website with business plan

Create a business website and start growing online

Establish your small business website with all the essentials—from intuitive design features to built-in management tools and secure payment solutions.

Templates designed to set you up for success

Choose from 800+ fully customizable business templates and start building your site today.

Get your site up and running

Secure web hosting.

With free web hosting , your site is automatically backed up and ready to handle any situation.

Unique domain name

Look professional online with a custom domain name . Check out the Business Name Generator  for inspiration.

Custom business email

Gain client trust and strengthen your brand with your own business email that matches your domain.

Intuitive design

Customize your site to fit your business needs with a complete suite of design features .

All the tools you need to grow your business

→ Find high-quality, ready-to-ship products from dropshipping suppliers .

→   Get secure paym ents , track transactions and generate invoices .

→   Reach your audience with social campaigns and built-in SEO tools . 

→   Convert leads through live chats, email marketing, forms and more.

→   Manage seamlessly from your dashboard, or with the Wix Owner App .

→   Gain actionable insights with analytics and repor ts .

How to make a business website

Follow these 6 simple steps to create your own business website today.

Select your template, or start from a blank canvas.

Pick your domain name and get reliable web hosting.

Customize your site’s content and design.

Add business apps like an online store, bookings and more.

Use built-in SEO tools to optimize your site for search engines.

Publish your website and start earning.

Learn more from business experts

How to Start a Business in 15 Steps

Your Guide to Business Website Creation 

How to Come Up With a Business Name

Faq - create a small business website, can i build a business website for free.

Yes. When you create a free website with Wix, you’ll get reliable web hosting, secure content storage and a full suite of design tools. If you’d like to add more advanced features like POS payments , invoices , an online store and more, you can always upgrade to Premium.

How can I get my website found on Google?

Using Wix’s SEO Setup Checklist and built-in SEO tools , you can index your site on Google right from your dashboard and find ways to improve your site’s ranking.

Is it easy to build a business website?

Yes, Wix offers a few different ways to make a website for a small business, so choose the one that’s best for you. Pick one of our  900+ beautiful templates  to start creating your site or get a business-ready site in minutes with our  AI website builder .

Will my client’s data be secure?

Yes, your site will come with built-in security coverage—from threat prevention to real-time detection and rapid response. Our world class experts and enterprise-grade security system work 24/7 so you can rest assured knowing that your and your client’s information will be kept safe and secure.

Which features should I incorporate when creating a small business website?

You can choose from Wix’s wide range of business solutions designed to help you seamlessly build and manage your online business—from creating an email address and phone number to built-in analytics and SEO and marketing tools. There are also powerful features like the Wix blog maker and online portfolio builder that allow you to showcase your business’s projects and brand voice.

24/7 support

Find answers to all your questions in our Help Center or request a callback to speak with an expert.

Hire a professional

Get matched with vetted agencies and freelancers to help you create, design or enhance your website.

Join over 220M users growing their business with Wix.

Sell online

Build an eCommerce website that includes print-on-demand, shipping, Google Shopping, and more.

Grow your community

Build a loyal audience for your brand by creating a blog , forum, 
or members area.

Serve everywhere

Improve dining with our restaurant website builder . Easy ordering, seamless delivery, and custom loyalty programs included.

Streamline operations

Manage your bookings, staff, clients, and payments—all from one appointment scheduler .

Host events

Plan and manage events , accept RSVPs, sell tickets & membership plans, all on a scalable platform.

Manage properties

Connect to 100+ traveling platforms, bulk update pricing & availability, and grow your hospitality business .

Website Design Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 1,000 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their website design businesses. On this page, we will first give you some background information with regards to the importance of business planning. We will then go through a website design business plan template step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

What is a Website Design Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your website design business as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategy for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan for a Website Design Agency

If you’re looking to start a website design business, or grow your existing website design business, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your website design business in order to improve your chances of success. Your website design business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Website Design Businesses

With regards to funding, the main sources of funding for a website design business are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans and angel investors. With regards to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the lender will not only want to confirm that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business.

Personal savings is the most common form of funding for a website design business. Venture capitalists will usually not fund a website design business. They might consider funding a website design business with a national presence, but never an individual location. This is because most venture capitalists are looking for millions of dollars in return when they make an investment, and an individual location could never achieve such results.  With that said, personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for website design businesses.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

If you want to start a website design business or expand your current one, you need a business plan. Below are links to each section of your website design business plan template:

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of website design business you are operating and its status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a website design business that you would like to grow, or are you operating website design businesses in multiple markets?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan. For example, give a brief overview of the website design industry. Discuss the type of website design business you are operating. Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers. Provide a snapshot of your marketing plan. Identify the key members of your team. And offer an overview of your financial plan.  

Company Analysis

In your company analysis, you will detail the type of website design business you are operating.

For example, you might operate one of the following types of website design businesses:

• WordPress website design : this type of business builds websites with WordPress, due to its capabilities, plugin options, and templates.
• Custom website design: this type of business involves developing both the front end and backend of a website using coding, programming, databases, forms, etc. without a content management platform.
• Other platform website design: this type of business uses a variety of other platforms to develop specific types of site, such as e-commerce. Platforms like Shopify or Squarespace make specific site development relatively easy.

In addition to explaining the type of website design business you will operate, the Company Analysis section of your business plan needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to question such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of websites launched, the types of sites developed, etc.
• Your legal structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry analysis, you need to provide an overview of the website design industry.

While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the website design industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.

Secondly, market research can improve your strategy, particularly if your research identifies market trends.

The third reason for market research is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your website design business plan:

• How big is the website design industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential market for your website design business? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your website design business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: large corporations, small businesses, nonprofits, government entities, and individuals.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of website design business you operate. Clearly, large corporations would respond to different marketing promotions than nonprofits, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, include a discussion of the ages, genders, locations and income levels of the customers you seek to serve. Because most website design businesses primarily serve customers living in their same city or town, such demographic information is easy to find on government websites.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can understand and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.  

Finish Your Web Design Business Plan in 1 Day!

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your business plan?

With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other website design businesses.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t direct competitors. This includes individuals who prefer to use template-based platforms to build their website on their own, or from dedicated in-house design teams.

With regards to direct competition, you want to describe the other website design businesses with which you compete. Most likely, your direct competitors will be website design businesses located very close to your location.

For each such competitor, provide an overview of their businesses and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But you should be able to find out key things about them such as:

• What types of customers do they serve?
• Do they specialize in specific site types (i.e. content sites, e-commerce sites, etc.)?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

With regards to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide either a wider range or more specialized range of services?
• Will you offer features such as social media integration?
• Will you provide superior customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.  

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a website design business plan, your marketing plan should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of website design company that you documented in your Company Analysis. Then, detail the specific products you will be offering. For example, in addition to WordPress site development, will your website design business provide custom design options?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your marketing plan, you are presenting the services you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the location of your website design company. Document your location and mention how the location will impact your success. For example, will you operate from a physical office, or will you primarily interact with clients online and/or at their home or place of business? In this section, discuss how your location will affect demand for your services.

Promotions : The final part of your website design marketing plan is the promotions section. Here you will document how you will drive customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Advertising in local papers and magazines
• Reaching out to local websites
• Signs and billboards
• Social media marketing
• Local radio advertising

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your website design business, including marketing, providing consultations, programming, troubleshooting, keeping abreast of new technology, etc.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to launch your 100th e-commerce site, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to open a website design business in a new location.  

Management Team

To demonstrate your website design business’ ability to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing website design businesses. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act like mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in programming, or successfully running small businesses.  

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statements.

Income Statement : an income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenues and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you complete/launch one website per week, or will you have teams working on multiple projects at once? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets : Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your website design business, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a bank writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement : Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and make sure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt.

In developing your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a website design business:

• Office build-out
• Cost of buying or leasing a company vehicle
• Cost of office supplies such as computers and software
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff
• Business insurance
• Taxes and permits
• Legal expenses

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your office lease, or an overview of the services you offer.  

Putting together a business plan for your website design business is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will really understand the website design industry, your competition, and your customers. You will have developed a marketing plan and will really understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful website design business.  

Web Design Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my website design business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily complete your Website Design Business Plan.

What is the Goal of a Business Plan's Executive Summary?

The goal of your Executive Summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the type of website design business you are operating and the status; for example, are you a startup, do you have a website design business that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of website design businesses?

Don’t you wish there was a faster, easier way to finish your Web Design business plan?

OR, Let Us Develop Your Plan For You

Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.   Click here to see how a Growthink business plan writer can create your business plan for you.

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

Home » Building Websites » Build a Business Website in 2024: Domains, Templates & More

Build a Business Website in 2024: Domains, Templates & More

Our independent research projects and impartial reviews are funded in part by affiliate commissions, at no extra cost to our readers. Learn more

Written and researched by:

So you want to build a business website? Before you start imagining scenarios of late nights grueling over coding or advanced web design, let me divert your attention to website builders . With this tool, you can set up a professional business website without any technical expertise.

If you’re not sure where to begin, I recommend a website builder like Wix or Shopify . Two of the top-rated builders for small businesses, these platforms come with an array of features that could be useful for your business website, from ecommerce to marketing.

Keen to begin? Keep reading and learn how to make a small business website today.

Before You Start Your Business Website…

Before you dive into creating a website for your business, you need to map out a few things first. Here are three questions to ask yourself:

• Why do you need to make a website for your business? First of all, you need to identify why you want to build a business website.  Would you like to grow your presence online? Promote your services? Showcase your creative works to potential clients? Figuring out the key motivations behind your website will help you later on, since you’ll be able to identify key website features that’ll help you achieve your goals.
• Who is the target audience ? After establishing why you’re building a business website, start thinking about who you want to visit your website. Identify your audience’s age range, gender, location, interests, and lifestyle first. From there, you can work out what their unique needs might be and how your business website can bring value to them.
• What will your branding look like? Your website’s looks are essential to its success. To stand out from the crowd, make sure your brand identity is eye-catching, memorable, and represents your business well. Logos, fonts, color schemes, and tone of voice are important aspects to cover. Altogether, they should accurately represent your brand’s personality and give website visitors a clear idea of what you stand for.

Need some ideas? Be inspired by these 7 brand identity examples.

1. Choose Your Domain Name

Your domain name is how people will find your business website online, so make it count. Since it’s one of the first things people see, ensure that it’s clear, catchy, and memorable (just like our own domain, “websitebuilderexpert.com” ).

But how do you get a domain? Well, some website builders let you access a free domain for your first year. For instance, Wix’s paid plans include a free domain for 1 year , letting you choose from suffixes like “.com” or “.net”.

However, at renewal, you’ll need to pay an annual fee ranging from $20-$70 to keep your domain running. This gives you two options: you could either stick with your website builder and pay the annual fee, or switch to a domain name registrar for more choice.

Domain name registrars are great if you’re looking for flexible pricing options. I recommend Domain.com, since it has a large number of domain suffixes to choose from.

As a general rule of thumb, I suggest opting for a “.com” suffix if it’s available. This is because it’s the most recognisable and professional domain ending. If you think of one of the biggest brands in the world, it’s likely that their website ends with “.com”. If you’re using Domain.com, this suffix costs $11.99 for the first year and rises to $21.99 per year at renewal.

How Do I Come Up With a Good Domain Name?

Struggling to choose a domain name ? Here are three key tips to help you out:

• Is it short? Effective domain names are between 6-14 characters long . Names that are too long are trickier for users to type down, making it difficult to access your website.
• Does it make sense? Your domain should have a logical connection to your website. For instance, “ booking.com ” tells you exactly what the website is for (holiday bookings).
• Are there unnecessary characters? Avoid using numbers or hyphens since this can make your domain look messy.

If you already have a business name, it’s best practice to make it your domain name too (if it’s available). This is so pre-existing customers who are already familiar with your brand can easily access your website. For instance, if your business name is “ best domains ”, you could easily convert that into “ bestdomains.com ” or “ bestdomains.org .”

2. Create a Business Email Address

Though you don’t need a business email address to set up your website, it will help you establish a professional presence online and leave website visitors with an easy way to contact you. Conveniently, business emails are easy to create, with a number of free and paid options available.

For best results, I recommend Google Workspace . Though it’s no longer free to use, you can create your own professional email from as little as $6 per month (billed annually), while its 14-day free trial will help you try before you buy.

Want a professional email without spending a penny? Read our guide to getting a free business email .

What Does a Good Business Email Look Like?

The best business email addresses end with the name of your business. In fact, you can have multiple email addresses for different areas of your business, so long as they end the same way:

• [email protected]
• [email protected]  
• [email protected]

Each of these emails clearly indicate what they’re used for, also ending with the name of the business. I know that I could contact “ [email protected]” to receive information on a specific query and that it’ll be sent to the correct company.

Make sure any business email addresses are easily discoverable from your website, newsletters, and social media pages. This is so customers know how to contact you!

3. Identify the Right Website Builder for You

Now for the serious part: choosing the right website builder for your business. Since there’s so much choice, I’ve decided to highlight only two website builders that we found were excellent solutions for small businesses during our research and testing. Both Wix and Shopify are powerful platforms that make it easy to set up without any technical experience .

The Best Small Business Website Builders

• Shopify – For setting up an ecommerce store
• Wix – For brilliant features for your business

Shopify Summary

Our top-rated website builder for small businesses, Shopify is best for ecommerce stores that are scaling up or have a large inventory already . It comes with a host of powerful sales features, ranging from over 100 payment gateways to substantial discounts on merchant shipping costs.

Whether you’re selling gym wear or pet accessories, Shopify’s huge list of sales features are adaptable to your needs. You can use Shopify Magic to generate product descriptions, or set up international shipping across different markets if you’re selling overseas.

Wix Summary

Just behind Shopify comes Wix, a popular website builder that we scored highly for its impressive website features that span bookings, ecommerce, and marketing. If you want a website builder that will provide you with the tools necessary to get set up and start growing your business online, this is the builder to go for.

Notable features include Wix’s AI tools, in particular, Wix ADI . This AI website builder generates a unique design based on your responses to specific prompts, such as “ what are you building a website for? ” Since it addresses your key needs, you’ll end up with a professional website that’s a suitable fit for your business.

Which Pricing Plan Is Best for Me?

Once you’ve found a website builder you’re interested in, you need to look at the pricing plans available and see which one is best for you. To give you an idea of the kinds of plans on the market, we’ve broken down the costs for Shopify and Wix.

Shopify’s three main plans range between $29-$299 per month (billed annually) . They all come with powerful sales features, such as point of sale to integrate in-person sales with your store, analytics to track your store’s progress with, and the ability to sell unlimited products.

To test out Shopify’s features, you only have a 3-day free trial . However, you can also access your first month for $1 – an inexpensive way to give the platform a spin!

For smaller businesses, I recommend the Basic plan priced at $29 per month (billed annually). You’ll still receive powerful sales features, while it’s also a brilliant starting point for new businesses who anticipate growth further down the road. For instance, you’ll have access to 3 international markets, helping you dip your toes into selling overseas.

As your business expands, you could switch to the Shopify plan at $79 per month (billed annually). On this plan, you’ll receive upgraded features such as increased discounts on your shipping costs, alongside the ability to add additional accounts for your staff members.

In contrast, Wix’s premium plans, which range from $17-$159 per month (billed annually) , are all suitable options for creating your business website. However, I would recommend the Core plan for a great balance between affordability and the quality of features. 

Costing $29 per month (billed annually ) , on this plan you’ll unlock website analytics, 50GB storage space, the ability for website visitors to create accounts, and a site chat that prospects can use to message you.

4. Choose a Business Website Template

It takes only 50 milliseconds for visitors to form an opinion on your website. If your design is messy or littered with pop-ups, people are more likely to leave. Fortunately, most website builders come with numerous templates to choose from that are both practical and stylish.

As soon as a visitor enters your website, your business branding should be as clear as day. Make sure that your unique tone of voice, font style, color schemes, and imagery are consistent across your website.

To show you just what you could achieve, below are some examples of eye-catching business website designs from Wix and Shopify users , and why they work so well:

• Brand: Floof Cotton Candy
• Website Builder: Shopify
• What I loved: I was immediately hit by Floof’s playful color scheme after opening their landing page, giving me a clear impression of what they sell. The varying shades of pink not only pack a punch, but also allude to the brand’s pastel-colored cotton candy cake.

• Brand: Generation She
• Website Builder: Wix
• What I loved: Generation She, a business connecting Gen Z women with tech roles, is an inspiring website to navigate. I was immediately drawn to the empowering tagline and bold imagery that made me want to find out more about what the business stands for and how it works. As you scroll down the homepage, you’ll also come across photos of women business owners and a link to their podcast – all very clickable!

• Brand: Adored Vintage
• What I loved: This vintage clothing website pairs a muted color scheme with minimalist fonts and rich imagery to achieve an old-timey feel. I liked that I could dive straight into their clothing catalog from the homepage, while the professional photos grabbed my attention and inspired me to keep looking for the perfect dress.

