VOLUME I

Finding Clients:

An actionable guide for growing your web design or development business

Creating a Solid Foundation

Table of contents

3 —

Web Design Portfolio

8 —

Case Studies

14 —

Contact Us Page

27 —

From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client

36 —

How to Become Part of the Shopify Partner Ecosystem

Introduction

As a web designer or developer who is beginning to grow their individual brand and business, it’s easy to want to hit the ground running — extending your feelers to (what feels like) the end of the earth to find new clients. We get it. How can you ever be successful without establishing a repertoire of customers?

With the goal of becoming profitable and establishing brand recognition in your industry, it can be easy to rush your website — your portfolio, case studies, and contact us page — to create an online presence for yourself.

They may look beautiful, but are your most important assets as optimized and effective as they could be?

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What to include in your design portfolio website

• How to write trust-building case studies

• Why you should be paying closer attention to your contact us page

• How to find your first client (or your next)

• How the Shopify Partner Program can help grow your business

Chock-full of professional tips, actionable insights, and expert advice, this guide will help you create a solid foundation for finding new clients.

Chapter 1 | Web Design Portfolio 4

CHAPTER 1

Web Design Portfolio

A professional portfolio is a necessity for anyone working in the creative industry. Not only does it allow you to showcase your design expertise to prospective clients, it also gives you the opportunity to establish a unique brand for yourself as a designer. And while physical portfolios continue to be a staple in the design world, online web design portfolios offer you an entirely new avenue to reach audiences outside of your immediate professional circle.

Unlike a physical portfolio, an online web design portfolio allows to show off your work in a medium that actually showcases the work you really do: web design. Prospective clients get to see your amazing work, and they’re also able to interact with the portfolio itself — another testament to your design expertise. Considering that your prospects will want to assess the quality of your work before hiring you, your online portfolio is a great way to demonstrate your abilities as a web designer.

Chapter 1 | Web Design Portfolio 5

1. Choose your best workThis should be a no-brainer. Since your web design portfolio will play a major role in winning the confidence of potential clients, it’s worth taking the extra time to go through all your design work to separate the average from the impeccable. Even if you aren’t usually the boasting type, this is one place where it’s okay to be a little self-aggrandizing.

When you’re going through your old web design projects, try to select examples that showcase the diversity of your capabilities and experience. Featuring projects from a variety of industries, design styles, mediums, and site types will let clients know that you’re more than a one trick pony. In addition, it’s a good idea to limit your examples to your most recent projects. That way, your portfolio will accurately reflect your current level skill and expertise with design.

“It will be tempting to include everything you’ve ever created to show your diversity. If you’re not 100 per cent convinced it is great work — don’t! Try to find your voice and then use your portfolio to showcase it. If you show something to a client that you don’t love, that client might hire you then to do more work that you don’t love. And that can turn into a vicious circle.”

Daniel Weinand, Chief Creative Officer, Shopify

If you’re just starting out and don’t have a ton of client work to showcase, don’t worry. It’s perfectly fine to include personal design projects, mockups, and design school assignments in your portfolio.

Pro tip: Always outline the problem that your project is trying to solve, and why your solution is a good fit. A little bit of research and a few well-placed statistics go a long way! However, save indepth analysis for your case studies.

Chapter 1 | Web Design Portfolio 6

2. Be professional and cohesiveYou should treat your web design portfolio just like you would any other design project. Once it goes live, it will act as your resume and will live on to become a direct extension of your personal brand. That means it’s worth your time to ensure the final product conveys a consistent visual narrative that wins over the hearts of clients — and opens their wallets, too.

Of course, striking a balance between cohesion and creativity can be tough to achieve. By no means are we advocating for a traditional portfolio with a boring layout, but there are some basic rules of UI you should try to follow to make things easier for your user. For example, each project page should have consistent layouts, writing styles, and image sizes. And every page of your web design portfolio should share similarities in terms of colour, layout, and experience.

Another important place to check for consistency is your usage of text. Typography will help you set the tone on your portfolio site, but you’re going to want to make sure that it never steals attention away from your design samples. To guarantee that your work remains the focal point for the user, try limiting your typography to one type family.

Pro tip: Create a brand guidelines document for your business to make this process easier. That way, you (and any other designers or developers you may hire in the future) are striving for cohesion, and creating a consistent experience across all of your brand’s assets — including your portfolio.

Chapter 1 | Web Design Portfolio 7

3. Make contact information readily accessibleIt’s easy to get tunnel vision when crafting your portfolio and focus all your efforts on the visual aspect of the site design. And while your visual designs should be the focal point of the portfolio, your personal contact information is equally as important. Give a little detail as to who you are, your experience, and your credentials. Just don’t get too wordy, as you want your designs to speak for themselves.

