Well, be forewarned – freelancing is not all sunshine and roses.  It has its own unique set of advantages and challenges.

As someone who started doing freelance web design back when the web was relatively new, and has continued doing it for over 10 years, I’d love to  go back in time and  pull starry-eyed 20-year-old fresh freelancer me aside and share a few realities, tips and advice with them.  Since time travel isn’t yet a possibility, I’ll share these valuable points and tips with you instead, in the hopes that you’ll be able to cut through the clutter and myths and get straight to the truth about working in the freelance world.

Let’s get started!

Know Yourself

The truth is, not everyone is cut out for life as a freelancer.  There are people who play with the idea in their head, but are miserable the moment they let go of the security and stability of their 9-to-5 job.  There are also those who start freelancing, but don’t take it as seriously as they would a job where they have to report to a superior.  Some people thrive on that kind of structure and routine, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But realize that you’re going to have clients who are scattered across a dozen time zones, projects that require more time and effort than you originally planned for, and people who will stubbornly drag their feet to get you what you need so that you can finish the project and get paid.  These are the realities of working freelance, and if you’re the kind of person who is self-disciplined, flexible, and accommodating when it comes to a few bumps in the road – you’ll find that freelancing suits your personality well.

Stretch Your Comfort Zone

I’m assuming that you already have the skills you need to make a serious go of web design work. But you should know that not every project you do will be strictly web design.  Some of the projects will involve logo design, WordPress or other content management systems, basic search engine optimization and even print design and layout.  Don’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone to try your hand at these things and see how you like them.

I found out quite by accident how much I enjoyed copywriting, split testing different websites against each other, and understanding how demographics and psychology play a role in getting people to take action.  In short, I found my niche as a conversion optimization specialist, with web design going from the bulk of my work, to a small part of the overall package.  Try out different things and see which type of design work really appeals to you!  You can always change and refine the scope of the work you do over time.  No one ever said you had to get it 100% right, right from the start!

Sell Yourself!

Truth be told, even though you might be a phenomenal web designer, you have to be an even more phenomenal marketer.  No one’s going to sell your services for you, so it’s up to you to pound the digital pavement and reach out to your ideal customers.   Take the time to discover who this “ideal customer” is.  They could be fellow start-ups like yourself, or people who already have a website but are in dire need of a redesign.   They could even be members of a specific profession like lawyers or chiropractors.  Whatever your chosen community, you’ve got to reach out and make sure your name is top-of-mind when someone thinks “web designer”.

Find online forums, local events, social communities or other places where your customers spend their time.  By meeting them on their level, you’re more likely to connect with their colleagues, associates and others.  Referrals can do wonders for your client roster, so it pays to network and get to know people both online and offline who can send business your way.

One of the things that really helps me win over clients to this day is a good proposal.  It doesn’t have to be full of numbers and complicated diagrams – just something simple and straightforward that lays out the whole process in a way that’s easy for the client to understand.  It also has to be the kind of proposal that’s quick and easy to create.   I’ve closed many high paying projects on account of having a professional estimate sent to the client within hours.

Have a Backup Plan, including Finances

I was fortunate that when I started freelancing, I was attending a local university and still lived at home while paying toward my share of utilities, groceries and basic rent.  Many people start freelancing while working at their normal job or even splitting their time between part time work and moonlighting as a freelancer.  Whatever the case, have a few months worth of savings stashed away so that you aren’t living on crackers and Ramen noodles if things fall through.

Take Note of Important Tax and Insurance Differences

If you live in the U.S., and you quit your full-time job to freelance, there will be a few notable differences.  If you’re not on your parents’ or spouse’s insurance, be prepared to have to pay a higher premium for rather basic insurance as someone who is self-employed.  Also bear in mind that you will need to pay quarterly self-employment taxes.  At your normal job, your social security and Medicare contributions were taken out of your check automatically.  As a self-employed business owner (also known as a sole proprietor), you’ll be responsible for taking care of these fees yourself.  I highly recommend consulting a tax advisor once you decide to take that leap into full-time freelancing.

Choose Your Brand Well

I cringe when I thought of the domain name I first registered in 1999, thinking how cool and edgy it sounded. It never occurred to me what a pain it would be to try and spell it to clients over the phone. Thankfully, by 2002, I had my current domain and business name, and it was much more memorable.

That being said, consider your domain name and brand – avoid domains with hyphens, unusual spellings or numbers.  If you’re not confident designing your own logo, hire a reputable company to do it for you.

Set Your Prices

This part could be a topic in and of itself, but setting prices is another one of those points that hardly anyone gets right, right from the start.  Here’s a helpful online calculator that factors in many of the monthly living expenses you’ll need to consider.  Also keep in mind the hourly rates that are consistent with your particular skill-set, demand for your service and so forth.  Create a base pricing figure you can easily work from and then adjust as necessary.

Create a Routine that Works for You

Remember that part about working in your pajamas?  Well, there is a slice of truth to that.  One of the advantages of being a freelancer is that you can develop your own routine.  After a few weeks, your body will settle into a natural schedule of highs and lows throughout the day. Whether you feel your best tackling tough projects first thing in the morning, or you get your best ideas at midnight, it pays to listen to your body and group your work into chunks or tasks accordingly.

Now It’s Your Turn!

It is my hope that you’ll not only be able to learn from this list, but also set about forging your own career path with confidence! 