• Brand: Dopple Press
• What I loved: This photographic printing studio has a clear brand identity. I was immediately drawn to the quirky illustrations and playful fonts, which gave me a positive first impression of the business. Though the website’s design is unconventional, it didn’t affect the page’s functionality since I could still navigate the landing page without any issues.

Need more design ideas? Head to our how to design a website page!

Business Template Features To Look For

It’s not all about looks. Your template should also be equipped with key features that will enhance the user experience:

• Contact forms – These make it easy for prospects to get in touch with you. You could add a form to your landing page, “Contact Us” page, or both.
• Testimonials – Customer reviews add social proof to your website. You could feature testimonials from previous customers, or let website visitors add their own reviews. This is especially useful if you’re selling a product or service, since a positive review can be the difference between someone buying an item or leaving it in their cart.
• Call to action buttons – When a visitor browses your website, what’s the main thing you want them to do? Is it to sign up to your newsletter? Or purchase a product? Whatever it is, you can use eye-catching CTA buttons to inspire visitors to take the actions you want them to.
• Search bar – Visitors may come onto your business page to look for something specific, so you can give them a helping hand by adding a search bar to your website.
• Navigation bar – If you have multiple pages on your business website, you need to help visitors get from point A to point B. That’s where a navigation bar comes in handy. Whether you opt for a horizontal or dropdown navigation bar, it should enhance the user experience by keeping website navigation simple.

5. Fill Your Website With Relevant Content

Once you’ve set the foundation of your website – your template – you can start filling it with useful business content. This includes going through your website and replacing the placeholder content that the website builder has added with your own. But what needs to be included?

First of all, you may want to add different pages to your website. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• “ About Us” page – To build trust with potential customers, you need an “About Us” page. Use it to let visitors know more about your business, its goals, and most importantly, the person or team behind the brand. This is your chance to reach out to potential customers, so make sure your words count.
• “ Contact Us” page – If a website visitor is inspired to reach out, they’ll no doubt head to your “Contact Us” page. On this page, you should include key ways for prospects to get in touch with you, such as your email address, physical address, phone number, external social media accounts, and even a contact form for specific enquiries.
• FAQ page – This page should be filled with valuable information for your audience, providing them with quick answers to commonly asked questions. When filling in this page, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. What will they need guidance on?
• Products page – Opening an ecommerce site? If that’s a yes, then you need a dedicated products page. On this page, you could list featured products, or your entire inventory that users can filter via variants like “colors” or “sizes” or specific categories like “shoes” or “bags.”
• Services page – If you’re offering services, you’ll need a page listing exactly what you offer. For instance, a beauty salon owner may want to list the services they provide (french manicures, blow outs, etc) alongside a detailed description and prices. You could also install your bookings functionality on this page, letting visitors book their next appointment once they’ve scanned through each service.
• Bookings page – Whether you’re a beauty professional offering treatments or a financial expert offering consultations, a bookings page will be the hub for all things appointments. On this page, you can integrate your website builder’s booking tool to get started. Wix has a built-in booking tool that’s accessible on the Core plan and above, while Shopify’s app store has free and paid booking integrations to install on your website.

6. Integrate The Key Website Features You Need

When creating a business website, you also need to add additional functionality to your page. Some platforms, such as Shopify, come with an app market where you can install apps onto your website. They cover a variety of functionalities, ranging from social media integrations and testimonials to live chat bots or Google maps.

For instance, there are thousands of Shopify apps to choose from. When setting up my test store, I could use filters to browse through Shopify’s selection and find appropriate apps for my store. Though many apps required payments to use, some came with free trials and free plans. Because of these varying prices, you can find apps that fulfill your business’ needs and are still suitable for your budget.

On the other hand, website builders can also come with a large number of built-in features. Wix is a brilliant example of this. Though Wix has its own app store, it also offers numerous in-built tools your business can take advantage of. Here are three that could be useful for your business:

• Wix Hotels – Announced in Wix’s April Review , this hospitality solution lets hotel businesses easily manage their services in one place. You can accept reservations and payments, manage rooms, and connect your business with websites like Booking.com.
• Wix Restaurants – In the restaurant industry? If so, you can use Wix Restaurants to create an appropriate website for your business. This feature comes with professional menus to showcase your dishes and beverages, and the ability to take and manage orders online.
• Wix Bookings – Be it group sessions, classes, or intro calls, you can use Wix Bookings to set up appointments through your business website. You can also accept payments from clients, send out email or SMS reminders to attendees, and update your schedule via your booking calendar.

What About Marketing Features?

When looking at website features, I encourage you to check out marketing tools too. From email marketing to social media integration, these tools will help you grow your online presence and introduce your business to new audiences online. These are the key marketing features to look out for:

1. Social media marketing – Since platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram are home to over one billion monthly active users, you need to grow your business on social media too and tap into this huge user base.

Both Wix and Shopify make it easy to connect your business website with social media. For instance, Wix lets you create and share content on other social platforms like Facebook, and add links to your social media platforms on your website through social bars. These social bars feature social media icons that link out to your other pages.

Meanwhile, Shopify is well known for its multichannel selling opportunities. You can connect your store with TikTok and sell your products there, or access its Starter plan – priced at $5 per month (billed annually) –  and sell on social media accounts without the need for a storefront.

2. Email marketing – According to our email marketing stats , 99% of users check their inboxes every day ! Make sure your business appears in your customers’ inboxes by investing in email marketing. Both Shopify and Wix come with powerful email marketing tools.To get you started, you’ll find a variety of templates and customization options that help you create emails designed to impress.

Depending on your business, you could send out company updates, product updates, news on special events or webinars, special discounts codes, or intel on industry-related news stories.

3. Search engine optimization – an effective SEO strategy will ensure that your business website is visible on search engines.

When a user searches up a keyword or query that’s related to your business, you’ll want your website to appear in the search results. For example, if you’re a pet grooming business, you could target the keywords “pet groomer” or “mobile pet grooming” and see if you appear in Google.

If you’re new to SEO, there are free online tools that can help. For instance, I recommend downloading Keyword Surfer , a free Chrome extension that will assist you in finding the right keywords to target. It not only shows you relevant keywords for a search, but it also shows you how many times each keyword is searched for every month.

Need an intro to SEO? Consult our SEO basics article. 

7. Optimize, Test, and Publish Your Website

You may be dying to publish your business website, but there are still two crucial things to do before going live: optimizing and testing out your website . The former step will ensure your business page is set up for search engines, while the latter will guarantee that your website works and provides visitors with a positive user experience.

Thankfully, these key steps aren’t as intimidating as you might think. When it comes to optimization, I recommend spending some time adding your chosen keywords into your website copy, making sure your website load times are speedy, and seeing if your page is mobile-friendly. All of these factors influence your website’s ranking on search engines, so make sure it’s all running smoothly.

Once you’ve optimized your site, you can then conduct your final tests. You need to test your website thoroughly and ensure that there are no glaring errors. As a starting point, look out for these common issues:

• Broken links – Ensure that your website links work, especially if you have important call to action buttons placed throughout your page. For instance, you wouldn’t want to miss out on a sale because a customer clicked on a “Buy Now” button that led to a “404 Error” page.
• Missing images – No one wants to see blank spaces where a vibrant image should have been. Go through each page of your website and make sure that all of your photos load fully. If they don’t, you may need to double check the media’s origin or optimize your photos to a lower file size.

Completed all of these checks? If that’s the case, go ahead and publish your website – congratulations!

How We Tested Business Website Builders

The findings in this article are supported by our in-house website builder research , which compiles over 200 hours of data collection . These findings were categorized into six key criteria , reflecting what users need most in a website builder. They are weighted as follows:

• Website Features (30%)
• Design Functionality (25%)
• User Experience (17%)
• Help & Support (10%)
• Value for Money (10%)
• Customer Score (8%)

We took these key criteria into account when choosing which website builders to feature in this article. For instance, website features are most important for readers, so we made sure to include a website builder with the best features on the market: Wix.

How To Build a Business Website: Summary

Well done for making it this far! You now know how to approach the process of creating a business website in seven easy steps.

Remember, the work doesn’t stop once you’ve published your website. You need to keep monitoring all aspects of your page, from site visitors to SEO performance, and make sure your website is succeeding online. To do so, I recommend connecting your website with Google Analytics , because it comes with advanced tracking tools that can tell you more about your website visitors and their behavior.

Keen to discover other website builders on the market? Get stuck into our guide to the best website builders and find the right fit for your business website today.

Is it worth hiring a professional to help me build my business website?

If you decide to hire a specialist, some website builders do promote professionals on their websites. The Wix Marketplace is a great example, offering certified agencies and freelancers covering website migration, SEO services, visual content, and more.

Written by:

Found this article helpful.

Share this article!

How to Start a Web Design Business: Expert Tips from People Who Did It Themselves

Updated: January 09, 2024

Published: January 02, 2024

Have you heard the expression, "If it were easy, everyone would do it?" That saying certainly applies to starting your own business. However, with the right preparation, you'll discover that learning how to start a web design business isn't as hard as you might think.

I talked to two web design business owners who filled me in on everything you need to know about how to start a web design business. I'll walk you through the steps you'll take, plus some pro tips to help you make your launch a success. 

How to Start a Web Design Business: 15 Steps

• Figure out your working arrangements.
• Identify your website design business niche — if you have one.  
• Pick a name.
• Create a mission statement.
• Determine what you want to offer.
• Establish a business plan.
• Seek legal advice.
• Check off administrative tasks.
• Identify pricing.
• Make your branding.
• Create templates and establish workflows.
• Design your website.
• Start building your social presence.
• Train yourself on anything you're not sure about.
• Network in person and online.

Whether you are figuring out how to start a web design business from home or eventually want to open up your own brick-and-mortar location, there are a lot of items to check off before you're ready to take on clients. Here are 15 steps you can follow when learning how to start a web design business. 

1. Figure out your working arrangements. 

Your first step is to figure out your working arrangements. Will you work from home or rent out an office space? Will you interact with clients virtually or offer a brick-and-mortar location where you can meet? And if you're working from home, do you have a professional, private space where you can conduct business? 

It's possible to learn how to start a web design business from home, but by addressing these questions upfront, you'll know how to better set your business up for success. 

Mindy League, UX Director at Elevated Third,  owned a web design agency that one of her clients went on to acquire. She knows her stuff — League has worked in digital marketing with B2B giants, including HP, IBM, Thermofisher, and more. When recounting her experience as a web design business owner, League mentions that she feels it's easier to start a business now in a world where working from home is normalized. 

She recounts, in a pre-pandemic world, needing to have a brick-and-mortar storefront where she could work with her team or meet clients. "Now, we have this really more acceptable work from home," she says. "I think it would be easier to start a business now than it was then. Because [then] it was expected that you had a brick and mortar, which was a high cost, a high expense. It was almost validating that you're in business." 

Once you've figured out your physical working arrangements, consider your hardware and software arrangements too. When learning how to start a web design business from home, keep in mind that you'll need all the bells and whistles you would in an office, such as a comfortable seat, functioning computer, and monitor, if you like using one. 

You may need to purchase a new laptop or monitor for your web design business work. Or, maybe you'll need to sign up for Adobe Creative Suite subscriptions. If you're not launching your business ASAP, you don't need to sign up for the software right away to avoid paying for it when it's not in use. However, you should have your physical hardware ready to go. 

Pro Tip:  I know that bills can quickly add up when you're first starting a business. If you're buying a computer, I recommend considering a lightly used one as they're reasonably priced. Or, purchase a gently used desk from a local thrift store to cut costs. What matters most is that your equipment is reliable. 

2. Identify your website design business niche — if you have one. 

Niche or no niche, that's the question. There are pros and cons to both — if you choose a niche, you can become the best in that industry and establish a reputation. Alternatively, if you don't choose a niche, you can garner a large pool of clients across industries. 

One way isn't better than the other; they're just different. 

Macey Miller , the owner of  Be Bold Design Studio , has created websites for "all kinds of businesses," though much of the sites she's made have been for woman-owned companies. Miller initially became interested in website design because she wanted a creative outlet when working in marketing at a hospitality technology company. You should trust her advice because, since starting her business in 2018, she's created more than 120 websites. What started out as a side gig became so successful that Miller was able to quit her full-time salaried role in six months.

"I have a lot of friends who own businesses, and they need websites," she shares. "And so I started my business out of really an outlet for creativity, but then also as friends and family needed websites and logos and designs. I was always like, yeah,  I can hop in. I'll do that.  It was a nice break after all the analytical meetings and just all the things that came with …marketing." 

Pro Tip:  If you're stuck, let your portfolio and professional experience inform your decision about whether you'll pursue a niche subcategory of website design or offer more holistic services. If you only have experience creating websites for consumer packaged goods products (CPG), stick with the CPG industry. Or, if you've created websites for educational institutions, food and beverage, entrepreneurs, and more, you may consider sticking with a no-niche agency. 

3. Pick a name. 

I know —  picking a business name  is tricky! It should be descriptive but not too long. Reflective of your mission, yet clever. Unique but simple. That's a lot to keep in mind. (Psst: If you need help selecting your business name, check out these  300+ examples of business names  we love for inspiration.) 

In some cases, you may want to use your own name as the title of your business. If you believe yourself to be the face of your brand, then maybe, using your name is a good idea. Of course, there's also the  search engine optimization  (SEO) value if you have an uncommon name. 

I advise you to test out your business names in front of family, colleagues, or friends. You can run a poll on LinkedIn to ask others in the industry which they prefer. Picking a moniker is a serious commitment, so be sure you're willing to stick with it for a while. 

Pro Tip:  I suggest doing some research before you commit to your name. When you Google it, if a lot of other agencies pop up, you might want to pick an alternative. If there are already a ton of other businesses with the name, you'll have a hard time securing social media handles, too.

4. Create a mission statement.

Before you begin ideating your company mission statement, I suggest you check out some examples from businesses you admire. ( May I humbly suggest HubSpot ?) 

I also love  Be Bold Design Studio's mission statement . It's straightforward, focused on impact, and I love how Miller clearly displays it on the footer of the studio's homepage. 

Your mission statement doesn't have to be too long or intricate. The best mission statements are straightforward and succinct, and they showcase your company's values. 

Pro Tip:  You can include your mission statement on your homepage, footer, or on its own page, depending on how much emphasis you'd like to place on it. 

5. Determine what you want to offer.

You have your name, mission statement, and niche all picked out. Your next step is determining what you want your business to offer. Ultimately, you can make your business as all-encompassing (or niche) as you want. Do you want to offer complete website design services that include add-ons such as branding and logo design or photography? Or do you want to work mainly on website rebuilds? What about maintenance — do you want to offer it or leave clients to their own devices? 

It is  your  business — so you can decide what you want to offer based on both your skills and experience. However, keep in mind that if you don't have a well-rounded menu of offerings, clients may take their business elsewhere, where they can get their website created, logos created, and branding established all in one place. 

Pro Tip:  If you're building your business with a co-founder, League suggests that you consider picking someone with expertise in the opposite of what you do. "When you're getting started, you don't necessarily think of looking for someone who does the opposite of what you're doing," she says. However, by thinking about this in advance, you can reduce the likelihood that you'll need to outsource help. (Psst: That doesn't only apply to business offerings. For instance, if you have the creative portion under control, consider working with someone more analytical who can tackle the finances.) 

6. Establish a business plan. 

In my opinion, writing up a business plan is arguably the most daunting part of learning how to start a web design business. The good news? You don't have to do it yourself — this robust guide to creating a business plan will offer you a life raft.

Your business plan should provide a clear summarization of your organizational strategy for success. You can use your business plan to acquire funding from investors or help forecast your business demands. Most importantly, when starting out a business, your business plan should highlight your goals and the way you plan to achieve them. This is also where you'll tie in your mission statement and business purpose. 

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of writing your business plan, use one of our free templates to set you on the right track. For example, I love this one page business plan template.

It's concise, asks the right questions, and makes it easy for you to keep all your crucial information in one handy location. You can download it here . 

Pro Tip:  Taking a look at other business's plans can help you figure out how to build out your own. Here are  24 sample business plans  to get your creative juices flowing. 

7. Seek legal advice. 

Congratulations; you're about halfway through the process of learning how to create your web design business from home. Give yourself a pat on the back — and take a deep breath because it can be overwhelming. 

Before you go any further in your business ownership journey, it's time to seek legal advice. Your best option is to find a lawyer who has experience working with small businesses and helping ensure they're compliant with all the laws in your jurisdiction. You may need a license to operate your business, depending on what it is and where you live. Or, you might need help deciding whether you want to be a sole proprietor, open an LLC, or start a corporation.

While no one likes shelling out cash for legal fees, the repercussions of not doing so and accidentally violating a law can be massive. Your lawyer can also help you draft the contracts that you'll share with clients when entering into an agreement with them. Getting liability insurance for your business is also a good idea, and your lawyer can advise more on the steps you should take to do so. 