Don’t forget that the purpose of your portfolio is to attract potential clients and convince them to hire you. If you’re able to capture their interest, your contact information should be readily available and the process to get in touch should be simple. A great way to facilitate this is to include a contact form that asks for basic details like name, email address, and a brief description of the project. A form allows your prospective clients to spend less time trying to reach you and more time examining your design work.

Also remember to include calls to action that encourage your visitors to reach out to you to learn more about what you can offer their business. Simple examples could include “Request a quote,” “Let’s work together,” or “Get in touch.” While these are perfectly fine to use, challenge yourself to come up with some that show off your creativity and personal flair.

Pro tip: Head over to chapter 3 to find out how you can completely optimize your contact us page to attract new leads directly from your portfolio site.

Chapter 1 | Web Design Portfolio 8

4. Show you can achieve business objectivesWhile the primary purpose of your web design portfolio is to showcase your design capabilities, prospective clients will also want to see how your work helped businesses achieve success.

That’s where the case study comes in.

These descriptive tools allow you to explain the rationale behind your design and the context in which the project was created. By making a business case for your work, you’re in a better position to prove the value of your work to even the most skeptical prospect.

A simple case study should include the following elements:

• Project background and description — This provides context for the project including timelines, budgetary constraints, and the purpose for the design project.

• Project goals and objectives — Every design project should have tangible goals and objectives associated with the project purpose. Were you trying to optimize product pages for higher conversions? Drive more traffic to the site overall? Reduce cart abandon rates?

• Creative strategy — This is where you should explain your thought process behind the design. This could be in the form of design iterations, research processes, or creative insights. Don’t just show designs; explain why certain elements and imagery were used, and dive into detail about your creative process.

• Success metrics and results — Sometimes it’s tough to get quantifiable results from a client, but if you can show prospects that your work was able to help past clients achieve results, they’ll be more confident in your abilities to do the same for them.

Chapter 1 | Web Design Portfolio 9

• Your role in the project — If you worked on a team, you should specify what your role was within the project and what contributions you made.

• Client testimonials — Client testimonials are another confidence booster for your prospects. These can be simple, two sentence quotes that show your client’s satisfaction with your work. Try asking for them at the tail-end of a web design project.

Pro tip: This is only a simple overview of case studies and their role in your portfolio website. In our next chapter, we offer an indepth look at each of the components that make an effective case study — with more professional tips that will allow you to create intriguing, trust-building case studies to find new clients and WOW them.

Chapter 2 | Case Studies 10

CHAPTER 2

Case Studies

One of the toughest challenges designers face when pitching prospective clients is winning over their trust and confidence. If your prospective clients haven’t worked with you in the past, they’ll likely have hesitations about handing over their hard-earned cash to a stranger. To win their confidence (and close the deal!), you’ll need to take some extra steps to reassure them that your design work will not only be a success aesthetically, but that it will also help them achieve their business objectives — this is where case studies come in.

The best case studies move beyond intuition-based explanations and document the rationale behind the design, UX, and visual decisions. They offer a more humanized perspective into the design process that, ultimately, makes a business case for your work. This leaves you in a better position to prove your value (and price) to even the most skeptical client.

Chapter 2 | Case Studies 11

The 5 core elements of a web design case study

1. The overview

Think of your overview section as the executive summary of your case study. It’s the Cole’s Notes version of the document, and allows your prospects to quickly understand the highlights of your past work without reading the entire thing. This section should include the core takeaways from all other sections including the main problem, an overview of the solution, and key results.

While the overview will be your least detailed part of the case study, it is probably your most important. Only the most meticulous clients will take the time to read through your entire case study; the majority of them will just quickly skim through in order get the gist. Because of this, drafting a complete and well-articulated overview should be your top priority.

2. The context and challenge

The second section of your case study — commonly referred to as the context and the challenge —  is designed to provide your prospective client with a detailed description of the context that led to the creation of the project. If it’s well-written, the reader will leave with a solid understanding of the environmental factors and problems that you were hired to solve as a designer.

Pro tip: Write your overview section once the rest of your case study is finished. That way you can simply scan over the main points of each section and summarize them into a one or two paragraph synopsis.

Chapter 2 | Case Studies 12

This section can be distilled into three main elements:

1. Project background and description — The contextual information for the project including timelines, budgetary constraints, and the overarching purpose of the job.

