your web design and like your site? I guess business assets, like the calculator you’re hosting.
Patrick: Yeah. That’s a good question. Actually I think you might be the first person who’s asked me that.
It’s definitely all designed to funnel people back to my web design services. I’m not interested in making it a separate business. I’m not interested in growing a massive following or becoming a YouTuber. And you can, might even, you could probably tell that from if you’ve watched any of my videos from the quality of the editing and stuff.
Like I’m not getting into that. I like storytelling But I also actually really don’t even like being on camera. So this is like doing this stuff is the first time I’ve done that. But yeah, the other, the idea is to funnel everything back to my web design services and that’s, I get quite a lot of clients from my YouTube channel.
A lot of people that are searching for how to do something on their website to fix something, how to build a website, they find me. They see that it’s more work than they thought it was going to be. And then they just hire me instead because I’ve proven, I’ve shown through my channel that I know what I’m talking about and they feel more comfortable hiring me.
The YouTube channel is just a, it’s basically a portfolio. It’s an extension to my portfolio showing my skills and abilities.
Scott: Yeah, it sounds like a good way to get clients because like I’ve seen like a couple other like a couple of other people on YouTube doing the same thing. Like I heard one guy just like straight up say this is just like some of them for my clients to see build trust. Like they see my content and then they hired the guy.
I guess another thing I’m wondering is so I’m like very new, so what’s like a way to build trust with new clients to get I know you said just work for free or like very cheap. Is that what I should do just to build my portfolio and build trust to get paying gigs?
Patrick: Yeah. There’s no way around it. The beginning is the hardest part, because if you don’t have a portfolio to show that the portfolio is everything, people, when you talk, when you can talk all you want, but when they say, okay, can you show me some examples of your work? And you say, I don’t have any yet. Then they’re like, okay.
And then move on, and it’s like the old cliche, like how these when you’re young and you’re, are you just out of school and you’re trying to get your first job. Every employer wants someone with five years experience for an entry-level job, and you’re like how am I supposed to get the experience and get my first job?
It’s just like the, the chicken before the egg. Chicken and egg situation. So this is what I did. I did do my first few websites for either free or for really cheap, usually really cheap. I tried to, I, they either came through connections of family, friends, or friends of my own, or previous colleagues that had worked from in other industries just reached out or they knew what I was doing.
And so I, and offering it at a cheap rate kind of was able to get some people through that. But once you build the initial portfolio, that’ll help a lot. And you can slowly increase your fees from there, but there’s no way around it in the beginning. It is a struggle.
And the ones that aren’t willing to do the work for free, they will grow a lot slower from what I’ve seen, because there’s some that think you should never work for free for anything. And that’s fine. If that’s what they feel is I get the mentality, it’s the know your worth type thing, but the reality is just not that simple web design is extremely competitive.
It’s an industry that is very misunderstood and contains a lot of con artists. A lot of people looking to make a quick buck through lying about what their abilities are. And it contains a lot of subjectiveness, but one person views as beautiful, a design, another person can think is ugly. So there’s just so many variables around it that.
It’s difficult. It’s difficult to start out. And I do recommend that. Yeah. You had to do it for free or for cheap for the first few and get the snowball rolling from there.
Scott: Yeah, that makes sense.
Building Websites for “Free” That Actually Pay You Back Over Years
Patrick: Here’s the other thing, sorry. One more thing that I recommend what I did early on. Remember what I talked about? The hosting and maintenance. Okay. Yeah. I would say, listen, I’ll build your website for free. I understand. I’m just starting out and don’t have a portfolio. I, I believe I have the skills and abilities, but I don’t have anything to show for it.
So I get it. I’ll just say for free. In exchange, on one condition. I get to host and maintain your website afterwards for this month, this a monthly price. And because I’ll be like, you need to host your website somewhere. You have to. Every website needs to be hosted. But I’d also like to maintain it for that little extra fee and here’s what you get.
And I got a lot from that. And what that does, is it like, yeah, upfront you’re not making any money, you’re building a website for free, but if you keep them on as a client for hosting and maintenance, you’re making that back up over time. So if I’m charging $30 a month for hosting and maintenance, I built a website for free. If that client stays with me, that’s $360 a year.
And I have clients that I did that with in the very beginning, since I started this business six years ago that are still paying me to host and maintain their site. What’s $360 a year at times, six years, it’s over $2,000.
So did I really build the website completely for free? Yeah. In a sense, I did that labor was free, but I made it up over time through my additional source of revenue and by providing a very valuable service that everybody that has a website needs. And that’s why I always say to people, give thought to that from the very beginning, before you even build your first website, think about how you can keep them.
Don’t let them go. Don’t say, they’ll say, oh, thanks for the website. You did an awesome job. Here’s a review by the way, make sure you get a review every time a Google reviews. Huge. Don’t let them go. They still need services, even if they don’t recognize that yet.