Pro Tip:  Lawyer fees can be expensive — especially when you're just starting out. If the cost of working with a lawyer is prohibitive, I recommend you try to find one willing to do the work pro bono. I'll admit, it can be tricky to find a lawyer that'll do the work for free. But ask around — you may have a connection willing to help out. 

8. Check off administrative tasks. 

I told you learning how to start a web design business isn't always glamorous, didn't I? I promise it will be well worth it. Your next step is to complete various administrative tasks you need to check off your list before your business can open its doors. 

For example, now that you're starting your own business, you'll need to think about how you're going to get health insurance. Maybe you can still be on your parent's insurance, or you have a partner who can take you under their wing. However, if this isn't the case, you need to think through the ways you'll be able to get healthcare.

I know this doesn't seem directly related to starting your own web design business, but it's an important administrative task you need to check off. When you're just starting out, you'll only need to think about getting healthcare for yourself. But if your business grows and you hire teammates, you'll have to think about their insurance, too. 

The next thing you'll want to think about is your retirement plan. You can consider opening a Roth IRA or a Health Savings Account. (Of course, if you want more guidance about what's best for your financial future, I suggest you speak with a financial advisor who better understands your particular situation.) 

Lastly, think through your holiday and vacation policy. You're your own boss now, which means you'll have to be accountable for getting stuff done. Creating a clear vacation and holiday plan is an excellent way to keep you on the right track. Miller believes that holding herself accountable for getting work delivered in a reasonable amount of time is partially why her business has flourished. "I think it is very important to… be true to your word," she says. 

Miller continues, "If you say you're going to deliver something on Tuesday, you need to deliver something on Tuesday. A lot of times with a website design business, you know, it's creatives, and it's hard to pin us down within the website design business. You can be a creative, but you also have to be very, very careful with that more creative energy and focus on making sure that your clients are being served well and efficiently and on time." 

Pro Tip:  If you're struggling with administrative tasks, I highly recommend talking to other small business owners you know who have taken their business full-time to learn more about how they handled administrative tasks when starting out. 

9. Identify pricing.

Now that you know what you have to offer, it's time to decide how much you're going to charge for it. 

Your first step when identifying pricing is to take a look at your competitors' pricing. How much is your competition charging for a website, logo design, branding, and bespoke photography? What about a site refresh? Find out, and make notes of what your top 5-10 competitors are charging. This will inform your rates. I suggest creating a spreadsheet that clearly identifies competitor pricing.

You'll also have to decide if you want to charge a flat rate for a project or hourly. If you go the project route, consider how many hours it will likely take to complete the project and break that down into hourly wages. Remember: You deserve to pay yourself a livable salary. 

Now that you've done your research, consider your business's overhead. Do you have to pay for your space? Have you thought about how taxes factor in? How about the software you'll need to run your business? Did you include your insurance fees when factoring in how much it costs to run your business?

From there, you can subtract your overhead per project from the rate you're thinking of charging. This leaves you with your profit. 

Pro Tip:  Adding testimonials to your website can help you feel more confident about your rates. These testimonials demonstrate the value of your work, and you can easily point to them when conferring with potential clients about budget. For some inspiration, check out HubSpot's Customer Reviews page . 

10. Make your branding. 

We're finally at a fun part of the web design business creation process. You'll have to make your branding before you begin to share the news of your business online. You're a creative, so you likely already know exactly what to do, but here are a few branding tips in case you need them:

Consistency is key — choose a color palette, style of photography, and a few fonts. Then, stick with them. This will give your business a professional flair. 

Create a logo that's not too detailed. If it is, the details will get lost when you shrink it down. 

Try to avoid already popular color pairings because they'll subliminally remind your visitors of other, more famous brands. For instance, red and yellow may not be the best bet for your company because these colors together conjure up images of Ronald McDonald. 

Pro Tip:  Need a dose of inspiration for your business's color palette?  These color pairings  are sure to wow.  

11. Create templates and establish workflows.

Yes, you have your branding, pricing, and business plan — but you are not open for business yet. First, it's essential to create templates and establish workflows. That way, when you do get your client (and trust me, it will happen), you already have a handle on how to get them onboarded.

Using a project management tool can help you create workflows that hold you accountable and ensure you deliver results on time. I love Asana, Trello, and Notion, so experiment to find one that works best for you and is within your budget.

This is also the time for you to make sure those contracts you worked with your lawyer to create are ready to go. Plus, create a checklist for client onboarding, the steps you'll follow to launch a client website, and make any necessary supporting documentation or templates. You should also have your invoice template in place. If you do all of this, professional is the name of your game. 

Last but certainly not least, determine how you're going to track your time. It's not enough to set an iPhone timer — you need to keep track of your time and how you spend it. There are plenty of time-tracking apps available, some of which even integrate directly with your project management tools. 

Pro Tip:  By having your onboarding checklist ready to go, you'll be ready the moment your first client comes knocking. Plus, you'll score major points with your client for preparedness and professionalism. 

12. Design your website.

You already know how to do this, so I'll leave this one to you. And if you want some sources of inspiration, you know where to find them — here, where I identified the  25 best creative agency websites . 

Just to recap, here are some key things to keep in mind when designing your website. 

Were created with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind. 

Include mindful CTAs, or calls to action . (Psst: You shouldn't only have one place for visitors to go to reach out to you — that CTA should be sprinkled throughout your site so visitors can contact you the moment they feel inclined to.) 

Feature cohesive branding . 

Have testimonials and examples of past work. 

Have a sense of personality so visitors know who you are and why they should trust you with their website. 

Hire a proofreader or ask a family, friend, or mentor to look over your site. Ask them to read through it for clarity and accuracy. 

Consider having a blog on your website and writing posts that target keywords. 

Your goal on your business website is to reduce friction in any way that you can. 

Pro Tip:  About  42.5 million Americans have disabilities . Don't ignore  website accessibility best practices when building your website . 

13. Start building your social presence. 

You're almost at launch day, congrats. It's time to start building your social presence. Whether you contribute to collaborative articles on LinkedIn to showcase your web design expertise, create your own X/Twitter posts with a link to your portfolio site, or begin filming trendy TikToks about web design misconceptions, the internet — erm, I mean the world — is your oyster. 

When deciding which social media platforms you want to hone in on, consider this:

Where is my audience?

What platform can I go viral on? (TikTok is great for this because, regardless of whether you have five followers or five million, you can go viral.) 

What platform feels intuitive for me to use? 

How can I best tell my brand story?

Pro Tip:  Ideally, you'll be able to create content for multiple social media platforms. However, focusing on one or two will help reduce stress. Dial in on wherever you're seeing the largest return on investment for your time. 

14. Train yourself on anything you're not sure about. 

Maybe you're a natural-born designer, but sales calls don't come easy for you. Or maybe you've always loved rebuilding websites, but you struggle with offering bespoke logo design services. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses — but your weaknesses don't have to stay weaknesses. You can decide to seek out training to teach yourself more about anything you're unsure about. 

"I think it's easy for people to say like, well, I'm not good at admin, or I'm not good at sales calls, and that's just an excuse," says Miller. "Why don't you go in and learn how to do a sales call? Like I've done two to three sales trainings, which has been very helpful because sales is a part of owning your own business. And if you're not comfortable with selling in a way that is natural and authentic but also just natural and authentic to you, then you won't be able to last." 

Pro Tip:  HubSpot Academy  has plenty of free courses that can help teach you more about different facets of marketing, sales, and beyond. You can even earn free certifications, which look great when you're trying to build authoritativeness. I've done several courses, and I found them to be both educational and engaging.  

15. Network in person and online.

You did it! You've successfully created your own web design business. I hope you're proud of yourself because I'm proud of you.

Now, it's time to share the incredible news with your family, friends, colleagues, and mentors. Remember to bring business cards with you when you meet with people, and bring along extras so your friends can pass them along to their friends. You never know who may be your first client. 

Online, you can spread the word on your personal and professional social media accounts. You can also reach out to any business owners you know and let them know you're open for business if they wish to enlist your help.

Pro Tip:  Keep your mind open when it comes to finding clients. You never know how your clients will make their way to you — just trust that they will. Be sure to spread the word so everyone you know can have their feelers out in case anyone they know needs a designer. 

What are 5 tips for people starting a web design business?

These five tips from Miller and League — who have actually gone through the process of building a web design business themselves — can help set you up for success. 

Remember that potential clients are everywhere. 

League recounts that when she owned her agency, she was living in Austin, Texas, where she had a large network. "There were a lot of folks that I knew," she says. "And so I would just make new clients at the retail stores, or wherever I was, I would just meet people. Or they knew someone, and then we referred." A valuable lesson to keep business cards with you at all times indeed.

Give back to your clients.

League also suggests the idea of using "swag" to gain momentum for your business. "We gave a lot to our customers," she says. "We had parties and gave them swag. So when we had profit, we really gave them things that we thought they would enjoy. We [were] really appreciative of them. We were constantly giving them mugs, and we made up cute campaigns around it, like a social media campaign. [With the cups, we asked clients to] send us your 'mug shot.'"

Keep in mind that things ebb and flow. 

The reality of owning your own business is that things will ebb and flow; there will be busy seasons and slower ones. However, to keep your business afloat during tougher times, Miller suggests you get creative. "There are a lot of different ways to make money as a website designer," she shares. "One tip is being open to potentially white labeling. There are a lot of agencies that white-label their services and that need freelance graphic designers to kind of come in and help with the workload. 

When you start your own business, a lot of times you think, oh, it's just going to be me, all by myself. I'm going to be getting all these clients, but in those slow seasons, it's nice to lend your services to an agency or even take on some retainer clients and do maintenance work or graphic design work." 

Customer service speaks for itself. 

Another key learning from Miller? That customer service really can set you apart from your competition. "I found that the reality of building a healthy business and a client base requires serving your clients, marketing, networking, and a strong online presence, but really more focusing on serving your clients," she says.

"A lot of people focus more on the design and the creative part, but I truly believe that customer service is almost as equally important as the beauty of creative design. It takes time to build a client base and to establish a reputation." 

Expect to wear a lot of hats. 

Depending on the client, you may have to wear more hats than just the assigned "web designer." For instance, League mentions that entrepreneurs are sometimes more anxious regarding where their money is going than large corporations, as it's their hard-earned cash they're spending. 

"They would get really nervous before the launch because it was the unveiling of their idea," she explains. "And so that, that was something I didn't realize, [that] I had to be so much of a psychologist, making that transition from the bigger agency, you know, to the smaller agency. There was a lot more psychology. Granted, when you work with an agency or with any client, you have to worry, think of, and be empathetic towards them." 

Bring Your Web Design Dream Business to Life 

You officially know how to start a web design business, and it's up to you to decide if you're ready to take that next step toward becoming your own boss. When building your company, keep your why in mind, and commit to customer service. If you do these two things, you can't go wrong. 

Don't forget to share this post!

Related articles.

Website Design Proposal: A Beginner’s Guide [+Template]

How to Strike a Balance Between Website Creativity and SEO

Our 25 Favorite Restaurant Website Templates in 2024

The Best Resume Website Templates: 27 of Our Favorites

Creative Website Templates: 30 of our Favorites

20 Simple Website Templates You Can Try Today

8 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid When Building or Revamping Your Site in 2024

The Basics of Page Layout Design (+25 Page Layout Design Ideas)

11 Types of Websites to Inspire Your Own [+ Examples]

The Evolution of Web Design: How Websites Are Becoming More than a Pretty Face

77 of blog and website page design examples.

CMS Hub is flexible for marketers, powerful for developers, and gives customers a personalized, secure experience

• Sample Business Plans
• IT, Staffing & Customer Service

Web Design Business Plan

If you are planning to start a new web design company, the first thing you will need is a business plan. Use our sample web design business plan created using upmetrics business plan software to start writing your business plan in no time.

Before you start writing your business plan for your new web design firm, spend as much time as you can reading through some examples of software and mobile app-related business plans.

Reading sample business plans will give you a good idea of what you’re aiming for, and also it will show you the different sections that different entrepreneurs include and the language they use to write about themselves and their business plans.

We have created this sample web design business plan for you to get a good idea about how a perfect business plan should look and what details you will need to include in your stunning business plan.

Web Design Business Plan Outline

This is the standard web design business plan outline which will cover all important sections that you should include in your business plan.

• Business Overview
• Keys to Success
• 3-Year Profit Forecast
• Company Ownership
• Start-up Summary
• Startup Cost
• Funding Required
• Existing Services
• Service Description
• Sales Literature
• Fulfillment
• Future Services
• Target Market Segment Strategy
• Market Trends
• Market Growth
• Service Business Analysis
• Business Participants
• Market Segmentation
• Competitive Advantage
• Marketing Strategy
• Marketing Programs
• Pricing Strategy
• Promotion Strategy
• Sales Strategy
• Strategic Alliances
• Organizational Structure
• Management Team Gaps
• Personnel Plan
• Important Assumptions
• Brake-even Analysis
• Profit Yearly
• Gross Margin Yearly
• Projected Cash Flow
• Projected Balance Sheet
• Business Ratios

Say goodbye to boring templates

Build your business plan faster and easier with AI

Plans starting from $7/month

After getting started with upmetrics , you can copy this sample business plan into your business plan and modify the required information and download your web design business plan pdf and doc file . It’s the fastest and easiest way to start writing your business plan.

Download a sample web design business plan

Need help writing your business plan from scratch? Here you go;  download our free web design business plan pdf  to start.

It’s a modern business plan template specifically designed for your web design business. Use the example business plan as a guide for writing your own.

Related Posts

Software Company Business Plan

SaaS Business Plan

Cost to Start a Web Design Business

How to Start a Web Design Business

How to Achieve Business Milestones

Important Business Milestones to Achieve

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

Plan your business in the shortest time possible

No Risk – Cancel at Any Time – 15 Day Money Back Guarantee

Create a great Business Plan with great price.

• 400+ Business plan templates & examples
• AI Assistance & step by step guidance
• 4.8 Star rating on Trustpilot

Streamline your business planning process with Upmetrics .

How to create a website for your business: a step-by-step guide

Need a website for your small business or large enterprise? Here's how to get started

TechRadar created this content as part of a paid partnership with Squarespace. The contents of this article are entirely independent and solely reflect the editorial opinion of TechRadar.

If you want your business to succeed, it needs to have a good website – it helps customers find your firm, adds credibility, and can lead to sales.

A good website is crucial for any company, no matter its size and industry. And if you're wondering if you need to bother, look at the numbers: surveys show that 75% of consumers judge a company's credibility on its website design. Nearly 90% of people searching for a type of business on their smartphone contact a company within 24 hours.

It doesn't matter what your company does – it needs a website. And it's not just about throwing a page online and hoping for the best, either, because it's got to work well on smartphones and desktops, it's got to be fast, and it needs to give potential customers easy ways to get in touch.

These days it's actually pretty easy to create a top-notch corporate website that ticks every box when it comes to attracting and retaining customers.

Read on to find out exactly why you should build a website and the crucial steps for creating your own site. We've even reviewed six of the top services if you want to use a website building and hosting company.

Don't worry if you need more corporate help, either – head here for our guide on different versions of Microsoft 365 Business , or delve into alternative working methods for a more productive career . 

Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed!

Squarespace is a top-rated website building platform   Techradar editors praise Squarespace for its beautiful templates and professional features. Visit Squarespace.com to  start your free trial .

How to build a website in 9 steps 

It can be hard to know where to start when you want to build a website for your business, but if you follow this method then you won't go far wrong: 

1. Figure out what you need

Every business needs a website, but not every business needs the same site. In some industries you'll need little more than a page with basic information and contact details, but sometimes you'll need more complex sites with loads of articles and sections. You might need employee login portals or full ecommerce functionality. Before you build, work out your needs and budget.

2. Choose the right website builder and host

Once that's done you'll be better positioned to choose a building and hosting company. And while that's great, you'll find that some services are better for different industries and that others aren't suitable. Do your research before spending any cash.

3. Pick a plan that suits your needs

Every building and hosting company offers packages that provide different services and levels of support. If you need a basic site and you don't anticipate much traffic you can choose a more affordable option, but if you want complex features, ecommerce abilities and better technical support you'll need a more expensive tier. Also think about which content management system (CMS) your new site will use. Ensure that any plan can scale with your business – you may need to add pages, subdomains or bandwidth as the business grows.

4. Register a great domain name

Your next website doesn't just need to look great – it's got to sound catchy, too. If you've got a name that's memorable and straightforward, people will remember the URL and be more likely to visit and recommend your business to other people. Also check that other companies don't already use the name and consider including your location in the URL – it can improve your SEO .

5. Pick a template from the website builder you've chosen

You don't need to know anything about coding to build a brilliant-looking website. Any decent website-building service will offer loads of templates. If you use these you can skip many of the headaches associated with web design. Make sure your new template is good-looking, easy to navigate and consistent with your brand.

6. Install extensions and plugins

Most web-building businesses don't just offer great-looking templates, either – they also provide extensions and plugins that add functionality to your site. If you need social media feeds, contact forms, ecommerce options or help with SEO, you can drag, drop and configure these utilities within minutes.