2. The problem — The “why?” and the focal point for the project. Your case study needs to clearly explain the problem that led to the onset of the project. For example, if you were working on an ecommerce project then your problem could be something similar to:

Interest for company X’s core product was growing internationally at an unprecedented scale. This led to severe logistical and distribution problems that could not be fixed by physical retail solutions alone.

3. Project goals and objectives — Every website you work on should have tangible goals and objectives associated with the project’s problem. Are you trying to drive more traffic to the site overall? Optimize product pages for higher conversions? Reduce cart abandon rates? No matter what your objectives are, try your best to include any quantifiable metrics that were known at the onset of the project.

Pro tip: The core elements of the challenge are often presented to you in the project Request for Proposal or creative brief. If you are working on a more personal level with your client, however, try capturing this information in conversation. This will become the basis of your brief and, eventually, your case study too.

Chapter 2 | Case Studies 13

3. The process and insight

The purpose of this section is to elaborate on your design process, creative concept, and insight that led to your design decisions. It’s also an opportunity for you to walk your prospective client through the research, workflow, and iterations of your design work.

When writing content for this section, you want to illustrate how you got from the challenge to the solution. Make sure the flow of information is logical and that it culminates with a core insight about your client’s audience, business, or industry. These insights can stem from your client’s unique selling properties and key differentiators, or from their audience’s behavioural and consumption habits.

To ensure your reader conclusively arrives at these insights as well, you’re going to need to thoroughly document your research. Include any details about A/B tests, user research interviews, and key brainstorming takeaways that led you to uncover those crucial pieces of information.

4. The solution

The solution is where you get to show off your skill and style as a designer. It’s your chance to feature any and all samples of your

Pro tip: Finding a core truth about your client’s audience can be one of the toughest challenges as a designer. If you’re lucky, your client might already have substantial research about their customers. Use their knowledge and this research to help you craft an insight. Otherwise, try employing tactics like A/B testing and user research to help guide your design decisions.

Chapter 2 | Case Studies 14

work — from videos, landing pages, custom integrations, and anything else you created for the project.

To really get the most from this section, be sure to include written descriptions about your design work. Take the time to explain in detail your site’s defining features like its UX, navigation structure, content strategy, or unique mobile attributes. If you put the effort into crafting descriptions that complement your visual assets, your readers will feel much more confident in your decisions as a designer.

5. The results

For most business owners, it’s all about the numbers. That’s why this section is crucial for an effectively written case study.

The results section will cover the qualitative and quantitative success metrics from your project. While the type of metrics you report on can vary from one project to another, they should directly address the objectives you established in the context and challenge section. Having these results in hand will allow you to show your prospects that your work had a direct influence on your client meeting their goals. If you can do this, you’ll help them feel more comfortable putting their business (and their money) into your hands.

In addition to, or in lieu of, quantifiable metrics, consider including one to three testimonials in this section. These testimonials are

Pro tip: Remember, the medium is the message. Don’t limit yourself to screenshots alone. Incorporate interactive elements — animations, video, transitions, or anything else — that accurately represent your design work to really wow your prospects.

Chapter 2 | Case Studies 15

another great tactic for boosting the confidence of your prospects. Since the source of these reviews come from outside your business, prospects are more likely to trust them as a reputable reference. When including your testimonials, however, keep them short and sweet. They can be as simple as one or two sentences, so long as they illustrate your previous client’s satisfaction with your work.

Pro tip: Be sure to collect testimonials from your clients near the tail-end of your project. Ask them to speak about your process, creative thinking, and the quality of the final product. Just make sure you get their approval to publish them!

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 16

CHAPTER 3

Contact Us Page

As a freelancer or agency, your portfolio website has the power to be your most valuable asset for finding new clients. As previously mentioned, it establishes a baseline level of trust, and helps build some initial interest from a prospective client without ever engaging with them directly. But what good does that interest serve if your prospects never end up reaching out to you?

That’s where your contact page comes in. When done right, these simple form-based pages allow you to capture interested prospects directly from your portfolio, while also streamlining your process for vetting and prioritizing those prospects.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 17

Why your contact page is so importantAt its core, your contact page is a simple web page that features a lead capture form, designed for client acquisition. You more than likely already have a very simplified version of this form on your site, which probably looks something like this:

These contact forms are quite common on freelancer and agency websites, but are mostly added as an afterthought without much consideration about their purpose or impact. While simple forms like the one above does give your prospects an opportunity to reach out to you, they’re often not compelling enough to persuade your visitors to actually do so. And even when someone does fill out your basic form, you’ll often end up with a vague response like this:

It doesn’t make sense for you to devote the same amount of time to every prospect that comes through your website. A response can take hours, or even days, of back and forth communication before you fully understand the scope of the project, and identify whether your prospect is a good fit for your business.

