Everything I Know To Be True About Getting $5,000+ Website Clients
$5,000 is a number I see a lot of designers trying to make each month. That amount would be a GAME CHANGER for so many people!
Honestly, nothing about making money is hard when you know how. It’s the NOT KNOWING part that trips people up.
So I’ve wracked my brain and have 9 of the MOST IMPORTANT things that go into getting these high-end clients for web designers!
(Though these tips can actually apply to any industry, so even if you’re not a web designer, be sure to take notes!)
With this blog post, I wanna demystify what all goes into GETTING these high-quality clients and making them happy.
How do you find them? After that, how do you pitch your services? What are clients expecting when they pay $5000 or more for a website? (I’ve got answers to these and more questions in a Q+A video at the end).
Grab your pen and notebook — it’s time to go through my 9 tips so you can create a plan for attracting and booking high-end website clients! And…it can be waaayy easier than you think 😉
Okay let’s dive into 9 tips to attract and book high-end website clients…
TIP #1
Put on blinders to what other people are doing.
If you’re spending more time getting inspired by what other people are doing than you’re spending putting focused action into your business, you’re unfortunately wasting a lot of time and energy right now!
You need to focus on YOU, YOUR BUSINESS and YOUR CLIENTS.* Nothing else. We get so caught up in what other people are doing and if you let it consume you, it loses any productive purpose you might have set for it.
Researching and learning is awesome, but if you never take action on what you learn…you don’t give yourself the opportunity to grow and gain a deeper understanding of what will and won’t work for your business. The ACTION STAGE is where shit gets done!
*If you don’t have any clients right now, create fake portfolio projects alongside these tips ♥︎
Your action step:
Put up boundaries and create productive and action-oriented habits so you can see results faster in your web design business.
Pay attention to how you’re spending your time. You need to make sure you’re putting ACTION behind all the research you’re doing. You can create a rule for yourself like, “for every 15 minutes I spend researching/learning, I need to spend 60 minutes implementing and putting what I learn into action.”
The point of this is, you’ve probably researched and absorbed a lot already! Now it’s time to implement so you can gain a deeper understanding of the strategies. You’ll learn how to personalize what you learn in a way that serves your business best, and before you know it…you might be the one sharing insight that other designers are looking for :)
I get questions all the time about how I got ahead as a self-taught designer — there’s no epic secret here, you get ahead by taking action! If you love to learn (like me), gain a BASIC understanding of whatever it is you’re working on right now…then focus your time on learning through trial and error. The lessons you learn through trial and error will be FAR more valuable than anything you can read in a blog post or watch in a workshop!
TIP #2
Understand your client’s problems on an emotional level.
Put yourself in your client’s shoes: would you spend $5,000 or more on something that wasn’t absolutely going to help you with a very specific and pressing problem you’re experiencing? Most people don’t have a spare $5,000 laying around that they can spend lightly. So the BEST thing you can do is understand your client’s main problems on a deeper, emotional level (bonus points if you can understand why they think a website is the solution to those problems, too).
This comes down to determining your ideal client and performing market research. When you’ve done this, you’ll know EXACTLY how to:
Package your services into irresistible offers
Pitch them to high-quality clients
And land more $5,000+ website projects
But first you have to understand who your client is and what their specific problems and goals are!
As in, why does your client believe a website will help them grow their business? And speaking of that, how exactly are they even trying to grow their business? What problems are they facing or what problems will they face around their website? Or — maybe the effort they’re putting into their website is affecting their personal life as well as their business! You need to get clear on your ideal client’s problems and goals so you can create services and a design process that caters to those specific things!
Your ideal client isn’t just anybody — she needs something SPECIFIC. You want your client to feel like you created a service just for them, which is actually exactly what you’ll do if you follow the action step below.
Understanding your client is THE thing that will help you on your journey to charging $5,000+ for your websites!
Your action step:
Determine your ideal client and the exact, specific thing they want in their life or business.
To do this you can create a simple “I help” statement that sums up your client in a nutshell": “I help (adjective) (descriptive name) who wants (goal or aspiration) without (problem they’re facing).”
Here are some examples:
I help overwhelmed creative entrepreneurs who want more balance in their life without making time-and energy-costing mistakes.