7. Upload your content

Once you've got a theme selected and plugins picked you can fill your website with your company's text, photos and information. Make your company's industry, location and expertise extremely clear, and ensure that all of your content is designed with SEO in mind.

8. Publish and promote your website

You won't get very far if you don't publish the website – so when it's ready to go, hit the big button and let it loose. Add your website to your company's social media pages alongside professional websites, because it's no good having a website if no-one can find it.

9. Track, tweak and improve

No website is a static project. If you hook up your site to popular analytics packages you'll be able to see how much traffic you're getting and how often that converts to sales and contacts. When you can see how people use your site, you can also see where it succeeds – and what you need to improve. You should also regularly publish new content to keep your site relevant.

Why you should create a website

It's tempting to think that you don't need a website if your business is active on social media, but that's not necessarily the case. More than 50% of people won't recommend a business with a bad website, and most people judge a company's credibility on its website design.

If you want to grow your business and engage customers you cannot just rely on social media. And if you drill down into the details, we've got five great reasons why you should build a business website.

1. Build your credibility

Statistics show most customers don't trust a business without a website or with a bad website. Build a good site and you'll gain trust in the eyes of your potential customers, partners and employees – and it'll help your business stand out against your competition.

2. Grow your audience

If you've got a website with great SEO then you've got another way for potential customers to find your business and engage with your products and services. And it's not just about gaining customers immediately, either: if your website can bolster your brand you'll find that customers trust you in the longer term and it'll make them more likely to recommend you to other people. The business will also attract more candidates to job vacancies.

3. Make customer service easier

You don't want things to go wrong, but it happens. And if you can resolve issues easily, the business will better retain customers and gain word-of-mouth recommendations. If you've got straightforward contact and chat features then customers can easily access help features, and you can add articles and forums to help customers resolve issues without making contact – which will save you time and money.

4. Publish relevant content

If you have a website you can publish your own articles. And whether they opine on industry trends, highlight your professional expertise or help customers, it's all going to improve your industry standing and contribute to your marketing efforts. And if you publish content on your own website then you control it – it's not going to disappear at the whim of a social network or get hampered by abusive comments or bad reviews.

5. Sell directly

Here's one benefit you can measure in numbers – if you've got your own website you can sell directly to customers. Creating your own ecommerce website will add cost, but you won't have to slice off revenues to other third-party sellers like Amazon and you're often able to sell to a wider audience. If you've got a physical shop, for instance, opening an ecommerce website can help you sell to the rest of the country – or even the world.

1. Hostinger

Our expert review:

Reasons to buy

Reasons to avoid.

Hostinger's website builder is one of the most intuitive we've used thanks to a sleek, effective drag-and-drop interface. It has an automatic responsive design that adapts your site to different screen sizes and Hostinger includes all of the ecommerce features needed to start selling immediately.

The firm's premium package costs $2.99 per month, so Hostinger is one of the more affordable web design options around, and for that money you can build 100 websites with unlimited bandwidth. You'll get one free domain, Cloudflare-protected servers and managed Wordpress installations. It's even possible to pay $1.99 per month for one website, although that doesn't include a domain.

Hostinger's website editor is impressively easy to use, but it's not all good news. With more affordable plans you only get weekly backups – not daily protection. It's not the best option for big businesses as you'll find faster VPS plans elsewhere, and other companies offer more detailed website builders. Phone support isn't available either.

For small and medium-sized businesses, though, Hostinger provides good value, a solid range of features and a website builder that's straightforward and easy to use, so it remains a good option for more modest projects.

Read our full Hostinger review .

2. Squarespace

If you listen to podcasts you'll undoubtedly have heard Squarespace adverts, and there's plenty to like about this website building company – it's not all just bluster.

Even beginners will feel comfortable dragging and dropping features around a new website thanks to the intuitive design, and users can pick from hundreds of templates. Once you've done that you can use loads of different customization options. Squarespace is strong when it comes to blogging, social networks and smartphone integrations, but it's a bit weaker when it comes to ecommerce.

You'll find more templates on other sites, too, and others also offer more in-depth options when it comes to customizing those templates.

Prices start at $16 per month for a personal plan and $23 per month for a business plan, and that does include advanced analytics and a free custom domain. If you'd like ecommerce without transaction fees and advanced checkout, shipping and merchandizing tools, you'll need to pay more.

Squarespace might not offer the customization or ecommerce abilities of some of the specialist builders out there. Still, it's a trusted and well-known all-rounder that'll do a great job with most business websites.

Read our full Squarespace review .

GoDaddy is one of the biggest names when it comes to website building and hosting, and no wonder – the firm's website editing tools are intuitive and straightforward, and it means you can get a website up and running within minutes.

You can pick from hundreds of sleek templates on GoDaddy and the drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to customize each page and add your own content. The builder works smoothly on desktops and smartphones. GoDaddy also offers features that can create consistent content across social media pages and emails. It's got ecommerce abilities and a management dashboard that offers analysis tools on any device.

It's an easy and effective system, and it's bolstered by great support options, including loads of guides, 24/7 tech support, a weekday live chat option and a thriving community forum.

Basic plans start at $9.99 per month and include custom domain connections, SSL security and analytics dashboards. You also get loads of marketing options, from social posting to email list management. Pay more and you'll get ecommerce features, the ability to send emails to wider audiences and more.

We'll be upfront about GoDaddy: it's not the cheapest website design option, templates can be tricky to find, and you'll also get a broader array of extensions and plugins elsewhere. But for most businesses, this is an ideal choice for straightforward website creation and hosting.

Wix is one of the most popular website-building and hosting services around, but its position of dominance doesn't mean the firm has stopped innovating.

Sign up to Wix and you'll get a couple of different options for website-building. The firm's conventional editor tool is excellent – it has more than 800 templates and it's easy to drag and drop content – and its newer WixADI tool is impressive. Choose this, answer questions about what you need and Wix will use AI to create a suitable site – and once that's done, you can edit it yourself.

If you're more comfortable with that, you can use Wix's open dev platforms and high-end editor tool to fine-tune your output. Wix also offers a logo designer and dedicated SEO tools.

Negatively, it can be tricky to manage templates across Wix's different editing and creation tools. And while its ecommerce options are decent, you'll get a broader array of features from other providers. It's not necessarily the cheapest option, either: Wix's Combo personal plan costs $16 per month and the Pro tool increases the price to $27, and even its basic business tool also costs $27 per month. Opt for the more affordable plans and you'll miss out on customized reports, multiple currency support, advanced ecommerce options and logo files for your social media profiles. Only the pricier tiers often have calendar and analytics utilities, too.

There's no denying the quality on offer from Wix – it's a versatile and powerful option for any kind of professional site. But, as ever, you get what you pay for, and this is not the most affordable tool.

Read our full Wix review .

5. Bluehost

Loads of website builders and hosts have been around for years and years, but Bluehost is a newer option that aims to disrupt the market with its Wordpress-friendly tools.

The firm's impressive Wordpress integration makes it easy to set up websites using one of the most popular platforms on the web, and Bluehost lets users choose from three hundred templates, many of which are tailored towards different industries. It's easy to edit sites for desktop or mobile platforms, and the marketing and social media features are intuitive too.

Bluehost tailors the building process to users with different levels of experience with Wordpress, and it's fast and reliable – we never encountered stability issues during our testing.

It's a slick product, but it's not flawless. The website-building tools from long-established companies like Wix are more powerful, and GoDaddy is easier to use. You can't switch templates without starting your site from scratch. The basic plans don't have much storage and you've got to purchase a special package if you want ecommerce features.

Bluehost is easy to use and affordable, though, with Basic hosting tools that start at $2.95 per month and even Pro packages that cost $13.95. It might be the most advanced option for large companies, but this is a good alternative for anyone who wants straightforward, budget-friendly web design.

Read our full Bluehost review .

You'll find about 150 high-quality templates on Web.com and they can all be customized using an effective drag-and-drop builder – and it's easy to position modular extensions and add-ons into your site.

Beyond that, users can also deploy Blocks, which assemble multiple extensions or design elements together to make it even easier to deploy common website features.

This is one of the easiest options for building a business website, so it's great for anyone without much tech experience. You even get one hour of free design support if you sign up to one of Web.com's design and hosting plans.

The prices are often right, too. If you pay annually the firm's Essentials plans start at $9.99 per month and only ascend to $19.95 per month, and at those latter levels you get added ecommerce features. All include a free domain, social media embedding tools and basic analytics, and you get phone support alongside live chat – a feature many rivals don't offer.

You'll certainly get more high-end power elsewhere, but Web.com has been around forever and remains a great option for anyone who wants a business website without any tech-heavy fuss.

Read our Web.com review .

We've also featured the best web hosting services.

Mike has worked as a technology journalist for more than a decade and has written for most of the UK’s big technology titles alongside numerous global outlets. He loves PCs, laptops and any new hardware, and covers everything from the latest business trends to high-end gaming gear.

Relume AI website builder review 2024

Bookipi AI website builder review 2024

Asus ROG Ally X: an impressive array of community inspired improvements

Most Popular

• 2 Should I still buy the Samsung Galaxy S24?
• 3 How to prepare for Windows 10 End of Life
• 4 There's nothing that can touch it: Sony Alpha 7 III falls to record-low price at Amazon
• 5 Windows 11 update introduces a long-awaited File Explorer feature – plus a Start menu change that may not go down so well
• 2 Duda launches new AI tools aimed at helping marketing agencies build websites faster
• 5 The Northern Lights could return this week – 5 ways to plan your photo shoot

• Our Approach
• Search Engine Optimization
• Website Design
• Website Examples
• Paid Ad Management
• Other Amazing Services
• Case Studies
• Hook Company Culture
• Careers / Join Our Team
• Free Contractor Social Media Course
• Free Lead Gen Audiobook
• Free Roofing Lead Gen Course
• Hook Better Leads Podcast
• Free Video Demo

Options and Tips for Creating a Web Design Business Plan

Don’t get too intimidated by writing a web design business plan, a lot of it just means getting down onto paper things you likely have been considering anyway. According to Entrepreneur “Writing…

Estimated Read Time:   40 minutes

Don’t get too intimidated by writing a web design business plan , a lot of it just means getting down onto paper things you likely have been considering anyway. According to Entrepreneur “Writing out your business plan forces you to review everything at once: your value proposition, marketing assumptions, operations plan, financial plan and staffing plan.”

If I can do it – and go from 1 to 10 people in three years, you can too 😉 My wife will tell you… I’m no genius.

Table of Contents

Main Points in a Web Design Business Plan Outline:

1. business concept –.

What is the web design industry like in your immediate area and region? What are the high-level possibilities for the success of your web design business? What are the prime differentiating factors and how you will set yourself apart from the competition?

2. Who is the market for your web design firm?

Who are your customers? Are you serving only mid-sized businesses? Only editorial publications? Churches? Non-profits? Teenie tiny mom and pop shops? Fortune 500 companies? What niche are you looking to serve? What is the demand like for the service? And this leads us into our next question.. What does your pricing need to look like to serve these customers? And it’s not always getting your price down into affordability; maybe you need to price higher so that your company seems more professional and that you can offer above and beyond service. “Price high and justify.”

3. Income and Cash Flow Statement, Balance Sheet etc.

“Start by estimating the revenues generated by an average sale. Then subtract the costs that change with each transaction, like sales commissions and costs of producing the products sold. The result is your “unit contribution.” Next, predict your monthly overhead, or expenses that don’t vary directly with sales volume, such as rent, salaries, utilities, legal fees, and accounting expenses. Finally, divide your monthly overhead by your unit contribution. That number will tell you how many transactions you’ll need per month to break-even.” From this article on Inc. of The Basics of a Business Plan by the Numbers.

Get started with this One Page Web Design Business Plan

General Principles for writing a Web Design Business Plan:

1. Keep your business plan short and simple.

Go for it right now with this One Page Web Design Business Plan .

2. Use visual charts to quickly show key numbers.

3. Do what you do best, and make it look professional.

4. Ask key questions like what will be it’s annual revenue in a year, and in 5 years.

5. What things can I delegate? Sales, Technical or others? How will you attract these people to help, and what will be your key differentiators of process and culture?

6. Is the business plan going to help you raise money? 

7. How much of an initial investment will the business need?

Tools for Creating a Business Plan:

1. LivePlan.com – Visual planning tool, helpful if you really don’t know where to start. It will give you the sections and the template is already there.

2. The Art of The Start 2.0 (Book by Guy Kawasaki) – “It’s most relevant for technology or IT companies, but he has a way of writing that’s very clear, very to the point. There’s not a lot of pedantic info that you’ll find in textbooks.”

3. Score – Business Planning Templates –  Quickly assess your marketing plan, Free business listing list for search engine optimization, Marketing must haves etc.

Thank you for reading! Share the love. 🙂

Keep the content coming, by tweeting this.

Other Links related to Web Design Plans:

• Web Design Sample Business Plan – Executive Summary
• 9 Steps to starting your freelance web design business – Business Tuts
• Plan a Web Development Business Part Two- BPlans
• How to Make a Business Plan for a Website Development Startup – Color Whistle

Getting Your First Web Design Clients

My first web design client was my future mother-in-law, a real doozie. A non-profit, I was paid $500 and an iPad. I’ve also been paid as little as – negative $ for making a website, because I was so eager for real world experience. Do you want a website? I want to give you one.. just let me pay for your hosting and I’ll make the website out of the salt from the sweat of my children.

Don’t sell yourself short. Charge a decent amount.

So the first real website I sold was a couple months later. I was just learning WordPress and I sold a site for 10 monthly payments of $250 dollars. Because it was a fairly simple marketing website and didn’t have a ton of custom features on it, this was actually a pretty solid deal for a starting out web designer.

The first half of selling yourself as a web designer is evidence. Let’s see the goods.

Make sure you have a decent portfolio out there, that you made yourself..

I don’t care if it’s on WordPress, straight HTML, or Ruby on Rails. Get that thing out in the open, give it the best you got and make sure it shows the best of your best work. Code up a non-profit’s website for free if you have to, and show as many real projects as you possibly can. I iterated on my website 3 times, with 2 live at my domain before I ever got my first real set of clients. It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to exist.

Here’s my site I made in 2012 (click here to see it in the Internet Wayback Machine):

Here’s the site in 2013 (click here to see it in the Internet Wayback Machine):

Yes.. I agree my portfolio was a little weak at this point, but guess what? I was getting clients. I wasn’t by any means, raking them in, but people I knew were coming to me and asking if I could help with their website or help them make a new website. I was eager to be of service, and make enough money to stop bussing tables.

Let the world know you’re making websites now.

Change your job on Facebook to ‘Self Employed Web Designer’, change your LinkedIn –  don’t put Aspiring Web Designer in your Twitter profile, put Web Designer. You’re a big boy (or girl) now. I personally took a good hard running jump at web design, and with one client and one month covered in expenses jumped out into the market as a web designer. No more restaurant job (which for me didn’t pay THAT well anyways.) When people hear that’s what you do, and you take a friendly and helpful attitude when they reach out, or you offer your services you can quickly earn some awareness around the new service you offer.

Don’t wait until you have it perfected, just go for it.

I’m not suggesting you make the new 3M website, or try to sell yourself as a ten year veteran of website design. You can, however, say you will go above and beyond for a client as you are starting out fresh and will do everything in your power to make them an excellent website. If you’ve created a couple of examples, then that can help adjust expectations and although you may need to put ungodly amounts of time into your first couple websites you will earn your chops in the struggle. You’ll figure out how to z-index a logo over the top of overlapping nav div.

In defense of the designer-developer.

Yes, I’m suggesting you will have to write code. Can you sell a website for $2,500 dollars and give half of it away to a front-end developer when you’re starting out? Perhaps, perhaps not. I personally couldn’t, and so… I learned to code. Basics at first, how to modify WordPress themes ever so slightly with CSS. Then cutting and splicing bits of PHP, then eventually writing my own themes from scratch. This is why I suggest having a couple of websites under your belt before really having someone pay you for your web design services; you can find the rhythm that works for you. If you are an epic visual designer who can confidently charge $5,000 for your first website you could potentially find the right person to develop it for you and you can pay them adequately to make it good. It’s really to each is own, because I preach design/development, and you have an equally right  person 2 doors down who wouldn’t touch a CMS to save his life. Literally … my old neighbor above me would sell sites for 7-8k and I thought he was an internet god. He would write the HTML, CSS, and Javascript (In Dreamweaver, hello throwback,) and then outsource custom Content Management System development for 2k. I just wanted to learn how to not pay that 2k .