Scott: So how did you set this up? Like with your hosting, did you have to yell at a developer or something to get hosting? Is it complicated?
Patrick: That’s something that’s definitely evolved over the years, too. So when I first started out, I was using Weebly to build all my websites and they had a dedicated section of their platform for web designers.
What that did is that you were essentially reselling, Weebly hosting. Like Weebly pro service was 30 bucks a month. Okay. That’s what you would normally pay for your website as a web designer, though, you got a discounted rate. You only paid $8 a month for every website client that you brought on, but then you can turn around and charge that $30 a month to your client.
And that’s important because the client isn’t paying more than they would Weebly. They’re paying the same price. You just get the majority of the profits and we believe is willing to do that because they know web designers will bring in more and more clients it’s bulk, right? They can get one guy for $30 for one website, or they can get a web designer to sign on and bring in 50 of them at eight bucks a month per site.
That’s a $400 a month difference. So for Weebly, it was very easy. They were smart about it. They set that up and made it easy for web designers to do that. It gets more complicated once you start doing something like WordPress, because you, then you have to take on more of the customization.
You need to figure all that out. There’s a lot of different hosting company. It really comes down to this. You pick a hosting company, you pick a plan. There’s lots of different hosting plans. There’s dedicated servers. There’s virtual private servers, VPS. There’s shared servers where your basically your websites just get put on to a shared pool of other people’s websites.
There’s a lot of different options and it all just comes down to price. Once you figure out a plan with a hosting company some make it easier than others to set up a WordPress installation and build a client’s website and host it. I wish I could be a little more clear about it, but it does take research like because every hosting company does it differently, some do it easier than others.
Some offer a more managed service like Cloudways. Cloud ways is awesome, but it is a premium service. It’s what I use now. I used to use Bigscoots in the past. They had great customer service. But yeah, that does kinda just require doing your own little research.
But when you’re first starting out, I keep it as simple as possible. And that depends again on what website builder you’re using. Because for example, Webflow actually has a hosting service if I’m not mistaken because you can’t actually. I think you have to host the website with Webflow, you can export all the code, and then maybe host it on like a PHP application or something. I don’t know. I don’t know much about Webflow, to be honest. Lots of people talking about it though.
Scott: Yeah. You got it. All right. Like they can export and take it to HostGator. That’s like one hosting I’ve heard of what they make, like within the client’s best interest to do with Webflow. Just be as like how everything’s connected and you can update it like consistently, and then it just goes straight to the internet. Not have to export it again. Yeah.
Patrick: Okay. I think we have time for one more question. If you got any.
My Best Advice for Improving Web Design Skills Faster
Scott: Okay. So I guess last question, what’s your best advice for a new designer to improve my skills? Like any recommended resources, books, practices, people to follow.
Patrick: My number one recommended people is always just dedicate time to it. Dedicate as much time as you can. The more you can do that, the faster you’re going to learn. It’s that simple. I don’t have anyone specific that I recommend following or reading their stuff, because to be honest, I find people just connect differently with different cause everyone’s different. People like different styles of reading of writing. They like different styles of videos. They like different, they have different needs when it comes to content. So I don’t have anyone specific. And to be honest, I, most of the stuff that when I was learning, I didn’t have a person that I followed or read or watched all their stuff.
If I had a question I would search for it and get my answer. Regardless of who that answer came from. I didn’t really pay much attention to I would just look it up on YouTube, watch a video that specifically answered my question and I move on. And then my next question that came up, I would search for it on Google, YouTube.
I’d get my answer. And then I continue. And then it’s just repeating the process. I didn’t find. I don’t think any one specific YouTuber or blogger or entrepreneur podcast or whatever has all the answers that you’re searching for. I think you need a little bit of, you’d take a little bit from everything.
I certainly don’t have all the answers that you’re looking for. You’ll probably get a lot better content from other people, frankly. But you might have specific questions that I answered and then you can get specific questions from other people. So that’s how I did it.
Personally, but my recommendation is just devote as much time as you can to pursuing it. The more you do that, the faster you get better and practice put your work into actually practicing because so many people will read. Watch it, consume all this content and feel like they’re progressing, but until you practice, you’re not learning anything.
And that comes down to everything like I’m trying to learn Spanish. I can read and watch and listen to all the Spanish content I want. But until I start speaking it, it’s not gonna, it’s not going to hook. I’m not going to progress. So the practice part is what really matters toy around with things.
Try different website builders. They all have free trials. So just play around with the tools it’s all available free.
Scott: Okay. Yeah. Thanks so much for this call. This has been really helpful. I can’t wait to apply this all and make some changes.
Patrick: Sweet. Yeah, no, I enjoyed it too. I love doing stuff like this. And I look forward to seeing how you progress and how your website project turns out there. Send me a link when it’s all done.
Scott: Yeah, sure. Thanks.
Patrick: All right. Stay safe, Scott.