I help woo-inspired brand photographers who want a booked out project calendar with clients they love without feeling like a sell-out.
Here’s how to form your “I help” statement:
Start with the first half of the statement. Give your client a descriptive name (can be general or specific).
I help creative entrepreneurs (general).
I help brand photographers (more specific).
Now you need an emotion-driven adjective or core value that identifies what type of person they are — something they’ll identify with and go, “YUP THAT’S 100% ME”.*
I help overwhelmed creative entrepreneurs.
I help woo-inspired brand photographers.
Add your client’s MAIN goal or thing they want right now, but don’t currently have. Can be related to their businesses or personal life!*
I help overwhelmed creative entrepreneurs who want more balance in their life.
I help woo-inspired brand photographers who want a booked out project calendar with clients they love.
And finally, add your client’s main problem, the thing that’s keeping them from having the life or business they want.*
I help overwhelmed creative entrepreneurs who want more balance in their life without making time-and energy-costing mistakes.
I help woo-inspired brand photographers who want a booked out project calendar with clients they love without feeling like a sell-out.
*Figure out your clients emotion-driven adjective/core value, their MAIN goal and their MAIN problem by performing market research — go to minute 21:18 in the the Q+A video below if you need a place to start with market research!
Here are some quick tips:
What your client wants or needs right now likely has NOTHING to do with their website. It has to be deeper than that and on an emotional level.
Do you have any clients who you looooved working with? Are their any commonalities between these client’s lifestyles, demographics, attitudes and interests that you can use to help you form your “I help” statement?
If you don’t know where to start, think about who you DON’T want to work with and use that as your starting point. And be sure to hop to minute 21:18 in the Q+A video below where I explain an easy, dummy-proof way to at least START your market research :)
I also HIGHLY SUGGEST taking the Adobe creative quiz. The quiz and results are fun on their own, but one of the things I found MOST interesting is that it tells you who your ideal collaborator is! I had an immediate flashback to all of my best client projects and they all matched my ideal collaborator’s description TO THE TEE. It made me wish I had taken this quiz when I first started my business so I could focus on understanding this specific type of business owner sooner, and adapt my messaging and sales process to attract JUST this type of person. Seriously they were all a DREAM and I didn’t understand the common thread until I saw the results of this test! Click here to find your creative type and ideal collaborator type!
PS I got the Visionary (full of ideas) whose ideal collaborator is the Thinker (intellectual curiosity)! This was eye-opening for me because TYPICALLY I had worked with other Visionaries — people who are always thinking high level too and don’t pay attention to details. I was always so drained from work, just mentally freaking exhausted, because I was having to remember and repeat details about my projects over and over again to my clients. As well as keep up with all the details of my own business. The Thinker on the other hand, you give them a concept and they naturally want to explore it. They’ll go seek out the details because they want to understand. They don’t ask as many questions because they’ll just go find the answer for themselves. YASSSS! This was such a game changer because I actually loved my Visionary clients, but they were exhausting me at the same time. I was so inspired being around them and getting to work with them, but their tendencies always drained me!
TIP #3
Develop an amazing offer and design process around your client’s problems and goals.
Once you have a good understanding of who your web design business is serving, along with the MAIN thing they want and the MAIN thing that’s getting in their way (whether it’s a fear or an actual obstacle), you can craft offer(s) and a design process that cater to those things.
Do your clients typically need a quick turnaround? Craft a process that delivers results for your clients in a timeframe that works for them.
Do your clients typically need a lot of guidance and coaching to PREPARE for their website design? Craft a process that emphasizes resources and support during the prep stage.
Do your clients get overwhelmed with details because they’re so busy in their businesses? Craft a package that takes care of all the little details for them so they can continue to focus on their business! Make the process easy and enjoyable for them :)
More than anything, be intentional about the problem your offer and process are solving. Make sure everything is suuuper thoughtful towards the unique needs, goals and fears or problems of your client! Remember, you gain this understanding through market research and focusing on having real conversations with people.
Your action step:
Do an audit of your services and process and see how they can be improved to meet the specific needs and goals of your ideal client.