Other ways to promote your new web design business

• Look for ways to trade your services for advertising : I sold my services in an auction by a Minneapolis newspaper  in exchange for adspace in their lifestyle magazine VitaMN.
• Get every viable social media handle/url under the name you’re using to freelance , promote yourself vigorously on TWO of these, and understand you’re not going to do ALL of them well .
• Make a list of all the acquaintances who have small businesses, and that could use a website. Send them a quick note, and always be of the mind that you’re there to be of service – not sell.
• Go old school and create a flyer : I put boots on the ground and peddled my wares (a one page services sheet – without pricing on it) around every business that I could open the door to in my area of Uptown Minnesota. I focused on what I did that was different. Alot of times this is personal service, since you likely have less clients and more time and attention than alot of web design shops in town. – To be perfectly honest, this didn’t get me a client. Maybe what I’m really suggesting here is hustling your ass off and being as present as possible… take every opportunity to share what you do until you gain momentum.
• Put out content on a blog on your website and promote it on social media : Don’t sell dude. Don’t do it. You can still see my oldest posts on this blog that are salesy… it’s not going to kill your blog, but it’s really boring and no-one wants to read those. Just give as much value as you can, share your experiences and focus on the ONE SERVICE you are really trying to sell and things you’re learning in that discipline. Use it as an opportunity to dig deeper into your craft, and to share as you go.

Price High and Justify

After you promote the living shit out of yourself on social media, talk to your long lost friend with a supplement or house painting business, and make a few mistakes it’s time to price high and justify . You have to charge what people will pay, but as soon as you can push that number up as high as it can reasonably go. Why? If you have high prices it means you can make more excellent work! Justify the price with above and beyond service and you’ll feel great about what you do. Your work will mean more profitable businesses that benefit from the excellent websites you make. It feels good to help people feed their families by helping them get the word out about what makes their business special. And in the end, that’s what it boils down to for me.

Make Sure Your Process Differentiates You from Competitors

It’s important to recognize what your business’s competitive advantage is, and unless you want to build a business that depends upon what’s special about YOU as an individual you have to draw out and nurture the special things about your process. To focus on your own unique specialties alone builds a prison fortress around you, and if you ever want to hire or contract out parts of the business you’re stuck with a business that only works with you sweating away at the center of it; the wizard behind the curtain, slowly getting too tired to perform at the same level.

So for me the key pieces of my web design process as I am learning to define them are:

1. responsiveness to changes that clients need..

– Example: Client asks for a lighter color scheme in development, instead of fretting we work hard to satisfy the request and push back when appropriate to keep within a reasonable budget.

Key to fulfilling: Web design services should not be dirt cheap, and if they are they aren’t taking into consideration the time it takes to build something fully customized for the business’s needs. Templated solutions get generic unfulfilling results. (However, I still feel that for some customers templated solutions such as Squarespace.com and WordPress Themes from Themeforest without custom code can occasionally fulfill their needs and suggest that they try those routes if their budget doesn’t allow to really hire someone to do it right.)

2. Examining the overall market for the client and tailoring the content on the site to the scenarios that could be useful to their favorite kinds of clients.

– Example: Your site is serving people who just suffered hail damage to their home, we assess that a key to surprising and delighting these types of customers is serving up content that is about how to buff out hail damage on their car.

Key to fulfilling: It’s crucial we think about the psychology of the people coming into the site. This is the number one question we ask when making a website: “how can we serve your ideal customer with this content, this imagery, the messages we’re sharing and the story we’re telling.”

3. Building out the main service pages of the website in the hope that the content will attract new customers, making key items like ‘contact us’ and ‘buy now’ super easy to access on the main promos, sidebars, and at the end of content.

– Example: Adding bigger content pieces after key visual blocks on service pages so that the service page is indexable by Google and people who want to really dig into what you have that option. Big old juicy buttons that say “Contact us now” or “Request a quote” are super obvious and surrounded by trust factors such as positive testimonials, industry badges, a phone number, or 3 key differentiating features in bullet points.

Keys to fulfilling: It’s important not only to think about how people are going to perceive this site when they get there but how they are going to get there in the first place. By thinking about big content pieces that could provide big value for the client during the design process, the website can be built in a way that emphasizes and makes those big content pieces that are serving a real need available and to the forefront of the site with menu structure, and other pieces of navigation and structure.

4. Imagery is outside the box, and elicits a positive emotional response from key individuals your business is targeting.

– Example: A Death to Stock Photo image that feels less stock photo-esque and more candid than most stock photos.

Even better, you and your storefront, your set of tools. An ACTUAL satisfied client, smiling and holding your product or enjoying your work.

Keys to fulfilling: Often this involves imagining what a positive interaction between your business and your client will look like. Is it you sitting with them, them smiling, and a chart of upward momentum on the computer screen in front of you? Is it freshly cut grass without them lifting a finger, so they get to smile and sip fresh lemonade on their porch? This is the story we want to display. We want the imagery to feel candid, real and maybe even a bit unusual. But a visitor should be able to see it and think to themselves, I want to be there. They should be able to imagine themselves in the place of the person pictured on the site.

5. The copy is written in a way that quickly explains the core benefit/value from your product or service, invites the visitor to participate, and explains why it will be awesome for them.

– Example: A moving company could say “Your back will thank you, call us for a custom quote today.” A remodeling company could say, “You’ll feel as good as your home will look.” with a call to action button that says, “Get a quote for a fresh look.”

Keys to fulfilling: Never be generic! Shake out the cobwebs in your marketing brain right now. Seriously, every single product or service has a unique and special story behind it, and the customers you serve need to know why anyone would choose you . Why have they in the past? I speak to the business owners and people representing businesses in their marketing teams, and I ask: “Tell me the story of positive customer experience, that you’re aware of.” What does that look like. Tell that story on the site. The more you get curious about these stories and the core benefit a product or service is providing, very few things are truly boring. The more you get interested in the story of the product or service, and tell that positive experience story the more you’ll see that almost anything can be interesting.

And the moral of the story is:

As you can see, the key differentiating features of this design process is a personal connection, customizing the solution to the industry and those specific businesses prime differentiating features, and enthusiasm. That enthusiasm through every piece of the puzzle is crucial. It’s important to note at every step of the process that this is for a business composed of REAL PEOPLE, whose food and shelter depends on telling the story to the world, and REAL PEOPLE who benefit from the product or service being served. This is the real end value. So anyone I work with, or for feels that: the enthusiasm and the genuine intent to provide value. This is key to this design process. 

How to Speak About Design to Establish Trust

“I thought you might like the flourishes in the header, it has that bohemian, natural feeling you were talking about when we first met up to discuss the project.” = FIRE ME . “Thought you might like,” “Going for that feeling,” and “I was inspired to take a fun direction,” all scream of whimsical dainty little artist types who could literally die from the harsh realities of designing for real economic pressures. The real economic reality is that families food and shelter depends on the success of a business, and a key component of how a business does is how that business presents itself to the world through design.

I’m not saying you can’t feel a feeling and apply it to your work in design, but design isn’t art. It is meant to solve real world problems. So instead of focusing on your feelings while presenting to the client, focus on design principles, web design best practices, and the persona’s and scenario’s you established during your discovery phase. Focus the conversation around:

• Design Principles
• Web Design best practices
• Persona’s and scenario’s

Why do design principles even matter?

I’ve had a couple situations lately, where someone seems to be questioning why a font choice even matters. They rolled their eyes when I mentioned a study that called Baskerville the most trusted font. It got me thinking. How am I presenting this wrong? Because I know in my heart of hearts that design matters. <- FIRE ME,  but I can’t seem to always make it dead obvious to people I’m presenting work to.

I want to show them two ads side by side, one with high quality fonts that were chosen with serious intention and one with quickly chosen free fonts , and ask them which of them makes the product they represent seem more expensive, or which one makes the product seem more quality. Because good design does indeed represent products and services in a better light, and makes them seem more high quality. You know that, and I know that, but:

But how do we make the value of design dead obvious?

1. Resolve to help them find solutions to pain points. – Your website looks like shit on mobile, let’s fix that. Your logo has gradients and shadows in it to the point it’s hard to use on shirts and in other simple ways. Let’s address those and work from there how design can help solve problems you’re aware of now. Maybe it expands from there; as a designer, you’re a problem solver and the more you can identify and come up with creative and solid solutions for, the more design solutions you get to get paid for.

2. Dive into their world and become aware of what they value. – For web design you might realize the client cares more about looking cool than contact form submissions. You might realize they value their relationship with their family deeply, that a certain type of customer is their favorite . Once we realize what they care about deeply… pause pause pause …we can help them communicate those values through the design.  By diving in, visiting their shop, asking a lot of questions, and being present we can then better let them know how good design will help them do that.

3. Focus on the things they do understand like ‘Trust factors’, ‘color psychology’ and ‘telling the story.’ – ‘We have to tell the story of your business better,’ is going to resonate with some people better than my fascination with the font Baskerville. Even though I deeply care about typography, it’s just not always as accessible of a topic, or as interesting to clients. What they do understand is how adding a Better Business Bureau badge next to the contact form will help increase the likelihood of people contacting them, and how blue is associated with trust and how green get’s associated with natural, fresh, or innovative. This really depends on the particular client, as some clients can go deep without a lot of prep.

Let’s circle back for a bit and make sure you’re working with the right kind of client:

The client defines the value and the designer discovers it. Ask the client what their business or organization does and why is it important to their target audience. If they don’t give you a quick comprehensible answer they are not ready to work with a designer or an agency. If they do answer the question you should next ask them what success looks like and what their goals are. DO NOT lead them toward what you think success might be. Let them define it.

When you get their feedback, dig deeper. A good way to do this is by asking who their target audience is and what their target audience needs are. If they can’t answer this they are not ready for the value a designer or an agency will provide. The client needs to have experience communicating with their target audience in order to set proper goals. If there’s no goal, how will you know whether or not a project is successful? Here are some red flags to look out for in the beginning stages of communicating with a potential client. I asked a fellow designer, Brenna French to share some thoughts on this issue:

“You sit down at a coffee shop excited to talk to a potential client about the project and the first thing they say is, I want to build a website how much would that be? This is a red flag because this means their mindset is already focused on getting a deal and not on the value you can provide for their business or their target audience.

This goes both ways in the relationship by the way, you never want to position the project or conversation around money. If you talk about money right away this shows the client that you are money hungry or desperate for work. Remember you are a professional and you are serious about your work and the value you can provide. Positioning the conversation around value sets the tone for the whole relationship in a positive way.

Say you get past that money conversation and everything is going well so far so you start talking about the project. The client starts to explain that they are wanting a one-page website design and they also want the main colors to be blue and orange because to them those are beautiful colors, oh yeah they also want a picture of themselves in the main header. This is a red flag because they have too many ideas of what they are visually wanting the end product to look like.

As a design professional, I don’t want to execute the client’s wants in mind. I design the best possible solution for the client’s target audience so the client will reach their business goals. From my experience, a client that has a specific visual direction is difficult to work with. Position the conversation around value. By the end of the conversation, you both are excited to get started. You set clear expectations and attracted the client by positioning the conversation around value.”

– Brenna French

Ask these questions of new possible clients: Is the client sure of their target audience?

Is the client aware of their target audience’s needs?

Are they able to answer right away, what is it that you do and why is it important to your target audience?

Do they start talking about their budget right away? (If they do it might be a red flag – try to change the conversation to talk about value that you’ll provide, not an arbitrary number you come with on the fly without fully understanding the project.)

Do they give off the impression that they understand you’re the expert, that they understand that are only responsible for Content – and Business Goals?

Do they have alot of ideas already about how the website should look? – A possible red flag.

That last one is challenging, and occasionally working for small businesses it’s important to kindly educate your clients on what is your responsibility and what is yours. But needless to say, if they come out of the gate giving strong layout suggestions and explaining their specific vision for look and feel you’re being pigeon-holed into the position of technician implementing someone else’s design, not the dynamic problem-solving designer.

Ways to talk and words to use

Talk confidently and make sure to include examples of previous work where you solved a specific goal-oriented problem. Now is the time to ask what their primary objective is, and to set up a metric for the design you’re working on currently. 100 e-mail list subscriptions, 15 contact form submissions by legitimate prospects, 20 sales the first three months of launch. Make specific goals have a date attached to them. Gathering this information after the design should be part of what you’re being paid to do, and part of what you’re selling.

Do user testing on the old site when they come in, if it’s worth testing. Talk about testing critical things. Words and phrases to use: research, effective, goals, trust-worthy, tell your story, appeal to your core demographic. Always do research on their industry before getting into the site design. Their competitors, and brand positioning. By doing this you better understand what they are up against and you position yourself as the expert with a unique understanding of their dilemma. This is another reason to hold off giving a price for the work until you fully understand the problem at hand.

Share research. You don’t always have to have it on hand when you are discussing a particular issue. But you should do your due diligence, if they want a pop-up newsletter subscription box then you should be able to go find the research on which way of doing that is most effective (right away, timed, or exit intent,) or general tips on making a pop-up effective. I find it especially effective to share these bits of research right before you show the design at all. Come up with three pieces of research to support points that might be contentious or that push their comfort level on the design. Share them briefly before going over the design.

When you get into showing the design, avoid the real estate tour; ‘here’s the logo,’ ‘here’s the nav,’ etc. Go straight for the heart of why the design serves their goals. Talk about flow and conversions, and especially focus on how the design presents their story in a unique and compelling way to appeal to their core demographic. Never ask for feedback, ask if they have any questions. In this way, you can further ingrain yourself in their mind as an expert. I think of it as a bit of swagger. Humble swagger, but you have to have some swagger in this industry.

Content Strategy for Web Designers to Attract Ideal Customers

Devising a workable and effective content strategy can be difficult for any company or brand, as the needs and desires of readers, clients, and businesses always vary from individual to individual, and from day to day. With a bit of work and the following content strategy guide to get you started, you should be well on your way to developing a stellar web design content strategy ! The most important part is that you start, and these practical and actionable strategies will help you get your ass in gear.

Begin with an Introspective Evaluation

Before taking that first step down the road of content creation, the best tactic is to initially spend some time to evaluate where your company, your content, and your brand currently stand. Begin this evaluation by honestly answering a few simple questions:

How is our brand currently perceived in the marketplace?

What are good and bad aspects of the brand’s existing content?

What content-related goals would we like to achieve?

How does our brand match up to other web design competitors?

With these basic questions answered about your brand and where your company currently stands, you can move onto an overall content strategy design by answering “The Five Ws”:

Who is the audience of our content?

When should particular content be available?

Where (in which channels) should the content exist?

Why is the content relevant (or) why will the audience care?

What is the message or purpose of the content?

For example, throughout this article I’ll illustrate examples with a fictional up-and-coming web design firm called Green Lemon Design. The Green Lemon team — who are looking to establish themselves in the web design market as a talented, young, and energetic choice for lower to mid-tier web designs — might answer these questions in the following (simplified) form:

Potential clients: Users seeking low- to mid-range website design and consultation services.

Existing clients: Users who have worked with us in the past.

Most content on the website should be available 24/7, while content that is time-sensitive (such as a month-long new client special deal) can be temporary.

Onsite, Blog, Email, Twitter, Facebook

The audience should be seeking professional and affordable web design services that we can offer (for potential customers) or additional customer support and services (for existing clients).

To inform and educate our audience on the skills and capabilities of our brand, to impress with our past successes and portfolio, and to establish good rapport and relationships with both potential and existing clients.

Establishing Brand, Voice, and Tone Guidelines

With the basic questions answered that inform you of a need to change your content strategy , now is a good time to evaluate the brand, voice, and tone guidelines you’ll utilize throughout the content.

Brand guidelines can cover logo design to color pallette and everything in between. For content strategy , the best places to start are:

Fonts and typefaces : What fonts will be used throughout the content? How about sizes for various elements (paragraphs, headers, testimonials, etc)?

Colors and palettes : What colors best suit your brand or company and can be utilized throughout the content? – Example above includes a distinctive color palette that could be applied to other elements.

Images and logos : Which particular static images or logos should be prominent throughout the content? – It’s useful to repeat symbols such as the ‘greenish lemon’ throughout this piece. This may be particular to the content you put out on your site in general, or a particular blog post or content hub.

Videos and animations : As above, are there any video clips that should be frequent or readily available somewhere in the content?

Voice & Tone

Determine early in the process what kind of voice and tone you wish to attach to your content and thus associate with your brand. This can be difficult at first, particularly without much in the way of experienced writers on staff, but finding an appropriate voice can be a huge boon to your content strategy as a whole.

For example, Green Lemon Web Design may elect to take on a very informal, even humorous tone throughout their content. As a young and fresh company, they may feel most comfortable keeping their tone light-hearted and fun, to attract the business and clientele of smaller, younger companies like themselves.

Onsite Content: The Bread of Your Content Strategy Sandwich

Time to get down to the real core of your content strategy by first devising the outline of content that should exist onsite. Remember, anything  that exists on the company or brand website (with the exception of the blog) is considered onsite content and should be under your complete control.

For our fictitious Green Lemon Web Design, the outline for onsite content strategy might include the following sections:

Voice & Tone : Errors/alerts, testimonials, FAQ, portfolio should have a fun and humorous tone, while a more serious, business tone is necessary for transactional and billing-related messages.

