Congratulations on finally getting your first web design project! If you haven’t got a project yet, keep trying. You will win clients soon if you have a good web design experience and an amazing portfolio.

If you think that you can make your first web design project successful just because you have the right web design skills, you’re wrong. Today, you need to know how to successfully manage your client and your project, and a few other things so that you can satisfy your client.

In this blog post, I will give you top 10 tips to kickstart your first web design project. I hope these tips will help you gain confidence and achieve project success.

1. Learn what your client wants.

Learning about your client’s requirements is the most important thing that you have to do if you want to satisfy your client.

So first of all, you have to know what your client wants. But it’s not always easy to understand a client’s requirements because not all clients can properly explain their requirements. They may confuse you with a long text explaining what they want from you. They may also finish in just a few sentences without providing many important details. But they don’t do it with an intention to make your work harder. They do it unintentionally.

Sometimes, clients don’t know exactly what they want. Does this surprise you? Many freelancers have to deal with clients who do not have a clear picture of what they want. And it’s a very normal thing because they may be uncertain about what will work and what will not.

The following tips will help you better understand your client’s requirements.

• Carefully read your client’s messages and instructions 2-3 times.
• Ask questions and clear your doubts.
• Tell them what you have understood so that you know that both of you are on the same page.
• Ask for a sample if necessary.

2. Learn about your client’s business.

If you learn about your client’s business, it will be easier for you to understand their requirements, and so you will be able to produce satisfactory results.

The following tips can help you:

• Learn about their products and services that they want to offer on their new website. Collect information such as product names, images, descriptions, etc. from your client.
• Learn about their target audience. Who will visit the website? Who are your client’s target audience? You may collect information such as age, sex, country, etc. of their target customers.
• Every company has one or multiple goals. Ask your client about their goals.

3. Write a rough action plan and share it with your client.

Write a rough action plan, share it with your client, and tell your client that this is a rough plan, not a perfect one. When you have an action plan, you will get a clear picture of what needs to be done, and your client can also know what you’re going to do.

“Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution; this gives you a 1,000 percent Return on Energy!”

|–Brian Tracy–|

It’s good to plan, but don’t go over board, as overplanning reduces productivity. It will stop you from taking action.

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”

|–Bruce Lee–|

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4. Set deadlines for yourself.

Meeting deadlines is extremely important because time is money. The sooner you can deliver the work, the sooner your client will get business benefits (conversions, sales, etc.) from it.

By meeting deadlines, you can stay ahead of your competitors. There are many freelancers that provide great quality work but not all of them can meet deadlines.

If you want to meet deadlines or deliver before the deadline, set deadlines for yourself. To give you an example, if your client sets the deadline to April 20, set another deadline for yourself to April 15 or April 10 or any other earlier date and try to meet that deadline.

5. Communicate well.

There is nothing called “over-communication” in business. Never think that your client will feel disturbed if you ask too many questions or send too many necessary messages.

If you think you need to say something or clarify something with your client, don’t hesitate! For example, if you think you will not be able to meet the deadline for some reason, inform the client. It will be of great help to your client. He/she will appreciate it.

By communicating properly, you can clear your misunderstandings and doubts about the project. If you fail to communicate well, you might become confused between what the client is asking for and what you are providing him with. As a result, you will probably not be able to produce satisfactory results.

Talk to your clients and always try to respond promptly to your client’s messages.

6. Deliver in small chunks and ask for feedback.

There are many benefits to delivering in small chunks. It’s better to accept payment after each completed chunk of work that you deliver. It’s very risky to ask for money after the whole project is complete. Because the client may also not pay. There are good clients and bad clients. So if your client does not pay, your entire effort will be wasted. But if you ask for payment after a small portion of the work has been done, only a small amount of effort will be wasted.

When you deliver in small chunks, you can also get feedback for each chunk of your work. So you can improve each part of the project. After completing a small portion of the project, submit it to the client, hear from him, and make changes in this portion and work on the next portions of the project based on the client’s feedback. If you work in this way, you will be able to produce better quality results.

Another benefit of delivering in small chunks is that the work will become easier for you. If you divide the whole project into small chunks, you can easily complete the whole project.

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7. Don’t add to the Project

If you think doing something which your client didn’t tell you to do can increase the overall quality of the project, inform the client about it. Ask for his opinions. Ask him whether he wants you to do it. If he says “yes” then do it. If he says “no” then don’t do it even if you think that it’s important.

If you think it’s important. Tell your client why it’s important. And after that, if they don’t want it, you shouldn’t do it. If you do things and add features which your client doesn’t want, they will get annoyed.

8. Follow design best practices

You can achieve great design outcomes by following the design best practices. Take a look at the following best practices.

• Design an easy navigation.
• Make the website responsive.
• Choose good colors.
• Make a powerful call-to-action.
• Make the design simple by eliminating unnecessary elements.
• Use clear fonts.

9. Give importance to content.

If you put a sufficient amount of content on the site, the site can easily be found on search engines. But the content must be useful. A blog section is highly recommended for every company website. Blog posts will attract more visitors to the site.

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10. Cooperate and be honest.

Cooperate with your client. If your client requests you to make changes in your website design, do it eagerly.

And be honest with your client. Always tell the truth. Honesty is extremely important in any business. Not every business person is honest. If you cooperate well and be honest with your client, he will be happy with you, and making your customers happy is the key to business success.

Bonus tip: Under-promise, over-deliver

If you want to satisfy your client to the fullest, promise less and deliver more. If you promise so much and can’t keep your words, your client will be dissatisfied with you.

This post covered the top 10 tips for starting your first web design project. I hope you found them useful.

Do you have any advice for freelance web designers? Share your tips with us in the comments section.

Best of luck with your first web design project!

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