I teach my students in Powerhouse Web Designer to create customizable packaged services. This means their services and project process are easier to streamline and sell to clients, and they can create more consistency in their day to day and schedule.
If you’d like to do an exercise similar to what my students do inside of PWD, be sure to download the High-Value Process Bundle so you can get access to the 10-step roadmap. It’ll help you streamline your packages and refine your project process, plus there are 4 canned emails you can use with clients and 15 ideas to help you elevate your client experience ♡
TIP #4
Use market research to develop crystal-clear messaging around your offers.
Once you’ve started focusing on your business and gotten really clear on your ideal client, you’re able to create offers and a process that solve the problems of your client.
Next up is creating messaging that speak directly to your client that helps them understand the actual, real-life benefits of working with YOU to design their website.
The heavy lifting of this is done through market research. You may need to go back to your research so you can continue to develop a deeper and deeper understanding of your ideal client (this is typical and I ALWAYS notice a positive shift in my business after I take the time to go deeper with understanding my ideal type of client).
The deeper you go in understanding the emotional needs and fears (like the things that make your client anxious in their day-to-day), the more impactful your copy and messaging will be.
If you know your clients tend to be business owner moms with limited time who want a website that helps them grow their email list and sell their info product…and you put copy that reflects that on your website and explains how your process or services deliver a website that does that…mompreneurs with limited time who come across your site are going to be like, “OMG HOW CAN I GIVE YOU ALL MY MONEY?”. 😁
Your action step:
Create a Google doc or note with your market research. Identify the MAIN thing you see as the want or goal and the MAIN thing you see as the fear or obstacle between eeeeveryone you included in your market research. Your ideal client’s pain point and big goal are the only 2 things that really matter. (Hint: these are also the things you’re using in your “I help” statement).
When you’re talking about your offers and business on your website, social media, in your service guide or anywhere else, tie it back to these 2 things. Start with your “I help” statement, then infuse that energy and messaging into whatever you’re writing. Relate everything back to the problem you’re solving. Do the work from steps 1-3 first if you’re unclear.
You can talk about the PROBLEM and the SOLUTION in eeeeverything you do from now on. In social media posts, emails, blog posts, website copy, your service guide copy, discovery calls, etc. Everything!
Something I’m personally learning more about is the art of storytelling for business. I love learning about human behavior and consumer psychology and also love being a human, not a robot, so I want to make sure my messaging is warm, real and effective. Telling stories through my website copy, emails and social media copy allows me to put a spin on the “problem” and “goal” messages I’ve uncovered through my own market research (so it doesn’t feel like I’m beating a dead horse by saying the same thing every time)!
TIP #5
Create a sales funnel for your offer(s).
This is a REALLY important thing you need to nail down in your business ASAP. If you can prove to yourself that you can gain consistent leads and turn them into paying clients…THAT’S where you get stability and gain the most confidence in yourself as a business owner. A way to do this is to build a strategic journey for your leads and clients — aka a sales funnel to your offer.
Here’s a simple breakdown of a sales funnel:
First build traffic and awareness around your offer. Think of this as “top of funnel” content that gets someone into the funnel. Ideas include blog posts, email content, social content, workshops, speaking gigs and podcasts. These are things that build awareness around YOU and show you know wtf you’re talking about. If you need a place to start, go back to your market research Google Doc (tip 4). It should be sprinkled with loooots of pain points and problems which you can use as a starting point for your top-of-funnel content and traffic-building.
Next you want to generate qualified leads that will be a good match for your service. After you attract people towards you with your top-of-funnel content, you need a way to collect information such as someones name and email. Ideas of this include an opt-in, service guide download or an application, which can all be automated using a tool like Convertkit or Dubsado.
Once you have a lead in your funnel, you can nurture your lead by providing information, education and social proof around your offer. The goal of the nurture stage is to prime someone to work with you. The next step in the funnel will be positioning your offer, so think about what your potential client will need to understand and BELIEVE at this step before they’re ready to work with you. You can automate this stage of the sales funnel through an email sequence!
Because the next step is all about positioning your offer. Use the market research you’ve done to understand your client (tips 2-4) and jam pack this step in the funnel so your lead KNOWS you understand them and want to help. Then you always want to ask your lead to make the next step with you by booking a call or contacting you to let you know they’re interested in working with you.
