Calling all web design/web development agencies — this article is for you! Keep reading if you want to keep clients satisfied, eager, and coming back for more.
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Businesses face a wide variety of daunting, important hurdles to overcome throughout their lifecycle, no matter what industry they’re in. Sometimes, those decisions hold a lot of weight — depending on how the issue is addressed, a business could either prosper and expand or it could struggle and potentially fail.
On the other hand, there are also a plethora of hurdles that won’t make or break a business, but are responsible for huge missed opportunities and a loss of potential income each year…and sometimes such problems can be easily addressed, if the company simply takes the time and effort to address them.
One smaller hurdle businesses face and often fail to address, or miss the opportunity to improve upon, is client retention.
This is a giant missed opportunity, as generally 80% of a business’s profits come from just 20% of its customers.
While there are many ways to improve your retention rate, most business professionals can agree that the level of customer service a company provides to its clients has something to do with it. So how should you improve your retention rate?
One of the best ways to improve your customer retention rate is simple: empower your clients.
Empowering clients is an especially important and effective practice for web design and web development agencies.
Limelight understands how important client empowerment is, and the higher retention rate that comes with it. We’re both web developers and marketers, so we had to find an approach that worked for us as well as our clients — and we mean what we say. Every website we make uses the Limelight Theme because we truly believe that it’s the best web building platform for marketers that you can find. It also is quick and easy to learn, understand, and use — meaning web agencies will feel confident using the theme, and clients will feel empowered by it. If you’re looking for a way to effectively build websites for your clients, build immeasurable value in your service, and boost your retention rate, then look no further.
Ultimately though we also believe that, as website designers, developers, and marketers, focusing on client empowerment will not only increase the trust between you and your clients, but also put more money in your pockets.
Read on to learn more about why you should make client empowerment your main sales strategy and how the Limelight Theme can help you get there.
Why Focus on Client Empowerment?
Anyone in the industry will agree: good web design takes time. A lot of thought and personalization goes into it, and that personalization equals time.
And time is money, as the old saying goes.
If web design is so time consuming, web design agencies have to have a fail-safe sales strategy to ensure they’ll continue to see a steady flow of income. And like any business, of course, more income is always welcome, even if you’re doing well as it is.
Acquiring new clients and new work is great, but it might not be your best bet for more sales and better work — especially if you’re a web design/development agency.
First of all, more clients typically means one of three things: working longer days, spreading your time thin between clients (meaning they won’t get as much quality work) or hiring more staff, which gets expensive.
But you shouldn’t want to just gain more clients and/or charge more for your work without changing the experience you give. That mindset is failing to see the missed opportunity and revenue in your current clients. Not to mention if you lose your new customers after their initial purchase — or fail to acquire them in the first place — you will consistently have to fight to find customers. Which ultimately means you’ll pay more to find customers, too.
So really, if you want to focus on truly making the most money possible (and not working 60-hour weeks, plus being able to breathe a stress-free sigh of relief) focusing on boosting sales with your current clients is the way to go. Increasing retention rates by just 5% can boost your profits anywhere from 25% to 95%. That’s a big jump.
And we’ve already brought up how to boost sales with current clients — empower them.
As a web agency, empowering your clients looks like several different parts:
It’s giving your client all the facts about your work — what they will gain from you, a time frame, etc. Give your client all the information and knowledge they need to understand the ins and outs of why your work matters to them and how it solves their problems.
Client empowerment is also telling your clients nothing but the truth, even if it’s bad. Clients will appreciate the fact that you aren’t hiding anything, and will also have a better idea of what to expect from you and your work. Accurate expectations means that they’re more likely to be happy with the actual outcome.
Most importantly, empowering your clients means giving them the knowledge to use the same tools that you use on their website. Give them the ability to update posts and make new content to share. This isn’t saying, “teach your clients how to do exactly what you do, including all the ins and outs of development and placement and WordPress.” This is enabling your client to feel confident, content, and comfortable using their website and posting their own news about their business.
Odds are that your client hired you because they either have a need that they cannot address themselves, or they don’t have the time to address it. It’s very likely that your client won’t work in the same web design industry you do, so it’s a safe bet to say that you’re the expert in the field. Giving them certain tools to allow them some independence and opportunity will not render you obsolete — rather, it will support you and establish you as the expert, with proven knowledge, reliability, and a customer-first mindset. Nothing could be better than that, from a customer experience scenario.
Either way, empowering your client with the information and tools to support themselves will not only show that you want what’s best for them, but it will also make sure that they come to you for larger issues and work while posting updates themselves. This will save your web agency time to focus on larger projects, while retaining your client for future work and service.
Again, your clients will still come to you for help, advice, and more work. And the fact that you took the time to explain how their website works, and are there for them when they have questions? They won’t want to look anywhere else for their website needs. Interesting too, is that consumers are willing to spend 17% more money on a company if they receive outstanding customer service. Meaning you can be a little pricier if you want, and your clients will happily accept it. Your work and your service have a tremendous value to them that they just aren’t willing to give up.
And that means you’ve just secured a recurring customer who will spend more money on more work from your company because of their experience — especially how you empowered them to know how to use their website.
Your client retention rate just went up.
The Limelight Theme and Client Empowerment
Empowering clients and giving them the knowledge they need to navigate and update their own website is important to improve trust and profitability for web agencies. It’s also safe to say that having an easy way to build websites will benefit both the company and the client.
Plain and simple: easy software is…well, easier to use and understand. And quicker.
The Limelight Theme makes all parts of web design and development as simple as possible. It enables you (and your newly empowered clients) to navigate, build, and update a website with ease, and implement any changes quickly — all without touching a line of code.
The theme comes packed with an enhanced version of Elementor for quick and easy page building. Not only do you not have to touch any code, but it’s as simple as dragging and dropping the elements you want on the page. You’ll see how the web page looks and changes in real time. This is especially useful for clients who might not have as much experience, but want to make sure their updated post looks good on the website.
The Limelight Theme is also mobile optimized and offers quick and easy tracking code implementation — that means that it’s not only easy to use, but it is still able to offer the capabilities and technicalities that a web agency would need while doing client work. Plus, the Theme bundle also comes with pre-downloaded fonts and pre-installed plugins for forms and cart checkouts.
Simply put, the Limelight Theme has the technical capacity to benefit web agencies in their design and development process, while also helping web agencies empower their clients. Your clients will be able to put their own content on their websites. As an expert, you will be able to teach them the simple how-to’s of the software while also being able to complete large-scale projects that are beyond their capabilities.
The Results
The more loyal customers you have, the more money you will end up making. And when it comes to retaining your most loyal customers, client empowerment is the biggest key web design agencies can use to keep their clients confident, satisfied, and coming back.
If your agency successfully incorporates client empowerment into its sales strategy, you’ll see the focus shift from “how many clients” to “how much can we give our clients.” The ease-of-use and front end changes that the Limelight Theme presents will give web agencies (and their clients) the power to understand and update websites in a flash.
Giving your clients the ability to update their own content will not only take some of the stress off of your own shoulders, but it will also strengthen the trust your client has for you and your services. They will see immeasurable value in being included in their ideas and projects. This approach has a high probability of increasing their satisfaction as a customer, which in turn will boost your retention rate and revenue — all because you decided to give your client the best customer service in the form of empowerment.
Client Empowerment is the ultimate website sales strategy for web design and web development agencies — and the Limelight Theme will help empower your clients and increase your profits.
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If you don’t currently use the Limelight Theme for WordPress, click here for more information on what we have to offer! The Limelight Theme was built for marketers, by marketers, and will help keep your website sales-funnel oriented and optimize your marketing goals.