Rather than opting for the status quo, you should put in the effort to create a contact form that is elegantly designed to extract the most relevant information from your prospect. This proactive information gathering allows you to make an educated decision about working with them, before wasting any time writing proposals or attending introductory meetings. Having an established process like this, might seem like overkill to some, but it can be exceptionally beneficial if you’re a longtime freelancer, or if you work at an agency that receives a substantial amount of leads through your portfolio.

Design agency Pixel Union has put together a beautiful contact form that is not only visually consistent with the rest of their website, but also asks the right amount and type of questions in order to effectively evaluate prospects for fit.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 18

The benefits of adding a detailed form like this to your portfolio don’t end there, they can also add a ton of value for your business by:

• Optimizing your portfolio site for inbound lead acquisition

• Allowing you to capture more information about the prospects in your sales pipeline

• Helping you better understand a prospect’s needs, challenges, and context before talking to them

• Streamlining your client qualification process so you know which prospective clients to prioritize

• But above all, strategically planning out your contact page form will help you identify potentially successful and profitable relationships more quickly — ultimately saving you time, energy, and money

Optimizing your contact pageIt takes some proactive and strategic thinking to transform your standard contact page into a lead generation and qualification machine. It’s important that you carefully consider all aspects of this page, and how they interact with one another, just as you would any other area of your portfolio site.

Pro tip: Many consultants choose to keep a basic contact form on their site, in addition to this more detailed form, so they have a space for general inquiries. This chapter is focused on the benefits of the detailed form, but it’s ultimately up to you to decide if you want both options available on your portfolio!

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 19

In order to optimize your contact page and encourage submissions, you’ll need to design it with the intent of lessening user friction — the actual or perceived amount of time and effort it takes to complete your form. At the same time, your form also needs to gather enough information to qualify your prospects. The balance between these two needs can be a tricky one, but it’s not impossible.

Here are a few things you should consider in order to avoid unnecessary friction, and qualify prospects when creating your contact form:

1. Provide context for the form

It’s important to provide context to your site visitors whenever you want them to take action — and your contact page is no different. If you want a prospective client to fill out your form, you’re going to have to convince them why they should. Some of the best contact pages accomplish this by including some clever copy before the form, in order to persuade visitors to take action.

This part of the contact page can often be overlooked, but it shouldn’t be. Providing context around the contact form will help you establish expectations with your prospect and allow you to overcome any perceived friction or risk associated with the form.

At the very least, we recommend including the following in your pre-form copy:

• A gesture of appreciation — Thank your prospects for their interest in your business and let them know you’re excited to work with them.

• An explanation of the form’s purpose — Describe why filling out the form is important for the client onboarding process. Take the perspective of the client when framing this part, by telling them that this detailed form will simplify the process

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 20

of working together and give you enough information to be truly beneficial for their business.

• An expectation of their time investment — Let them know how long it’s going to take to complete the form before they start. This will help reduce any perceived friction associated with the length of the form (this is especially important for longer contact forms).

Shopify Expert and design agency Lucid have included some succinct, but compelling copy in their contact form that is able to communicate the value of the form, the length of time it’ll take to complete, as well as their appreciation for the prospect’s initial interest.

2. Ask the right questions

We’ve all seen the status quo for contact pages: the “name, email, memo” format that appears on most websites. While you may be able to get some information from these questions, they are really the bare minimum and won’t provide you with enough detail to make a sound decision about your prospect.

It’s important that you think about your contact form questions strategically — you want to capture enough details that you have a

Pro tip: It’s also a good idea to let potential prospects know if you aren’t currently taking any new clients. That way expectations are clearly established upfront, and neither of you will waste time by starting a conversation that won’t lead anywhere any time soon. You can see an example of this type of messaging on design agency and Shopify Expert Shopify Ninjas’ contact form.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 21

baseline understanding of their request, but not so much that you scare them off.

A good rule of thumb is to include one to three questions from each of the following sections:

Contact information — This stuff is mandatory for any contact form. Examples of these fields include their name, email address, and phone number.

Business information — These questions allow you to get a better understanding of who you’re dealing with, and are vital if you’re focused on a specific vertical. Examples of these fields include business website, industry, product offering, and primary contact/decision maker.

Project information — This is the most important part of your contact form since it provides you with the necessary details to qualify their project and determine if it’s the right fit. Examples of these fields could include project type, estimated budget, estimated timeframe for completion, and even the business problem they’re trying to solve.