Then finally, you need an established and concrete way to turn that lead into a paying client. I like to do this through an intake questionnaire and discovery call, which is also what I teach my students in Powerhouse Web Designer. This is a time where your lead gets one-on-one attention from you so you can really assess where they’re at and offer solutions. It’s a time to connect, build rapport and talk about your process and services more in depth to make sure you and this person will be a good fit for each other :)
Once you get through these steps, it’s on to the booking process which generally includes a proposal, contract and deposit.
As someone warms up to you inside your sales funnel, they’re more likely to care about your unique take on things so you can start offering information around your services or process AFTER you’ve provided insight, information and social proof inside your nurture sequence.
So for instance, say someone opts onto your list because you offered a website prep list freebie. You wouldn’t deliver the freebie and immediately ask them to book a call with you. You’d need to nurture them and build trust by helping them solve a smaller problem related to their business problems (in relation to their website) first.
The closer someone gets to booking with you, the more detailed and specific about your services you can be.
Your action step:
This one’s pretty simple! Map out what steps you want your leads to take as they go from “brand new, never heard of you before” to “VIP best ever client”. There needs to be space to qualify your leads (as in, you’re attracting them through content that relates to their main website platform AND your services) then time to connect with them and nurture the relationship before you ask them to take the next step and become a potential client.
Again, think of yourself in this situation. Have you ever purchased something for thousands and thousands of dollars? What was that buying decision like? What did you have to BELIEVE about this product or offer in order to purchase it? Did you need to understand the person or company you were buying from? Did you want to research them and see what other customers/clients thought of the product or service? Didn’t it take time before you were ready to pull out your credit card? Didn’t you want to feel like this person or company understood the issue you were facing first before you invested in them?
You had to develop trust then find a logical reason to back up your emotion-driven decision. I’m such a fan of modeling your sales process around what you personally need during the buying process. Because guess what? You’re a human working with other humans and we all pretty much have the same brain when it comes to buying things!
TIP #6
Show up as the expert.
Here’s a little secret you might not know right now: clients want you to lead them.
As a matter of fact, a high-end website client absolutely expects it and will lose trust in you if they feel like you aren’t in control of the situation.
This one is REALLY important. It means you’re showing up having already thought of your client and their experience (more on that in tip 9). You’ve got a process that helps you get what you need from clients and deliver an amazing website for their business at the end of it. You’re responding to your client’s needs and taking control of the situation if things start veering off course. You’re guiding the experience while leaving room for collaboration.
Think about it: this is exactly what a high-end website client is hiring you to do! They need you to show up as the expert. When you don’t, clients lose trust in you. Client situations WILL get tense or go sour. A payment will be missed. Content won’t be turned in on time.
It’s up to you as the expert to nip those situations in the bud. Notice it, take control and steer the client or project back on course!
This also gives you space to come up with creative solutions for your process. I always take time to reflect after every single project to figure out if it can be streamlined, automated or made better in any way possible.
Once I realized that clients were having a hard time turning in website content, I made it my mission to eliminate this problem…which eventually led me to my Website Content Guide that not only eliminated this problem for me and my clients…but for other web designers too! (I actually created a whole mini course around this — check it out here 🙃).
I think it’s so important to rely on our creativity as designers for creative problem solving. We’re naturally good at this so take advantage of it when problem-solving and refining your processes!
Your action step:
Think of a place you tend to shy back in your business when it come to clients. Or potentially a place where your projects often get derailed. Is it with collecting payment? Getting feedback? Collecting website content? Wrapping projects up? Never charging more when the project scope expands?
Think about what you can do to prepare for the situation or keep it from happening. (From my experience, having stellar client communication can nip most of these things in the bud which is exactly why I created the Ultimate Client Communication Pack for you here!). Remember, you’re a CREATIVE. Even though solutions might take time, you ARE capable of simplifying and creating solutions for your clients and projects. It took me TWO YEARS to develop my website content guide and current content collection process, but it was obviously worth it in the long run :)
TIP #7
Realize that you have to feel confident in your offers (and the results you’re providing) before you can sell a $5,000 website.