Images : In addition to the logo and color palette established previously, we’d like some professional photography to splash through the core onsite pages (about us, contact us, etc), but with a refreshing twist: Each photo should contain a small green lemon strategically placed and tucked somewhere in the graphic, to bring a branded element into the design for brand awareness and maximum impact.

Portfolio : A list of clients we’ve assisted in the past with small testimonials from business partners from each when relevant.

About Us : Details about how Green Lemon came to be, including headshots of all employees with short, fun bios from each. Employees must provide a quote (think high school graduation yearbook quote, or ask a curious question to get your team showing their true colors.) In my experience looking at analytics for a lot of sites, people visit these pages more than you might initially think. It make sense, because we want to know about the people in your business. Tell us more, give us the inside scoop, tell your story.

Contact Us/Get a Quote : Standard form with name, email, and (optional) telephone fields for potential clients to get in touch. Should we include our company promise to establish return correspondence within 4 hours?

FAQ : Answer basic questions, primarily focused at potential customers. What is our typical turnaround time? What post-design support can we offer? Include a handful of fun and humorous questions at the end as well.

Services : Describe all services we offer, broken into categories (consultation, marketing, technology, industries, etc).

Errors & Alerts : 404 error should be squeezed green lemon with one final drop of juice falling out. Logged in clients with unread messages or invoices should see amusing flash message on each screen until dismissed. Little alerts and responses to contact form inquiries can be an opportunity to show a bit of the companies friendly, human character as well as display being adept with technology and attention to detail.

Blog Posts: That’s the Good Stuff

While strong onsite content is of course critical to the success of any strategy, very often the real meat and potatoes of your online presence is contained within the blog. The blog offers an avenue for expressing ideas and sharing content that is timely, relevant, and inspirational for the audience.

A blog is also a more appropriate channel to take risks — even slight ones — with the content your brand produces. Blog content can be anything from industry news and competitor-vs.-self comparisons to tutorials and how-to guides.

A successful blog is a channel for content that relates to the brand or company, but then extends well beyond the purview of the brand to provide relevant and interesting content for the audience to consume.

Don’t get caught in the old-school idea of a blog, where one or a handful of curators post personal stories and anecdotes. While that type of content is certainly acceptable and sometimes appropriate to a modern blog, try to expand the content well outside the bounds of that traditionally small umbrella.

For example, Green Lemon might highlight some potential blog ideas for their new web designer content strategy :

Leveraging Influencers

A post discussing highly influential creatives in the design space and how they have inspired Green Lemon and other designers. We should emphasize the great projects these creatives have worked on over the years to entice our readers by illustrating how Green Lemon understands the industry and that our team (or freelancer) strives to meet the same standards of excellence.

Discuss the importance of social media contact, even amongst these influences, by tagging them on Twitter with a link to the blog post. An ideal tactic is not to directly ask a question of the power user in question, but to ask a question of our general Twitter audience (e.g. “Designers: How has @Influencer inspired you in your own projects? #GreenLemonDreaming”).

Content Hub Posts

Posts that emphasize a highly-curated and relevant series of links and posts found elsewhere that relate to a particular topic, such as web design. Since a popular group of articles gathered in this singular “content hub”-style post will drive a lot of SEO traffic and referral linkbacks to our site, we can be confident that the effort in putting together these posts is worthwhile and will generate a great deal of buzz and traffic for Green Lemon.

Emphasizing Keywords

As a relatively new company, we cannot be afraid to try emphasizing localized keywords to drive interest and traffic to Green Lemon and bring in potential clients.

A great technique is to create a series of blog posts that highlight particular keywords and heavily focus the relevant aspects of the content on those keywords.

To drive localized traffic we can start with “Web Design in Minneapolis” and “Web Design in Minnesota,” which should feature some location-specific content mixed into the standard information. This can be as simple as pictures or mentions of local attractions in the city or state that residents of these areas who read the article will relate to.

Conversely, we’ll need more broad language and images to accompany our post about “WordPress Web Design,” which should shy away from localized content but instead contain information solely about the techniques and technologies (CMS organization, colors/typefaces, content release schedule, etc).

Inactivity is a Death Sentence

While the initial questions and answers when getting started in the content strategy process as seen above might seem at first to provide only a very rudimentary insight the steps to implement a strategy, there is one key lesson to learn when it comes to anything related to content: Don’t get bogged down by the minutiae and thus never take action .

The biggest mistake anyone can make when it comes to content strategy is to be too passive, to over-assess and over-plan to the point of inaction. Particularly in the online space — where content moves at the speed of light (both figuratively and literally) — failing to act at all on a new content strategy is far worse than taking action and modifying or adjusting the content strategy plan as you learn and grow along the way.

That’s not to say planning and strategy are not important, but in many situations for both companies and clients alike, it is far more important to just “get out there” with the content so the audience can begin to interact with the content or brand than it is to delay far too long with nothing to show for it from a public perspective.

Maintaining Your Flexibility

Content strategies come in all shapes and sizes and should not be solely thought of as a brand-wide, all-inclusive methodology for every piece of content the brand creates.

Instead, content strategies can and should be developed in a modular fashion. Similar to a well-crafted website, an interchangeable content strategy allows for flexibility throughout the process over time, as variables change and the success (or failure) of a particular strategy evolves over time.

This technique should most commonly be used to distinguish between the various channels in which your content resides. A strategy module that suits email campaigns is likely not as well suited for handling social media interactions on Twitter, just as the static onsite content used throughout the site will differ significantly from the content posted on a blog.

Embrace these differences and freely develop multiple modules of your content strategy to fit each appropriate channel. You can and should still maintain an overall parent strategy that infuses elements into every child strategy below that (fonts, colors, common logos/images, etc), but much of the content beyond that will shift as the medium changes.

The Necessity of Taking Risks

A very useful tool when first developing a content strategy is to evaluate the various levels of “risk” involved in any given style or example of content. That is, when a reader or user engages with that content, how likely are they to expect it versus how likely are they to be pleasantly surprised? Additionally as the content creator, how likely is a piece of content to feel standard and safe versus something risky that could fail or be taken poorly, but provide benefit if successful?

There are numerous risk strategies out there, but a solid standard for content strategy used by Portent, Inc. is the 70-20-10 rule .

This rule effectively states that 70% of your content should be safe and expected, 20% should be moderately risky and challenges the standard 70% of your content, and the last 10% should be very risky , such that it is entirely unexpected content or may horribly fail in some way (but will offer large benefits if successful).

For the fictitious Green Lemon Web Design, they have elected to disperse their content using the 70-20-10 rule in roughly this manner:

70%: Most onsite stuff, such as About Us, FAQ, Services, Contact Us/Get a Quote, etc.

20%: Most blog posts that relate to the industry; those that provide assistance to clients, potential customers, or casual readers.

10%: A handful of blog posts that go against the normal, such as emphasizing the great work our competitors have been doing in the past few months or a post about a seemingly unrelated topic to drive traffic and user interest (books, gaming, fishing, etc). We’d also like to add a comparison chart of services and pricing between Green Lemon and popular competitors, which may include features we are weaker at than others but may ingratiate readers to us for our honesty.

Whatever the exact risk assessment is that your own brand settles on, it is vital to not be too afraid of taking risks from time to time. Being a little out there or edgy with your content will make a lasting, memorable impression instead of the countless other examples that are boring and forgotten after a short glance.

A Handful of Content Examples

Below you’ll find a list of example content titles that a new web design firm like Green Lemon — or even you — might find useful to pursue, roughly categorized by intended audience and/or creators.

For Web Designers

Web-for-All: Accessibility for Modern Web Design

Why Improved Design Cannot Solve Content Issues

Content Optimization for Mobile Platforms

Why Email Requires a Responsive Design

And Dash of That..: How A/B Testing Dramatically Improves User Experience

A Bridge Too Far: When Additional Feature Requests Should Be Ignored

This Ain’t Your Granddad’s Pixel: How Modern Displays Are Changing Web Design

Creating Beautiful Graphics and Logos in Pure CSS

The Homepage: When Automation Must Take a Back Seat to Human Control

For Web Marketers

Identifying Your Audience and Content to Meet User Demands

Community is Everything: Why Building a Community is Critical to Content Strategy

Risk vs. Reward: Why Safe is Often the Least Safe

Cultivating Client Relationships

I Like You: Spreading Your Content via Third Party Services

Localization, Love, and Liberation: Why i18n is Critical to Content Strategy

For Clients

Miniature Adults: How Children Utilize the Web and Interact with Your Site

Stay Awhile and Listen: How to Genuinely Engage with Readers

Establishing a Content Strategy for Personal Websites

Online Trapdom: Why Free Services Rarely Are

Just You Being You: How Social Media Encourages a False Sense of Self

Look At All My Resources!

While this article should provide a great starting point to establishing your own web marketer content strategy , there are multitudes of resources online with great information to boost your knowledge and get you down the right path toward content nirvana.

Below are a handful of prime resources to chew through at your leisure, so please enjoy!

Creating a Content Compass : Explores the diverging content strategy of a particular web project across the entirety of a brand’s content universe.

The Magic Content Marketing Ratio: Email Conversion Rate

4 Keys to Capturing a New Audience for Your Content Marketing

Being Real Builds Trust : Discusses why trust with users and clients is among the most vital components of strong marketing content strategy .

Help Your Content Go Anywhere With a Mobile Content Strategy

Future-Ready Content : Developing a web design content strategy that is as future-proof as possible, not just technically but in the manner in which content is created.

Contently Comic: Sponsored Insanity : Explores the pitfalls and trouble that can come from unnecessary sponsored content.

The Most Important Audience for Your Content Marketing : Your Own Employees : How brand and businesses should ensure employees fully understand and adhere to the marketing content strategy .

Social Media for Contractors Course + Daily Prompts

Trusted by top industry partners.

Are You a Home Service Business Who Wants to Increase Your Qualified Leads?

 100+ 5-stars.

 Award-Winning

 Industry-Vetted

Get the 'Ideal Marketing Plan' Template

Fill out this brief form and you'll invited to copy the Google Doc template immediately!

• Name * First Last
• Professional Title
• Comments This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Create Your Business Plan in Minutes

Type your business idea below.

What Our Users Say

Zakariya A.

How it Works

Questionnaire

Respond to a series of targeted questions about your business goals and objectives.

AI Business Plan Generator

The engine analyzes your responses and generates a business plan tailored to your vision.

SBA Approved Business Plan

Receive a detailed, tailored business plan that aligns with your requirements. Ready for funding.

WHO BENEFITS FROM Plannit?

Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Analyze your ventures through extensive business plans aligned with your vision and goals.

Business Owners

Back your business with a solid plan that aligns with your vision and goals. Perfect for startups and small businesses.

Educational Institutions

Develop your business understanding and vocabulary by analyzing your business idea and creating a plan.

Startups Accelerators

Work alongside your founders as they build their plan to ensure they have a solid roadmap for growth and scalability.

Try Plannit AI For Free

Funding ready business plan, executive summary, company overview.

Problem Statement

Business Description

Mission Statement

Business Model

Products and Services

Additional Features

Revenue Model

Market Analysis

Target Market

Market Size and Segments

Unique Value Proposition

Risks and Mitigations

Identified Risks

Mitigation Strategies

Financial Overview

Income Statement

Marketing and Sales Plan

Focus On Your Vision

Language support.

Key Features & Benefits

Ai editing companion.

Modify and regenerate sections of your business plan using premade or custom prompts. Our AI will help you refine your plan to perfection.

Multi-User Collaboration

Invite team members with easy sharing to collaborate on your business plan in real-time. Communicate and make changes together. Collaborate with your partners in real-time as you perfect your plan.

Education Center

Immerse yourself in a rich library of articles, tools, templates, webinars and resources for continuous business and professional growth. Learn all about the key aspects of starting, running and growing a business.

Powered by Chat GPT

Our algorithms are powered the latest in AI technology to ensure the most accurate and relevant output. We use OpenAI's GPT 4 and 3.5 engines for the perfect blend of accuracy and speed.

Business Resources

We recommend a variety of useful tools and resurces that help sustain your growth. We only recommend the best in the business. Filter your needs and equip yourself with the best tools.

Your plan in your language. We offer a choice of over 150 worldwide languages to ensure the best fit for your business plan.

Financial Projections

Take an additional questionnaire about your financial trajectory and get a detailed financial projection + 3 year income statement for your business.

Tools and Templates

Plannit's comprehensive suite that accompany business planning. From pitch decks to financial models, we have you covered.

Plan Export

Download your business plan in an editable .docx format. Fully edit & share your plan with investors, partners, and stakeholders.

Privacy & Security

Rest assured, your privacy is our top priority, and we're committed to keeping your information safe and confidential.

PLANNIT BUSINESS ECOSYSTEM

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Initiate with Your Business Concept: Lay the Groundwork: Start by introducing your business idea into Plannit AI's Business Plan Generator. This first step is crucial, as it sets the tone for a tailored, insightful business plan that truly resonates with your vision. Capture the Essence: Our platform is designed to grasp the nuances of your concept, ensuring that the generated plan accurately reflects the core and potential of your business.
• Navigate Through the AI-Guided Questionnaire: Tailored Interactive Experience: Plannit AI’s AI-guided questionnaire is your interactive guide through the planning process. It meticulously gathers information about your business's objectives, strategies, and market positioning, ensuring a comprehensive and reflective plan. Intelligent Feedback and Suggestions: As you progress through the questionnaire, benefit from smart prompts and suggestions, ensuring that your plan is not just detailed but also strategically sound and aligned with industry standards.
• Generate Your Plan with Advanced AI: Intuitive Plan Creation: With the questionnaire complete, Plannit AI's advanced algorithms intelligently analyze your responses. They then craft a detailed, customizable, and strategically aligned business plan, providing you with a structured, coherent, and actionable format. Benefit from AI-Powered Insights: Plannit AI offers AI-driven insights and suggestions, ensuring your plan is not just a document but a strategic tool equipped with tailored AI prompts and an in-app plan editor. Get inspired by browsing through our sample business plans, a collection of successful strategies across various industries.
• Finalize Your Plan with Confidence: Dynamic Adaptation and Refinement: Plannit AI recognizes that a business plan is a living document. Our platform allows for continuous adaptation and refinement, ensuring your strategy remains agile, relevant, and aligned with your evolving business goals. Professional Presentation and Sharing: Once your plan meets your standards, utilize Plannit AI's export features to present your plan professionally. Choose between various formats for exporting your business plan, ready to impress stakeholders, attract investors, or guide your team. Review and Adapt: Ensure your business plan is a living document, ready to evolve with your growing business. Plannit AI's dynamic platform allows you to adapt your strategy as new opportunities or challenges arise.
• Roadmap for Success: At its core, a business plan acts as a strategic guide, providing detailed steps on how your business will achieve its objectives. It helps you navigate the startup phase, manage growth effectively, and tackle unforeseen challenges with a well-thought-out strategy.
• Securing Funding: For startups and businesses looking to expand, a business plan is crucial for securing loans or attracting investors. It demonstrates to potential financial backers that your business has a clear vision, a solid strategy for profitability, and a plan for delivering returns on their investment.
• Informed Decision-Making: A well-prepared business plan offers valuable insights into your market, competition, and potential challenges. This information is vital for making informed decisions, from day-to-day operations to long-term strategic shifts.
• Market Analysis and Strategy: It allows you to conduct an in-depth analysis of your target market, understand customer needs, and position your product or service effectively. The marketing strategy outlined in your business plan helps in identifying the best channels and tactics to reach your audience and achieve market penetration.
• Financial Planning: One of the most critical components of a business plan is the financial forecast. It outlines your funding requirements, expected revenue, profit margins, and cash flow projections. This section is essential for budgeting, financial management, and ensuring the financial viability of your business.
• Goal Setting and Performance Measurement: A business plan sets clear, measurable goals and objectives. It provides a framework for monitoring performance, measuring success, and making necessary adjustments to stay on track.
• Aspiring Entrepreneurs: If you're at the idea stage, looking to transform your vision into a viable business, Plannit AI offers the tools and guidance to bring your concept to life. Our platform helps you articulate your business idea, define your target market, and develop a solid plan to turn your dream into reality.
• Students and Educators: For students delving into the intricacies of business planning and educators teaching the fundamentals of entrepreneurship, Plannit AI serves as an invaluable resource. It provides a practical, hands-on tool for learning and teaching how to create detailed business plans, analyze markets, and understand financials in a real-world context.
• Startup Founders: In the dynamic startup environment, Plannit AI is the ideal partner for founders looking to pivot quickly, secure funding, or understand their competitive landscape. With our AI-driven insights and market analysis tools, startups can make informed decisions and adapt their strategies to thrive in competitive markets.
• Small Business Owners: For small business owners seeking to optimize their operations, expand their customer base, or explore new markets, Plannit AI offers targeted solutions. Our platform simplifies the planning process, enabling owners to focus on growth while managing the day-to-day challenges of running their business.
• Consultants and Freelancers: Consultants and freelancers specializing in business development, strategic planning, or financial advising will find Plannit AI a powerful addition to their toolkit. It allows them to provide clients with comprehensive, data-driven business plans and strategies, enhancing the value of their services.
• Non-Profit Organizations: Leaders of non-profit organizations can leverage Plannit AI to plan initiatives, secure funding, and manage resources more efficiently. Our platform helps non-profits articulate their mission, set achievable goals, and measure their impact, ensuring they can make a difference in their communities.
• Innovators and Inventors: Individuals looking to commercialize innovative products or technologies can use Plannit AI to navigate the complexities of bringing new ideas to market. From patent strategies to go-to-market plans, our platform covers all bases, ensuring innovators can focus on what they do best.
• Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs) and Government Agencies: Government and SBA backed entities can greatly benefit from integrating Plannit AI into their services, enhancing their ability to support a larger number of clients more efficiently. By facilitating quicker, more in-depth business plan development, these organizations can spend more time assisting with plan execution and less time on creation, ultimately serving their communities more effectively.
• Anyone with a Business Idea: Ultimately, Plannit AI is for anyone with a business idea, regardless of industry, experience, or stage of business development. Our mission is to democratize business planning, making it accessible, understandable, and actionable for everyone.
• Interactive Questionnaire and ChatGPT Integration: Plannit AI transforms the business planning process into an engaging conversation. Through our advanced ChatGPT integration, we offer a questionnaire that dynamically adapts to your responses, ensuring your plan is personalized, comprehensive, and aligned with your business goals.
• Dynamic Planning Environment: Unlike static templates provided by many, Plannit AI introduces a living platform that grows with your business. It features real-time updates, strategic insights, and a feedback mechanism that keeps your business plan current and actionable.
• Extensive Educational Resources: Our Education Center is packed with articles, guides, and sample plans to bolster your planning process. It's designed to arm you with the knowledge to navigate the complexities of your industry confidently.
• Enhanced Collaboration and Customization: Recognizing the collaborative essence of business planning, Plannit AI supports team efforts with multi-user editing, annotations, and feedback features, ensuring a comprehensive approach to your strategy.
• Customer Success Stories: Our users' achievements are a testament to Plannit AI's effectiveness. These success stories illustrate how diverse businesses have utilized our platform for strategic planning and growth.
• Tailored Business Plan Creation: Our platform stands out with its tailored approach, featuring customizable templates that directly cater to your business type and industry, making plan creation straightforward and relevant.
• Content Generation:: ChatGPT helps draft various sections of a business plan, from executive summaries to marketing strategies, by providing structured and coherent text based on the prompts given.
• Strategic Insights: It can offer suggestions on business strategies by analyzing trends and providing examples from a wide range of industries.
• Financial Planning: While it can't replace professional financial advice, ChatGPT can guide the structure of financial projections and statements, helping you consider important financial aspects of your plan.