Pro tip: It’s important to remember that just because you ask the right questions, doesn’t mean your prospect will fill out the form correctly or entirely. Some clients will not have all the answers you’re looking for right off the bat, so it’s important to make non-essential questions not mandatory if you want to increase the likelihood that the form will be completed.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 22

3. Ask questions the right way

While it’s important to be strategic about what questions you ask, it’s equally important to consider how you ask those questions. The format of your questions can directly impact the level of friction felt by the user, which in turn will influence the likelihood of a site visitor completing your contact form.

In his online course, Unbounce’s Oli Gardner talks about how one of the major sources of user friction in lead generation forms stems from the style of questions used within the form itself. While the course focuses primarily on forms in a broad sense, his lessons can be directly applied to your contact page form.

For example, including too many open-ended questions on your form can leave prospects spending more time thinking about their responses and not actually responding. If they end up wasting too much effort planning out their answer, it’s more likely that they’ll just exit without giving you one at all.

To keep this from happening on your contact form, simplify their thought process by swapping open-ended questions with drop-down menus or radio buttons that present a set amount of options. This will instantly remove any unnecessary friction from an open field and make it easier for a prospect to fill out your form quickly.

Ecommerce consultant and Shopify Expert Kurt Elster uses this approach in various sections of his contact form, which makes filling it out a breeze.

Just be careful because, according to Gardner, drop-down menus and radio buttons can actually increase friction when they don’t include a reasonable option for the user. Thus, it’s mandatory that you always add an “Other” option for those special use cases.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 23

4. Add some social proof

We’ve all heard it before: social proof can help build trust with users. You probably already use social proof on your portfolio site within case studies and on your client roster page, but you can also leverage its influential power on your contact page.

Even after reviewing your portfolio of work and navigating over to your contact page, your prospects may still feel uncertain about reaching out to you. One way to combat this is by adding a few client testimonials above or below your contact form, to help remove any of these worries or doubts.

Having other business owners share the positive experiences they’ve had working with you will not only lend to your perceived credibility, but it will also help even the biggest skeptic feel more comfortable entrusting you with their business.

5. Consider the length of your contact form

So far, we’ve focused on the content of your form and its impact on the overall effectiveness of your contact page, but the way in which you design your form is important as well.

One of the biggest design decisions that can influence a prospect’s assessment of friction is the length of your contact form.

Form length has an interesting correlation with lead quality. In general, the shorter the form, the easier it is to complete and the more prospects you’ll likely receive. While in many cases, more

Pro tip: Having these endorsements directly on your contact page will help remove any unnecessary concerns about your business on the spot, which ultimately reduces friction and can lead to increased form submissions.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 24

submissions is a good thing, you’ll be more likely to generate highly qualified prospects with a more detailed form.

The decision to go long or short will ultimately depend on the type of strategy you’re trying to pursue. Here’s a little insight into both:

THE CASE FOR THE SHORT FORM

If you’re new to the freelance world and are looking to land your first few clients, it might make sense to opt for a shorter form length with fewer questions. A reduced form size will eliminate a lot of friction from the submission process, and help you get more prospects in your sales pipeline.

If you do opt for the short form, make sure to include the essential contact information section, as well as a few qualifying questions from the business/project sections so you have at least some information to evaluate the client.

Jeffrey Zeldman offers an example of a great, simple contact page form (bonus points for the budget slider).

THE CASE FOR THE LONG FORM

On the other hand if you’re an experienced freelancer or work at an agency, you’ll probably be looking for a higher quality of prospect for your sales pipeline. This can be accomplished by using a longer, more detailed form. The length of these forms will help you weed out any prospects who aren’t serious about hiring you, while giving you enough information to qualify prospects before deciding to continue the conversation.

If you opt for the longer form, we recommend breaking the process into steps, and including a progress bar to show prospective clients how far along they are as they complete the form. By dividing up questions, your lengthy form will appear much more manageable, which will reduce the perceived amount of effort needed from your prospects.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 25

We’ve include these examples previously in this chapter, but both Lucid and Shopify Ninja’s contact forms demonstrate some good best practices for dealing with long form lengths.

6. Test and iterate your form

The recommendations above are general best practices commonly seen across the industry. However, this does not mean that they will be the best solution for every specific situation.

It’s important to consider what will work best for your business when building your contact page form. As with any part of your website, you should be consistently gathering research around the effectiveness of your form for future optimization.

In order to collect some quantitative results, I’d recommend running your contact form through some simple A/B tests. By measuring the impact of small, incremental changes on form completion rates, over time you’ll be able to create a form that is fully optimized for submissions.