If you’re constantly doubting whether or not you’re good enough to charge $5,000 for a website, it’s gonna be REAL HARD for you to sell a $5,000 website.
The solution to this is a little bit mindset, a little bit organization.
Mindset stuff: You have to basically become the person you want to be before you actually feel ready for it. I’ve had to show up this way CONSTANTLY in my business. And it’s always really freaking hard because you’re basically making yourself adopt the thought processes and decision-making of Future You…the one that feels waaay far off in the future and has all her shit figured out. She books clients with ease and loves posting to Instagram because she’s sooo excited to share her work. She meets friends for happy hour every week and always drinks enough water! Yeah that Future You : )
I know she might feel super far away, but you have to think like she would in order to actually become her. Which actually means you can start operating that Future Awesome Business of yours right now.
Organization stuff: This is an exercise I have my students in Powerhouse Web Designer do! Set aside 30 minutes or so and write down eeeeverything that went into your last 5 or so website projects. How many pages, what features and functionalities, technical stuff you took care of for your client, ways you helped your client prep, etc. Now think about what each website is helping your client do. Is it helping them collect more leads? Are they building brand awareness and authority in their market? Are they be able to sell more efficiently now that you helped them set up their e-commerce store? Write down every last detail of what went into each of these projects and the specific results you were able to give your clients. Use these as a way to create packaged services and make direct links back to the clients who’ve benefitted and are able to grow because of you.
When you focus on the results you bring clients, it’s easy to see and sell the value of your services. This is why I started writing copywriting for my clients! On one hand, I wanted to make the website experience as easy as possible for my client and a done-for-you experience. And on the other, I wasn’t able to confidently raise my prices without feeling good about the value I was bringing to the table.
And guess what? Building up this confidence is about more than just yourself! Clients will need to “borrow” your confidence before they’re ready to invest. If you’re having a problem- and solution-oriented conversation with a potential client while radiating your confidence in the websites you design (aka you KNOW you get clients closer to the big, dreamy goals they have for their business)…they’re gonna feel that and NEED to feel it during their decision-making process.
If you’re feeling lost about WHERE to find this confidence in your website results…I always say start with yourself (this is EXACTLY how I built my business as a self-taught designer and business owner). Get clear on your goals and get yourself results, then talk about it and find clients who you know you can give similar results too!
Your action step:
I know I’m a broken record but I want you to go back and focus on what you did in steps 1-4 (get super focused on taking action in your business, understand your client's problems + goals, develop and amazing offer and design process, develop crystal clear messaging around your offers). These are the foundation to ensure you’re ONLY bringing in people who you KNOW you can help. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT FOR YOUR CONFIDENCE AND WILL MAKE YOUR BUSINESS AND LIFE FEEL SO MUCH EASIER.
Then when you’re ready, I’ve got a resource that I know will help you build more confidence in your design business: the High-Value Client Process bundle. This is an actionable PDF that will help you lay out your entire project process. It comes with 4 canned emails for your clients plus 15 ideas to help you elevate your client experience.
TIP #8
Your process has to be thoughtful and streamlined AF.
The easiest way to create a thoughtful and streamlined process is through automated tools and templates.
An automated process using smart tools, canned emails and templates gives everyone more room to just show up and be human. It helps you as the designer deliver a consistent, efficient process. You get to be more creative because when you begin doing something consistently, it becomes more second-nature and automatic (read: less thinking and energy has to be put into it — glory glory hallelujah).
And there are soooo many things you can automate for both yourself and your clients! Your lead funnel (yep, GETTING CONSISTENT CLIENTS can be 98% automated), client onboarding, project management and task reminders, payment reminders and so much more!!
Your action step:
Take a look through your process and figure out all the most important client touch points (like when a lead initially shows interest in working with you, your discovery/sales call, any important client meetings within your process, onboarding your client, etc). Then, prepare as many templates and canned emails as you can (I’ve got 35+ canned client emails for you here).
After you have those ready, you can use a tool like Dubsado to automate a huge portion of your project process. This will help you create more time and energy in your process that you can devote to showing up and being as thoughtful and creative as possible with your client.
