Anybody who has advertised on Google Ad words or Overture knows what it costs to generate leads, build a sales pipeline and convert the orders. The cost per click for the keyword ‘web design’ can be as high as £2 per click. Try to generate enough good leads and your pay per click budget could run into the thousands. Obviously getting the leads is not enough to secure web design orders. A lot of time and money can go into following up on the leads and converting these to web design orders. There is no doubt about it: securing first time customers is hard work and expensive. A viable business option is to generate web design orders through word of mouth. Whilst anybody would probably with this statement, the question remains…how do we sell web design effectively through word of mouth?

The obvious answer is by getting yourself known within the web design industry and by your potential customers. There are a number of ways of achieving this objective. Your existing satisfied web design customers are an excellent starting point. Notice I say ‘satisfied’ customers. Although it is our aim to have satisfied customers, it is not always possible to keep all our customers always happy. Let’s face it, there are some web design customers out there that you just cannot please, no matter how hard you try. Yet, every web design company should strive very hard to keep excellent relationships with existing customers because there is no better reference for your web design business than your happy clients.

Assuming you do have a reasonably good web design customer base, use it. From time to time call these customers and ask them how they are doing with their web sites. You will often find that a past customer needs some kind of web design updates and additional work done to their web site. What’s more, by keeping in touch with your clients, you are reminding them that you are here if ever they need web design work. People in business talk and anybody searching for a web design company will more than likely talk to a friend or partner before starting to search for some anonymous web design company on search engines. Somebody who has heard good things about your web design services will find it compelling to get in touch and at least find out about your web design offer. People instinctively trust their friends if the later are genuinely happy with your web design services.

The bottom line is, your existing happy web design customers are your best references and your ‘word of mouth’ source of web design business. Whilst we do need to spend resources and time into advertising for new web design business, let us not lose sight of our portfolio of clients and the potential web design business that they can bring us.

Ralph Ramah is the webmaster of Discount Web Design, one of the leading web design company in the UK offering quality web site design and SEO services.