Here are some resources for learning more about running your own A/B test:

• How to A/B Test Your Forms for Maximum Conversion

• Case Study: 30% More Leads By A/B Testing a Contact Form

• Form Length Isn’t Everything: 3 Other Ways to Optimize Your Forms for Conversions

These anecdotal insights can uncover some interesting perspectives and ideas about your contact form.

Regardless of how you decide to gather insight on the usability of your form, it’s important that you invest in conducting this research to simply test your assumptions and optimize based on your findings.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 26

These anecdotal insights can uncover some interesting perspectives and ideas about your contact form.

Tools for creating your contact form

If you’re looking to set up a form on your own portfolio website, there are a variety of tools available for simplifying the process.

While you can create a simple form yourself using basic HTML and PHP, sometimes it’s just easier to use an online form builder instead. If you’re looking for a tool for this purpose, here are few favorites to keep in your back pocket:

• TypeForm — You can easily create beautiful, customized forms, surveys, and quizzes using TypeForm. Typeform offers a ton of personalization and customization options to help you create the form of your dreams.

• Wufoo — Another great option for automated form building, Wufoo allows you to host forms on their site or embedded within your own. They offer more than 300 templates that you can start with, or that you can code your own design too. You can try them out on your site for free, but only up to 100 entries.

• Hubspot — Hubspot is much more than just an online form builder. This tool is great for creating custom lead capture

Pro Tip: You can also uncover a lot of insight by gathering qualitative feedback from existing clients who were onboarded through your contact page. Try chatting with them in-person, or seeing if they’d be willing to fill out a follow-up survey mid-way through or near the end of your project work.

Chapter 3 | Contact Us Page 27

forms for your site, while also offering CRM functionality for keeping track of those leads in your salespipeline.

There are also a few tools you can use to integrate your form data with other software services you might be using, such as mailing automation and CRM software:

• Zapier — A great workflow automation app that makes it easy for your various platforms to share data and talk to one another. Zapier integrates with more than 500 web applications and is perfect for connecting form software to email platforms like MailChimp or CRM solutions like Hubspot.

• IFTT — Another workflow automation app that allows you to connect various web applications and push responses from one another. IFTT has less integrations than Zapier, but is available to use largely for free.

Transform your contact page today

Despite the tendency to overlook the contact page, you should treat yours with the same devotion as the rest of your portfolio site. Investing in an optimized contact page can result in a greater amount of leads for your business, and a sophisticated process for qualifying those leads.

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 28

CHAPTER 4

From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client

Now that you have all of your personal assets optimized and ready for client conversions, it’s time to find your first client (or learn some useful new strategies for finding your next)!

Shopify Expert Kurt Elster, co-founder of Ethercycle, offers his counter-intuitive approach for finding clients, as well as tips for building your network of fellow web designers and developers.

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 29

One of the most common questions I hear from new freelancers is, “Where do I find my first client?”

The first client is always the hardest to get. For any new business, no matter how compelling your offer is, if no one has heard of you, they can’t hire you.

When I started my own web design business in 2009, I eagerly launched my new website to crickets. After some frustration, I resorted to an entirely old-fashioned approach. I hand-addressed letters of introduction to my local neighborhood retail-business owners, and slipped envelopes under their doors one early morning.

A few of those letters turned into phone calls, which turned into meetings, and within two weeks it turned into my first client. From there, that first client referred me to another local business, that in turn referred me to another.

Each subsequent client is easier to get due to a combination of experience and word of mouth. But until you land that first gig, what do you do?

Were I to start my business over from scratch, I have a clear idea of how I’d do it.

Figure out your positioningYour first step should be to figure out your positioning. Who do you serve? What do you do for them? How are you different from other freelancers?

If you know that, then you can put it together and form what I call a positioning statement. For example, my positioning statement reads something like this:

“Kurt Elster helps Shopify store owners uncover hidden profits in their websites. Unlike web designers, he’s solely concerned with providing the highest possible return on investment.”

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 30

Try it yourself, fill in the following blanks:

“I’m a __________ who helps__________ with__________. Unlike my competitors, I __________.”

It’s easy to skip this step, but you’ll be hurting yourself in the long and short term by doing so. Having a crisp and concise positioning statement is the cornerstone of your marketing. By defining your positioning, you make it easy to stay top of mind with clients, which enables easy referrals.

Think about this: When someone asks you, “what do you do for a living?” how long does it take you to answer? I bet it takes longer than ten seconds. And if it does, how do you expect them to remember it? If you can’t concisely explain what you do for a living, no one else will be able to either.