TIP #9
Your client’s experience with you has to be top-notch.
I know you already know this. You knoooow that client experience is super important. It might even be why you’re reading this blog post (a lot of designers name “taking care of clients” as one of their highest priorities — it makes my heart so happy)!
Selling a $5,000 website and getting clients who are willing to pay those prices means that everything is really ALL ABOUT YOUR CLIENT. The great thing about this is that making your client’s life easier also makes YOUR life easier :)
Pretty much everything in tips 1-8 all lend themselves to an amazing client experience, so I wanna show you how they all come together for the client:
Your service has to provide a solution — so first of all you need to gain a deep understanding of the MAIN problem and MAIN goal of your clients. And realize that they most likely have NOTHING to do with a website — it’s deeper and more emotional than that. Show your clients that they have someone in their corner (tip 2)!
You’ve gotta show up as the thoughtful, organized expert and steer the entire process (refer back to tips 3 + 6).
There needs to be clear expectations, support and great communication (which is exactly why I created the Ultimate Client Communication Pack for you here!).
Your clients are going to need to “borrow” your confidence before they book with you, and maybe even during the actual project, too! As an expert with value-driven website services, this can be easy to show your clients if you take some time to organize everything on the front end (tip 7).
The entire project experience needs to cater to your client’s success. Tweak your process to make things easier if you notice a negative trend or pattern (such as late client content — this is exactly what I did to create my Website Content Guide and now I’m teaching it to other designers too). Think of all your client touchpoints and map out the experience. Create canned emails and templates and automate what you can (tip 8).
And last of all, make sure you’re showing energy, excitement and enthusiasm about your client and their business. Think of yourself and how happy and warm you feel when someone wants to genuinely talk to you about your business. This happens from like, no one in our normal lives. Be a support system for your clients!
Your action step:
Check out this blog post training I created with my friend Megan. It’s all about 4 steps to creating an amazing client experience and I think you’re gonna love it! Megan and I go through each stage of the project process and give you toooons of tips for your client experience along the way, then we go over ideas to elevate the experience, using templates to create consistency and how to use a project management tool or client portal to help your clients stay organized. Plus there are more than 15 bonus tips at the end. This is a jam-packed training that we hope you love!
You may already have some areas of your business completely perfect, that’s awesome! I want to empower more designers to do business THEIR WAY so trust your gut on what feels most important to you right now :)
Reflect on these 9 tips and prioritize what you want to work on and in what order. Then you can follow the action steps I’ve laid out for each tip.
Start with the one thing you think needs your attention most RIGHT NOW, and stay focused on that action step until you feel like you’ve completely tackled it. Then keep going down your list from there.
Keep scrolling for the video training!
I asked web designers on Facebook and Instagram to let me know their questions around getting $5000 website clients! I answer them in the video below (omg I got SUCH good questions).
You’ll learn about:
💻 The REAL difference between a high-end website client and a budget website client
🤓 The 2 main things you need to uncover in your market research (the EXACT, SPECIFIC things you need to understand about your customers in order to create, sell and deliver $5k+ packages!)
🎉 Simple, practical things you can do to elevate the experience and really make working with you a fun special event for your client
Questions from the Q+A:
2:10 What do the $5,000 clients want from us?
5:17 What makes the DESIGN between a cheaper website and a $5,000 website different?
9:23 What are the differences between a high-end and budget e-commerce site?
12:35 How can I elevate the whole experience to make it worth my client’s money?
20:50 Where can I find high-paying clients who understand the value of their investment?
22:50 How should I structure my services, website copy, etc to attract clients with budgets?
24:54 How do I pitch to high-end clients so they understand the value of a high-end site?
26:15 If a client has $5,000 to invest in a website, why would Squarespace be the best choice?
29:18 Do clients really want to be involved in Asana?
35:00 How can we balance personal touch with the necessary use of digital tools and automation?
36:59 How do you gather content so that clients don’t stress and you get what you need? (Pssst: I've got a mini course about this here!)
37:56 How do you build websites that the client won’t break easily?
39:34 What is the onboarding process like for a high-end client?
Resources mentioned:
Web Design Business Bundle (now called the High-Value Process Roadmap!)