Take The First Step Towards Success With our AI-Generated Business Plans

• Search Search Please fill out this field.

Market Research

Business planning, website development, product or service selection, marketing and promotion, is it a good idea to start an online business, can i start an online business with $100, what are different types of online marketing strategies, the bottom line.

• Small Business
• How to Start a Business

How to Start an Online Business: A Step-by-Step Guide

Crafting a Winning Business Plan: Setting Goals and Strategies

Katie Miller is a consumer financial services expert. She worked for almost two decades as an executive, leading multi-billion dollar mortgage, credit card, and savings portfolios with operations worldwide and a unique focus on the consumer. Her mortgage expertise was honed post-2008 crisis as she implemented the significant changes resulting from Dodd-Frank required regulations.

• How to Start a Business: A Comprehensive Guide and Essential Steps
• How to Do Market Research, Types, and Example
• Marketing Strategy: What It Is, How It Works, How To Create One
• Marketing in Business: Strategies and Types Explained
• What Is a Marketing Plan? Types and How to Write One
• Business Development: Definition, Strategies, Steps & Skills
• Business Plan: What It Is, What's Included, and How to Write One
• Small Business Development Center (SBDC): Meaning, Types, Impact
• How to Write a Business Plan for a Loan
• Business Startup Costs: It’s in the Details
• Startup Capital Definition, Types, and Risks
• Bootstrapping Definition, Strategies, and Pros/Cons
• Crowdfunding: What It Is, How It Works, and Popular Websites
• Starting a Business with No Money: How to Begin
• A Comprehensive Guide to Establishing Business Credit
• Equity Financing: What It Is, How It Works, Pros and Cons
• Best Startup Business Loans
• Sole Proprietorship: What It Is, Pros & Cons, and Differences From an LLC
• Partnership: Definition, How It Works, Taxation, and Types
• What is an LLC? Limited Liability Company Structure and Benefits Defined
• Corporation: What It Is and How to Form One
• Starting a Small Business: Your Complete How-to Guide
• Starting an Online Business: A Step-by-Step Guide CURRENT ARTICLE
• How to Start Your Own Bookkeeping Business: Essential Tips
• How to Start a Successful Dropshipping Business: A Comprehensive Guide

Oscar Wong / Getty Images

If you want to get into the online business game, it’s a good time to start. The COVID-19 pandemic reshaped online consumer spending, including how people shop online and how they research products.

Today, 76% of Americans buy products online. Furthermore, roughly a third of people purchase items online weekly. From setting up an ecommerce business to offering web design services, there are countless avenues to explore as an entrepreneur.

Below, we’ll walk through each step to building an online business.

Key Takeaways

• When starting an online business, comprehensive market research is critical for identifying your target audience and learning how to resonate with your customers and understand their needs.
• Creating a business plan is an important step for outlining your business goals. It also includes your product description, target market, and financial projections, among other core components.
• Building your website involves setting up a domain name, finding a hosting company, and designing a strong website with consistent branding that allows your customers to navigate it intuitively.
• Choosing the right product or service to sell is essential. It’s important to think about how you’re addressing an unmet need.
• Several digital marketing strategies can be utilized, from content marketing to paid advertising, to help your business grow.

Successful online entrepreneurs study hard in order to have a thorough understanding of their market. This is important for knowing exactly how to reach your target market , because these are the people who will buy your products and drive your business growth.

At its core, market research is about understanding your customers’ needs, pain points, and solutions. It is designed to help your business better meet these needs.

Steps to Conduct Market Research

Market research involves understanding key aspects of your current and future customers. To get a clear sense of your target market, outline the characteristics of your audience—for example, age, location, gender, income, job title, and key pain points.

Once you have identified your target audience, conduct research on the following topics, which will tell you about how they make decisions and how you can better position your business:

• What are the challenges that your target market faces?
• Where do they research a given product or service?
• What are their views on pricing for this product or service?
• What factors influence their decision to make a purchase?
• Who are your competitors?

To put this market research into action, there are a number of different avenues you can take:

• Focus groups
• Competitive analysis
• Brand awareness research
• Market segmentation research

Consider the following questions that may be asked in an interview or focus group to learn more about your audience:

• “How do you search for that product?”
• “How useful was it?”
• “What words do you use when you search on Google?”

When you have completed your market research, identify what you have learned as well as your next steps based on these insights.

Creating a business plan is a key first step for all business owners . It is important for companies looking to secure funding resources. It also serves as a blueprint to summarize your key business objectives and goals.

To write a business plan , incorporate these eight main sections, which are often found in traditional templates:

• Executive summary : This is typically a one-page section that explains your objectives and includes your mission statement, core team, and why your company is positioned for success.
• Company description : This describes what you offer, your competitive advantages, and your business goals.
• Market analysis : This is where you explain your target market, market size, market trends, and competitive landscape.
• Organization and management : Explain who is working on your team and their professional background and experience.
• Service or product line : Describe the product or service you are offering, including any copyright or plans for patenting.
• Marketing and sales : Discuss your marketing and sales strategy. Discuss your pricing, key metrics, and sales plan.
• Funding request : If you are a company looking for funding, here is where you outline the capital you are requesting and where it will be allocated.
• Financial projections : Include projections for your company’s revenue and expenses. Consider including an income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement in this section.

A business plan is important because it helps clarify your action points, who you are, and what you offer, all in a coherent template.

Getting your business online is the next key step. In an ever-changing environment, it is important to know the tools, trends, and strategies for building a strong online presence to allow your business to grow.

Registering Your Domain

The first step is registering your name, or your website address. This can be in the form of your business name “.com.” To purchase your domain name, you can go to sites like GoDaddy or Namecheap . If you decide to build your website using WordPress, you will need to use a site such as these to host your website.

Web Hosting Companies

Alternatively, you can buy your domain name at a hosting company. These are companies like Shopify , Wix , or Amazon Web Services , that may also offer tools to build your website and release content on them. 

Website Design

A well-designed website is important for many reasons. Using a website builder, such as Mailchimp or Squarespace , can allow you to choose a theme, customize your pages, create relevant content, and set up a payment page.

Other key aspects of your website design include its functionality, simplicity, and ease of use. Allowing your potential customers to navigate the site intuitively will be key to their experience. Brand consistency—in your logo, colors, and typeface, for example—is also key to creating a unified brand.

Another essential part of website design is its mobile application. You’ll want to ensure that your website runs smoothly on mobile, that images load properly, that the text is legible, and that buttons are intuitive to click.

This step focuses on how to choose the right product or service to sell. At the heart of this choice is the goal of solving a customer’s problem. But there are a number of strategies you can use to identify your product idea.

For example, you might consider analyzing companies with high-profit margins, products that align with your passion, burgeoning trends, items trending on online marketplaces, and/or customer reviews.

With this in mind, analyze how this product will get to your customers. Additionally, you may consider products that are not available in stores in your local market but are offered in communities such as Europe or Japan, for example.

Marketing strategy and promotion is an essential driver of business growth. As the digital landscape evolves, it’s important to have an effective marketing plan that resonates with changing consumer preferences and needs.

Here are questions that companies can consider as they create their marketing strategy, navigating today’s environment:

• Impact, value, and growth : What are the goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) that will measure success for your business? How will you explain the value that the business provides to its customers and/or society? Create an “elevator speech”—a 30-second description of what you offer and why it’s special.
• Customer need and brand promise : How does the brand meet a customer’s need through its products and services?
• Customer experience : How will the business deliver the best experiences at each stage of the customer journey?
• Organizational model : How will the business operate to serve the customer with the most impact?

These will help you understand what types of strategies can have real impact.

Types of Marketing Strategies

Consider the following digital marketing strategies that can be used for your online business:

• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Paid advertising
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Content marketing
• Influencer marketing

Each of these presents a different way to reach your target audience, drive conversions, or build brand awareness, depending on your marketing goals.

You need to determine that for yourself. But before starting an online business, it’s important to assess the time, investment, and resources you’ll need to get it off the ground. While the barrier to entry can be quite low, it’s worth considering your goals and strategies for making it a reality.

However, compared with starting up a traditional brick-and-mortar business, the risks of launching an online business may be reduced due to lower upfront costs such as rent, staff, and materials, among others.

The short answer: yes. While it depends on the type of business you hope to pursue, there are many ways to set up an online business at very little cost. For example, you could offer your services doing freelance work, photography, bookkeeping, or personal training. The primary costs involved include setting up your business website, which can cost as little as $2 to $20 each year with companies such as GoDaddy.

There are a number of digital marketing strategies that online businesses can use, such as content marketing, email marketing, paid advertising, SEO, and influencer marketing. Each of these strategies can be useful, depending on your product and goals.

Starting an online business can be a powerful way to launch a new product or service while reaching a wider audience. With market research, a solid business plan, a strong website, and a digital marketing strategy, you can get started in growing your company effectively. As customers increasingly make decisions virtually, building an online business is vital to any business owner’s success.

Pew Research Center. “ For Shopping, Phones Are Common and Influencers Have Become a Factor—Especially for Young Adults .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Market Research and Competitive Analysis .”

U.S. Small Business Administration. “ Write Your Business Plan .”

Ogilvy. “ Getting Future Ready with Marketing Transformation ,” Page 15.

GoDaddy. “ How Much Does a Domain Name Cost? Find Out! ”

• Terms of Service
• Editorial Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Your Privacy Choices

How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated May 7, 2024

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. 

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

• The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan . 

You understand that planning helps you: 

• Raise money
• Grow strategically
• Keep your business on the right track 

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. 

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. 

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business. 

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create. 

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

Brought to you by

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

• What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. 

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

• A summary of the problem you are solving
• A description of your product or service
• An overview of your target market
• A brief description of your team
• A summary of your financials
• Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service. 

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business. 

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market. 

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.” 

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market. 

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers. 

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service. 

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics. 

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement . 

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning. 

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy . 

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services. 

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process. 

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like. 

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

• Supply chain management
• Manufacturing processes
• Equipment and technology
• Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains. 

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

• A description of each task
• The proposed due date
• Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap. 

Possible milestones might be:

• Website launch date
• Store or office opening date
• First significant sales
• Break even date
• Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Profit per customer
• Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality. 

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before? 

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

• Sole proprietor
• Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided? 

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. 

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. 

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

• Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
• Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
• Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
• Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
• Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business. 

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

• Company logo
• Business name
• Value proposition (optional)
• Business plan title
• Completion and/or update date
• Address and contact information
• Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity. 

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers. 

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

• Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .  

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project. 

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure. 

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it. 

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template. 

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses. 

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples . 

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started. 

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

• Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality. 
• Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
• Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
• Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
• Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas. 

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

• Did you meet your sales goals?
• Is spending following your budget?
• Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets. 

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees. 

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

Free business plan templates and examples

Kickstart your business plan writing with one of our free business plan templates or recommended tools.

Free business plan template

Download a free SBA-approved business plan template built for small businesses and startups.

Download Template

One-page plan template

Download a free one-page plan template to write a useful business plan in as little as 30-minutes.

Sample business plan library

Explore over 500 real-world business plan examples from a wide variety of industries.

View Sample Plans

How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

• Write a brief executive summary
• Describe your products and services.
• Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
• Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
• Outline your organizational structure and management team.
• Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
• Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

• 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
• Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
• Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
• Failing to establish a sound business model.
• Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

• How will your business make money?
• Is there a need for your product or service?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you different from the competition?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

• Use AI to help write your plan
• Common planning mistakes
• Manage with your business plan
• Templates and examples

Related Articles

7 Min. Read

How to Write a Bakery Business Plan + Sample

5 Min. Read

How To Write a Business Plan for a Life Coaching Business + Free Example

3 Min. Read

What to Include in Your Business Plan Appendix

1 Min. Read

How to Calculate Return on Investment (ROI)

The Bplans Newsletter

The Bplans Weekly

Subscribe now for weekly advice and free downloadable resources to help start and grow your business.

We care about your privacy. See our privacy policy .

The quickest way to turn a business idea into a business plan

Fill-in-the-blanks and automatic financials make it easy.

No thanks, I prefer writing 40-page documents.

Discover the world’s #1 plan building software

What stage is your business at?

Tell us and we’ll match you with a special LivePlan discount:

New Business Idea

Startup Phase

Established Business

Enter your email address to unlock it.

Please enter a valid email address

We care about your privacy. See our Privacy Policy .

Everything you need to plan, launch & grow

Create a fundable business plan. Then use financial tools to bring it to life.

4.8/5 Google Reviews

4.8/5 ShopperApproved

With the right tools and a little guidance, you can achieve almost any business goal

Build your business plan faster and easier with AI

Say goodbye to writer’s block. Ensure your business plan is the best it can be with the AI-Powered LivePlan Assistant.

Get inspired by 550+ sample business plans

Browse hundreds of sample business plans that cover every industry imaginable. This helps you visualize what your completed plan should look like.

Organize & pitch your ideas

Clarify and vet your ideas in 30 minutes by creating a One-Page Pitch. Then use it to easily explain your business opportunity to investors.

Create financials without clunky spreadsheets

No more complicated formulas. LivePlan guides you through a simple process for building financial forecasts and reports for your business plan.

LivePlan has helped over 1 million business owners build better businesses

It’s proven, companies that plan and track against their plan grow 30% faster than those that don’t. No matter your industry, location, or size — LivePlan helps you get your business off the ground and grow

“Trying to open a new business is very time-consuming, and since I was running another business while I was trying to set up Tailored, I didn’t have a lot of time.”

Owner & Founder, Tailored Coffee

“It wasn’t my intention to be an entrepreneur or a business person. My intention was to work with dogs. I kind of had to learn the rest of it in order to do what I wanted to do.”

Joanna Stanford

Founder, Trots Dogs

“That’s what it does for your business; [using LivePlan] has got us all talking and much more engaged about what we are and what we’re trying to do.”

Owner & Founder, Web Ninja

“Before LivePlan, I was making decisions that were poorly informed. Now I test everything through my business first, before I take it to my clients.”

Enae Jackson-Atkins

Owner & Founder, Esquire Accounting

Entrepreneurs & business owners love LivePlan

“I learned more about running my small business from a week of focused work in [LivePlan] than I have from any other single source. It has fundamentally changed the way I view my business ventures”

Capterra Review

“Using LivePlan is easy and there is so much assistance available. There are examples, templates, and videos explaining what to write. [...]. It does the math for you. It creates graphs and charts. It is amazing.”