Having a crisp positioning statement enables you to describe what kind of value you offer, but more importantly, it also lets others describe what you do with ease and consistency. In turn, when you’re not around, people in your network can easily remember what you do, and give your elevator pitch for you. Again, it keeps you top of mind.

The worst thing you can do here is to have a broad positioning statement: “I help everybody with everything!”

Don’t do that. It’s counter-intuitive. When you’re a generalist, it’s extremely difficult to establish yourself as an expert or authority, because you do too much. For me to become the go-to Shopify Expert among my network, I had to start saying that I worked exclusively on Shopify. The more specific and targeted your positioning, the easier it will be to attract clients.

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 31

The rule of tenOnce you have a positioning statement worked out, it’s almost time to start writing to your audience. Let’s start building you an audience by exploiting the rule of ten.

The rule of ten is pretty straightforward; tell ten people about your positioning. If you have more than ten, great, but if not make a list of ten. That list can include past clients, coworkers, friends, family, anyone really.

Start a newsletter on your topic, and ask them to join. This is the start of your audience, and the only requirement is that each person must be able to directly benefit from your writing and knowledge. In any online business, professional services included, your list is your most valuable business asset.

A newsletter will let you systematically build a list of people who have raised their hands and said they’re interested in you. This lets you build a relationship with them, allowing them to either hire you or make referrals to you.

Once you have a small but mighty audience, start writing. It’s so much easier to write with an audience in mind, and even easier to write if that audience has questions that you can answer.

Your first email to your list should be a question. Ask them, “what’s the single biggest pain or problem you’re facing with [TOPIC]?” The replies to that email are your homework; the answers should be what you publish in your newsletter.

Get inspiration for your own newsletter by signing up for others like:

• Gavin Ballard’s Mastering Apps

• Eric Davis’ Shopify Dispatch

• And my own, Ethercycle

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 32

Finding your next clients Finding continuous clients isn’t always easy for web design and development agencies, and creating beautiful websites sometimes isn’t enough. Luckily, there are plenty of things you can do to branch out and find more clients, whether you’re just starting out or a veteran of the business. Here are 6 tips web development agencies can use to find new clients.

Use social media

This might seem obvious, but having a social media presence is a great way of getting free publicity and a potentially wide reach. And believe it or not, you can be picky with your channels. You don’t have to be on all of them, but make sure you pick the right ones for your business; in other words, pick the ones where your clients are likely to be.

Pinterest is great means of showing off the fantastic websites you have created while LinkedIn is a powerful tool for networking with peers, potential clients, and partners. Create a profile that’s rich with keywords and try to remain active and engaged with other users to build strong relationships.

You also want to develop a consistent social media presence to get your branding across.

Dedicate some time to creating a solid strategy which you can realistically maintain over time. Think about what content is right for what platform: Facebook is great for more relaxed, laid back content; LinkedIn is best for professional or business related content; and Twitter is perfect for short, snappy updates and anything that’s currently a hot topic.

Think about your branding, what you stand for, and what tone you’re going for. If you strive to be quite serious and professional, stick with LinkedIn; if you’re more edgy and hip, maybe try something

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 33

like Twitter or Instagram. But remember: use social media to engage with people and build relationships, not to sell.

Finally, join appropriate groups related to your skills (Google+ and LinkedIn are great for this). Interact with other users, engage with them, and answer questions. By connecting with people on a regular basis, sharing resources and answering questions, you may find that work starts to come to you.

Blog posts

Writing your own blog is a great way of building your credibility as an expert designer. The key is to show potential clients that you really know what you’re doing, so you are going to need to create content that demonstrates your knowledge of web development. Writing guest posts for respected blogs in your industry is also a good idea — this way you can get more exposure, build relationships, and get backlinks.

The focus here should be on developing name recognition and improving your credibility, but you want to write content that’s interesting, engaging and helpful — i.e. stuff budding developers are actually going to read. Try and strike a balance with your content, for example a “Tips for Web Developers to do X, Y and Z”, or an instructional series for those new to the business. Humour is good, but use it sparingly, and write in a way that developers of all skill levels can understand.

Pro tip: Don’t feel the need to be on every social network — only the ones that are appropriate for your brand. That way, you can focus your time on engaging with your community, rather than exceeding your professional bandwidth trying to be everywhere at once.

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 34

To search for guest bloggers, try looking through Twitter to find web development bloggers with lots of followers, or simply try Google, searching for keywords like “web development blogger” + “guest post” to find bloggers that accept guest content.