It’s Friday. I’m hungry. One of my friends recommended a new trendy restaurant and, hey, it’s right around the corner. However, knowing that “trendy” can mean “a sole sprig of lettuce and a sprinkling of truffle oil” and I wasn’t joking about this whole hunger thing, I head to the restaurant’s site to check out the menu before making any firm plans. But, when the graphic and video-heavy site finally loads, the menu is impossible to find, as are directions to the entrance, which I’ve been told is hidden down some strange back alley. In fact, I can’t even figure out how to enter the site, mired as I am in this gorgeous yet impossible to navigate landing page, with earthy music blaring through my speakers. Frustrated, I choose another old standby just around the corner (probably ten feet from this new restaurant, but who can tell?), just to spite the first one.

I know I’m not the only person who feels this way. And yet, I appreciate beautiful design just as much as the next person, and dislike those hyper-corporate sites that are all business and no personality. That’s why I think it’s so important to test the success of your web designs — not just to see whether or not users actually find the site compelling, easy to navigate, and even easier to buy from, but also to see how far a designer can push the envelope before that bottom line begins to suffer.

To accurately measure the success of a website, Google Analytics is a must. There’s a lot to it, so I highly recommend this analytics guide for both an initial grounding in the subject and for more advanced, deeper investigations. As a start, here are just a few key things to look out for when testing the success of your web designs.

Conversion Rate

When it comes to determining the effectiveness of a website’s user interface, there are few measures as telling as conversion rate. Whether it’s an actual purchase or simply downloading a pamphlet, conversion rate is an effective way to gauge just how engaged in the site users are, and where in the sale funnel they might be encountering roadblocks.

Of course, basic measures like keeping a headcount of newsletter sign-ups are useful, but to really dig into the nitty gritty, consider using Google Analytic’s Advanced Segmentation tool. As you can see in this case study of a company called WBC, advanced segmentation can really help you dig down into subtle measures that are powerful yet easy to miss. For example, this particular company found that, lurking within a generally low conversion rate were loyal users with high conversion rates. This lead to a redesign that displayed a greater range of products most desired by loyal customers, and established industry authority.

This tool is most powerful when paired with content experiments, which, despite the title, can be applied not just to content but to various elements of design as well. As a designer, you already know that on a landing page the most crucial information and any forms or other means of conversion should appear above the fold. But how much information should appear? Should the content be wordy and informational or highly visual? How clean is too clean, how packed too packed? With content experiments, you’ll randomly send visitors two or more versions of your site while tracking conversion rates, enabling you to test everything from major layout differences to the color of a headline. Whether that creative, totally new layout works or not will entirely come down to the data.

Event Tracking

Let’s say a design is working and a customer has added the desired product into the cart or started to fill out a form field. But then they get frustrated with just how long the form is, or they type something incorrectly, or the cart responds with an error message. Make no mistake: web users are fickle and these kinds of frustrations are likely to turn them away.

Google Analytics’ event tracking can both identify and help mitigate the problem. With the ga.js tracking code, you’ll be able to see and record just how users are interacting with website elements, and you can classify those interactions with web page objects. So, whether your forms are too long or your checkout process is too cumbersome, event tracking can help you identify user experience and sales funnel roadblocks and move them out of the way.

Site Speed

By most accounts, the average user expects a web page to load in no more than 2 seconds. Yep, all of those jaw-dropping photos and helpful videos and interactive features you’ve added to a site in order to up conversions and engage users (and just generally keep things fun and cool) have all of a couple of seconds to load and become totally functionally. Not only that, but they also have to work on a variety of devices; fair or not, users will blame the site for not loading on their ancient iMac, and all of that design genius of yours will be thrown out of the window.

First order of business a site speed test for every site you produce. The Site Speed menu under Content in your Google Analytics dashboard will also provide a look at specific page load times, as well as that of the overall site. If the results are disappointing and you’ve got a high percentage of visitors coming to you from around the world, consider hosting your site on a Content Distributed Network like MetaCDN. As the name implies, CDNs distribute storage of a site across a worldwide network, so that users will always be downloading page elements from the nearest server to them, rather than waiting for it to download from some server halfway across the world. CDNs also automatically account for the demands of different devices, making for an overall much speedier experience (and a higher likelihood that visitors will stick around).

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate analytics are easy to find in your GA dashboard both for landing pages and specific pages on your site. However, just what bounce rate means is a little more confusing. Strictly defined, bounce rate measures the percentage of users who leave the site rather than clicking links that bring them deeper in.

But if you’ve designed for, say, an expertise blog, this could just mean that users are finding exactly what they want and leaving. You’ll know this for sure if they’re staying awhile on the site — something you can see for certain when you take a look at site times in the Engagement tool. This all may mean that the content and layout in themselves might be great, but there may not be, for example, a nice display of related articles in the sidebar, or enough featuring of services to show the reader that there is more on offer. Other causes of high bounce rate might include loading and error issues, boring content and design and poor usability.

Google Experiments can again prove crucial not just in upping conversions but also in getting users to stay there in the first place. Use the bounce rate to identify and pin down the problem, and Experiments to determine just what to do about it.

Take-Away

Creativity, artfulness, and fun are all crucial elements of good web design. But users won’t appreciate any of that if they can’t find what they’re looking for — and fast. Rather than fearing the numbers, web designers should use them as the source of their creativity. In fact, many times the most creative and inspiring solutions are those that come from within real world constraints. In that way, analytics and web design are perfectly paired.

The great thing about being a Web Designer & Developer is that it is a constantly changing field, full of bright minds that are also constantly changing and innovating. This has yielded not only a fun work environment for creatives, but a useful, informative, and fun web for everyone!

If anything makes the web go round, it is Web Hosts. Without them we wouldn’t have anywhere to put our sites (easily) and the web may not have grown so exponentially if it weren’t for the abundance of affordable and reliableWebsite Hosting on the web. So if you are tasked with creating a web design for one of these clients (or for yourself) you better make it count!