Then send out some emails, something along the lines of:

“Hello, I’m a web developer who has been in the industry for X years. I’ve been reading your blog and would love for you to consider me as a guest blogger as I think I have some content which would interest your audience. Please get back to me so we can discuss this further.”

Make sure you actually read their blog to get an idea of the kind of content they accept, and include links to some of your previous content so they can see some examples of your work.

As your name becomes more well-known, you’re more likely to find new projects falling into your lap with little or no marketing effort, simply because people have read and liked your articles.

Look at existing sites

Redesign a popular website with your own unique take, send it to the head of the company, and explain why you’ve made the changes you’ve made. This is a great way for web developers and designers to get work, and also allows you to get creative as a designer to demonstrate your skills to both your peers and potential clients.

Pro tip: Find a critical knowledge gap in the blog’s content and offer your article as a solution to this gap. This will show that you’ve read the blog, understand the content and audience, and have found a niche that your content can satisfy.

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 35

You’re showing that you have specific ideas to make someone else’s business better, and that you can actually create these ideas.

Network with other freelancers

Networking and building relationships with freelancers is one of the best ways to get client referrals. A number of freelance web developers find themselves in a very fortunate position where they have more work inquiries than they can handle. It is also possible that they might frequently be contacted for work that is beyond their capabilities.

The good news is most of these web developers are willing to help their peers out because even if they can’t do the work themselves, they want to help the would-be-client by referring them to someone they trust. And chances are, you might be in a similar situation where you can one day recommend them to other would-be-clients.

It’s important to remember that these people aren’t necessarily your competition; they are actually your community and building relationships with these people could benefit you.

How do you network with other freelancers? There are plenty of networking opportunities and events both offline and online, and social media is also a great means of making contact.

Once again, social media can be a great tool for finding other developers to connect with. You can use these sites like LinkedIn and Google+ to join groups where you can meet other like-minded individuals, engage, share content and ideas, and so on.

Forums are another great method of meeting developers. Try sites like Web Design Forum, Freelance Gossip, and Digital Point. You can even find information on meet-ups, expos and conventions for developers and designers. Try going to ecommerce expos to meet potential new clients as well as meeting potential partners. Just

Chapter 4 | From a Shopify Expert: How to Find Your First Client 36

make sure you take some business cards that include your contact details, website, and information on what skills you offer.

The same thing goes for web designers. These guys are just as useful as other web developers when it comes to building relationships and getting more clients. Having working relationships with web designers can be especially helpful to web developers as a lot of web designers aren’t strong coders or have reached a place in their business where they want to outsource the work. This can be a great opportunity to build a longterm relationship with a web designer where you partner up on projects, or refer clients to one another for work that the other party is not capable of completing.

Again, try social media and forums to get in touch with designers. Search on Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, as well as forums like Designerstalk, Graphic Design Forum, and Web Pro Cafe for designers who are looking for partnerships.

Pro tip: Joining the Shopify Partner Program gives you access to the partner-only forums. This will allow you to network with other web designers and developers, and learn more about the Shopify platform and how it can benefit your future ecommerce website projects.

How to Become Part of the Shopify Partner Ecosystem

As a web designer or developer, one of the many decisions you’ll (eventually) have to make is which ecommerce platform to offer to your clients. It needs to be intuitive for you to build on, and extremely user-friendly for the merchant you’re building for. No one can make that decision but you.

Perhaps you’ll consider Shopify.

We’ve established a vast network of international designers, developers, marketers, and consultants that use Shopify as the ecommerce tool of choice for their clients. We call it the Shopify Ecosystem — a supportive community of freelancers and agencies learning from one another and aiming to make commerce better for everyone.

The easiest way to join this ecosystem is to sign up for the Shopify Partner Program (don’t worry—it’s free, so you can try it out to see if it’s a good fit). You’ll get access to our in-depth documentation, workshops and webinars, marketing materials, private discussion forums, and early insights into Shopify’s roadmap. You’ll also have the opportunity to earn a listing in our Shopify Experts Marketplace, where we send all of our merchants looking for help with design, development, or marketing.

You’ll be able to create unlimited development stores so you can test out the platform or build a client’s site before launch.

These are the things that we feel will bring you the most value as a Shopify Partner, but to say thank you, we also offer a revenue share for each merchant you bring onto Shopify (or each app or theme you sell). We’ll give you 20 per cent of what your clients pay Shopify monthly for as long as they remain on the platform. For your apps and themes, you’ll earn 80 per cent and 70 per cent respectively from each sale.

We hope you’ll join us.

Become a Shopify Partner