Shawnnell B

“LivePlan was a great help to design, work out, plan and strategically organize and think about all the ideas that go into developing a new project and business plan [...] Think about it like a coach guiding you through the process.”

Shopper Approved Review

“I’ve been using LivePlan with Xero for a few months now and love it. It’s given me visibility about how we’re doing against Forecast like I’ve never had before...”

Rob Mackley

Xero App Store Review

“Before LivePlan, my team and I had no idea where or how to start [...] It helped us focus on and build every single area of our business strategy and recognize that some aspects of the company needed to be adjusted before we could launch.”

“LivePlan has eased my business planning processes and have provided me with easy access to credit from both banks and investors alike.”

“All businesses require solutions and tools [...] for control of expenses, spreadsheets were always the first option, but since the arrival of LivePlan, all work is easier and more automated.”

Trust Radius Review

“I didn’t have a business plan and using LivePlan helped give me an easy tool to build a strong business plan for myself and clients. My clients have gone on to enhance their plans and grow their businesses.”

Gabriella B

“LivePlan made us feel confident and secure in our numbers and gave us a clear view of our past, present and future!”

“LivePlan provides the balance between stating your vision, the framework to support it, and the numbers.”

Try LivePlan today

Totally risk free. 35-day money-back guarantee.

I'm an entrepreneur with 6 tips for building a website for your small business without breaking the bank

Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us and terms apply to offers listed (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our opinions are our own. See how we rate products and services to help you make smart decisions with your money.

• I built my first business website in 2000 — it was hard to get started, and even harder to make it look good.
• Now, there are low-cost options to make your small business website look professional.
• Many hosting plans give you a staging area where you can experiment with your site's design.

You can do many things to succeed as a small-business owner — steps like forming an LLC and getting a business credit card can help. One of the most important steps you can take is building a website for your business.

I got my first business website around 2000. In those days, you had to learn Dreamweaver or HTML to build your site from scratch, and it would still probably look terrible. I didn't know how to do it myself, so I hired a designer. I had to wait for her to be available for updates, which meant my site was often stale. I vowed never to have another business website I couldn't manage myself.

Now, many tools are available to help new business owners build and take control of their websites. I built my freelance writing website in WordPress, which is much fancier than I could have designed without those tools. I had help from a consultant to develop this version of my site, but you don't need that. Here's what you need to know.

1. Plan to spend some time on your website

When I was ready to build my first business website, a friend who had created a site for her business told me she could help me and we could do it in an evening. That was not overly optimistic. I spent about 10 hours getting my website up and another 15 hours updating it with a new theme a few years later.

2. Build it in WordPress

There's a reason WordPress is the most popular website-building platform. It is robust and full-featured, updates often, and is free. Because of its popularity, there are endless plugins, many free, that you can use to increase functionality. WordPress comes with a built-in page builder that's easy to use. Platforms like Wix or Weebly that promise simpler builds don't have the flexibility and, in my experience, aren't any easier to work with than WordPress.

One of the best things about WordPress is online help. I have never taken a class in WordPress; the online community is my help desk and instructor. I now help manage WordPress sites for my clients, not because I'm a techie but because it truly is easy.

3. Choose a low-cost hosting platform

WordPress is free, but you'll need to pay for hosting. I use Bluehost and pay about $400 annually, which gives me access to several security add-ons. Many services offer low-cost hosting for WordPress sites, and you can often manage your domain registration through the same company.

4. Use a page builder

WordPress's web builder keeps improving, but I recommend adding a drag-and-drop builder to give you more tools to add functionality and visual interest. There are many builders with free versions; two popular ones are Elementor and Beaver Builder. I use the Divi builder, which is not free, but I bought a lifetime license on sale for around $150.

5. Start with page templates

Templates are packs of pages with all the design elements in place. All you have to do is substitute your graphics and text. One way to choose a page builder is by looking at templates and using the builder for the template you like.

There are both free and paid templates. My builder subscription includes many free template packs; I chose one designed for freelancers. Using template pages gave my website a unified look, saving me a tremendous amount of time in design.

6. Do not fear failure

One of my favorite things about working on the web is that absolutely anything can be changed. I once accidentally changed the background color of my theme, which made all my pages look hideous, but I simply changed it back — no lasting harm done. Be experimental. Try new things.

One final pro tip: My hosting plan allows me to create a staging site where I can fiddle around to my heart's content while my current site remains live and unchanged. It is shockingly easy to set this up. When I first built my current website, I used a WordPress theme that wasn't very flexible. I created a staging site where I could take my time renovating the site with my new builder and templates. When I was ready, I switched to the updated pages with a click.

Watch: How two brothers are turning busted skateboards into bowls, furniture, and jewelry

• Main content

An official website of the United States Government

• Kreyòl ayisyen
• Search Toggle search Search Include Historical Content - Any - No Include Historical Content - Any - No Search
• Menu Toggle menu
• INFORMATION FOR…
• Individuals
• Business & Self Employed
• Charities and Nonprofits
• International Taxpayers
• Federal State and Local Governments
• Indian Tribal Governments
• Tax Exempt Bonds
• FILING FOR INDIVIDUALS
• How to File
• When to File
• Where to File
• Update Your Information
• Get Your Tax Record
• Apply for an Employer ID Number (EIN)
• Check Your Amended Return Status
• Get an Identity Protection PIN (IP PIN)
• File Your Taxes for Free
• Bank Account (Direct Pay)
• Payment Plan (Installment Agreement)
• Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS)
• Your Online Account
• Tax Withholding Estimator
• Estimated Taxes
• Where's My Refund
• What to Expect
• Direct Deposit
• Reduced Refunds
• Amend Return

Credits & Deductions

• INFORMATION FOR...
• Businesses & Self-Employed
• Earned Income Credit (EITC)
• Child Tax Credit
• Clean Energy and Vehicle Credits
• Standard Deduction
• Retirement Plans

Forms & Instructions

• POPULAR FORMS & INSTRUCTIONS
• Form 1040 Instructions
• Form 4506-T
• POPULAR FOR TAX PROS
• Form 1040-X
• Circular 230

IRS makes Direct File a permanent option to file federal tax returns; expanded access for more taxpayers planned for the 2025 filing season

More in news.

• Topics in the News
• News Releases for Frequently Asked Questions
• Multimedia Center
• Tax Relief in Disaster Situations
• Inflation Reduction Act
• Taxpayer First Act
• Tax Scams/Consumer Alerts
• The Tax Gap
• Fact Sheets
• IRS Tax Tips
• e-News Subscriptions
• IRS Guidance
• Media Contacts
• IRS Statements and Announcements

IR-2024-151, May 30, 2024

WASHINGTON — Following a successful filing season pilot and feedback from a variety of partners, the Internal Revenue Service announced today that it will make Direct File a permanent option for filing federal tax returns starting in the 2025 tax season.

The agency is exploring ways to expand Direct File to make more taxpayers eligible in the 2025 filing season and beyond by examining options to broaden Direct File’s availability across the nation, including covering more tax situations and inviting all states to partner with Direct File next year.

The IRS plans to announce additional details on the 2025 expansion in the coming months.

The decision follows a highly successful, limited pilot during the 2024 filing season, where 140,803 taxpayers in 12 states filed their taxes using Direct File. The IRS closely analyzed data collected during the pilot, held numerous meetings with diverse groups of stakeholders and gathered feedback from individual Direct File users, state officials and representatives across the tax landscape. The IRS heard directly from hundreds of organizations across the country, more than a hundred members of Congress and from those interested in using Direct File in the future. The IRS has also heard from a limited number of stakeholders who believe the current free electronic filing options provided by third party vendors are adequate.

The IRS will continue data analysis and stakeholder engagement to identify improvements to Direct File; however, initial post-pilot analysis yielded enough information for the decision to make Direct File a permanent filing option. The IRS noted that an early decision on 2025 was critical for planning and programming both for the IRS and for additional states to join the program. IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel recommended to Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen to make Direct File permanent. He cited overwhelming satisfaction from users and improved ease of tax filing among the reasons for his recommendation, which Secretary Yellen has accepted.

“The clear message is that many taxpayers across the nation want the IRS to provide more than one no-cost option for filing electronically,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “So, starting with the 2025 filing season, the IRS will make Direct File a permanent option for filing federal tax returns. Giving taxpayers additional options strengthens the tax filing system. And adding Direct File to the menu of filing options fits squarely into our effort to make taxes as easy as possible for Americans, including saving time and money.”

State and eligibility expansion

Building on the success of the limited pilot – where taxpayers with relatively simple tax situations in 12 states were eligible to use Direct File – the IRS is examining ways to expand eligibility to more taxpayers across the country. For the 2025 filing season, the IRS will work with all states that want to partner with Direct File, and there will be no limit to the number of states that can participate in the coming year. The agency expects several new states will choose to participate.

The IRS is also exploring ways to gradually expand the scope of tax situations supported by Direct File. Over the coming years, the agency’s goal is to expand Direct File to support most common tax situations, with a particular focus on those situations that impact working families. Announcements about new state partners and expanded eligibility are expected in the coming months.

“User experience – both within the product and integration with state tax systems – will continue to be the foundation for Direct File moving forward,” Werfel said. “We will focus, first and foremost, on continuing to get it right. Accuracy and comprehensive tax credit uptake will be paramount concerns to ensure taxpayers file a correct return and get the refund they’re entitled to. And our North Star will be improving the experience of tax filing itself and helping taxpayers meet their obligations as easily and quickly as possible.”

Direct File’s role in the tax system

During the agency’s review, many taxpayers told the IRS they want no-cost filing options. Millions of taxpayers who did not live in one of the 12 pilot states visited the Direct File website to learn more about this option or asked live chat assistors to make Direct File available in their state.

As a permanent filing option, Direct File will continue to be one option among many from which taxpayers can choose. It is not meant to replace other important options by tax professionals or commercial software providers, who are critical partners with the IRS in delivering a successful tax system for the nation. The IRS also remains committed to the ongoing relationship with Free File Inc., which has served taxpayers for two decades in the joint effort to provide free commercial software. Earlier this month, the IRS signed a five-year extension with industry to continue Free File.

As the IRS works to expand Direct File, it will also work to strengthen all free filing options for taxpayers, including Free File, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program (VITA) and the Tax Counseling for the Elderly program (TCE).

Pilot analysis and feedback

In the six weeks following the close of the Direct File pilot, the IRS closely analyzed pilot data and gathered feedback from diverse groups of stakeholders, including Direct File users, state officials and representatives across the country’s tax community.

While data analysis and partner engagement are ongoing, the IRS’ post-pilot analysis has yielded three conclusions that support making Direct File a permanent tax filing solution:

1. Taxpayers overwhelmingly liked using Direct File

As detailed in the IRS Direct File Pilot: Filing Season 2024 After Action Report PDF , more than 15,000 Direct File users participated in the General Services Administration’s Touchpoints survey, which collects comprehensive user feedback about government systems:

• 90% of respondents ranked their experience as Excellent or Above Average.
• When asked what they particularly liked, respondents most commonly cited Direct File’s ease of use, trustworthiness and that it was free.
• Additionally, 86% of respondents said that their experience with Direct File increased their trust in the IRS.
• 90% of survey respondents who used customer support rated that experience as Excellent or Above Average.

For the primary quantitative measure of taxpayer opinions of Direct File, the IRS selected the Net Promoter Score (NPS) customer sentiment metric, which asks users, “On a scale from 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend Direct File to a friend or family member?” NPS scores range from -100-+100. Direct File has a NPS of +74. If compared to benchmark scores from financial services companies, Direct File would lead in eight of nine categories.

2. Direct File made the tax filing experience easier

Direct File’s users reported saving time: Filing taxes with Direct File generally took less than an hour, and many reported filing in as little as 30 minutes. Nearly half of Direct File users reported paying for tax preparation the previous year, and the Treasury Department estimates that Direct File users saved $5.6 million in tax preparation fees this filing season.

3. Direct File helps catalyze the IRS’s digital transformation

To build Direct File, the IRS assembled a team of experienced tax experts, digital product specialists, engineers and data scientists from across the federal government. The agency partnered with the U.S. Digital Service and GSA’s 18F, as well as private sector partners, who all brought critical agile technology expertise. Working side by side at IRS headquarters and collaborating with remote team members across the country, the Direct File team developed and delivered a strong technology product.

The Direct File pilot also gave the IRS the chance to test customer service innovations on a large scale.

Live Chat served as Direct File’s primary customer support channel because it could be integrated directly into the product. This allowed customer support to gradually expand in concert with the overall number of users in each phase of the pilot. The IRS is exploring how this approach could impact taxpayer service overall as the agency works to provide taxpayers with more choices in how they can interact with the IRS.

“We’re mindful that the most important decision we made during the pilot was to focus on executional certainty,” Werfel said. “We took the time to get it right. We found the right first step to test the demand and the user experience and build a strong product. We will apply that same critical lesson for next year as we take a strategic approach to expanding Direct File’s availability and capabilities.”

•  Facebook
•  Twitter
•  Linkedin

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Boeing Gives F.A.A. Plan to Address Systemic Quality-Control Issues

The action plan is the latest in a series of moves by the F.A.A. to push for safety improvements throughout Boeing during a tumultuous year for the company.

By Mark Walker and Niraj Chokshi

Boeing’s top executives delivered a plan to improve quality and safety to the Federal Aviation Administration on Thursday, vowing to address systemic issues that have damaged the company’s reputation and put the aircraft manufacturer at the center of several federal investigations.

Boeing detailed these and other steps during a three-hour meeting with the F.A.A.’s administrator, Mike Whitaker, where the company submitted a “comprehensive action plan” that the regulator ordered in February.

Mr. Whitaker had given Boeing 90 days to develop a plan to make sweeping safety improvements after a midcabin panel known as a door plug blew out of a 737 Max 9 jet flying at about 16,000 feet on Jan. 5. No one was seriously injured during the flight.

The F.A.A. said in a statement on Thursday that “senior” leaders from the agency would “meet with Boeing weekly to review their performance metrics, progress and any challenges they’re facing in implementing the changes.”

Boeing was also required to address findings, from an expert panel convened by the F.A.A. last year, that revealed persistent issues with the company’s safety culture. Mr. Whitaker said Boeing had accepted all of the recommendations the panel made in the report.

“We need to see a strong and unwavering commitment to safety and quality that endures over time,” Mr. Whitaker said during a news conference on Thursday. “This is about systemic change, and there’s a lot of work to be done.”

In a statement, Boeing said the action plan it delivered to the F.A.A. was based on feedback it received from employees and through conversations with the regulator. Boeing provided some additional detail on the actions it was taking to improve quality but did not make the safety plan public.

In an email to employees, Stephanie Pope, the head of Boeing’s commercial plane unit and the company’s chief operating officer, said the company is investing in training, simplifying plans and processes, eliminating defects and improving quality and safety.

The company has made some changes, including expanding training for new hires to 14 weeks from 10 weeks; helping managers spend more time on the factory floor and less time in meetings; increasing inspections at Boeing and at a top supplier, and ordering more tools and equipment.

“Many of these actions are underway and our team is committed to executing on each element of the plan,” David Calhoun, Boeing’s chief executive, said in a statement. “It is through this continuous learning and improvement process that our industry has made commercial aviation the safest mode of transportation. The actions we are taking today will further strengthen that foundation.”

The company has also conducted more than 20 meetings at sites around the world, pausing work to gather employee feedback on improving quality. More than 70,000 Boeing workers have participated, providing tens of thousands of comments, the company has said.

Mr. Whitaker, who met on Thursday with Mr. Calhoun, said he planned to continue to meet weekly with Boeing to make sure the actions were executed correctly and in a timely manner. Mr. Whitaker will meet with Boeing’s chief executive in September. Mr. Calhoun has said he plans to step down at the end of the year.

There is no timeline for Boeing to carry out the changes, Mr. Whitaker said.

He also said Boeing had developed six measures by which it and the agency would be able to track the company’s progress. The F.A.A. will also maintain heightened inspections of both Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems, a supplier that makes the bodies of the 737 Max jet. Boeing has said it plans to buy Spirit to gain more control over the quality of the parts it produces for the company.

The action plan is the latest in a series of moves by the F.A.A. to push for safety improvements throughout Boeing. The regulator limited Boeing’s monthly production of 737 Max jets and audited its production lines, and is investigating the company’s compliance with federal safety standards.

Mr. Whitaker said the F.A.A. would continue to put limits on Boeing until the agency was satisfied with the company’s progress. The regulator and Boeing have not yet discussed raising the number of Max jets that Boeing can produce in a month beyond 38, he said. Boeing is making the planes at well below that rate, but has said it hopes to accelerate production in the second half of the year.

“We will not approve production increases beyond the current cap until we’re satisfied,” Mr. Whitaker said during the news conference. “Bottom line, we will continue to make sure every airplane that comes off the line is safe and reliable.”

The Justice Department has also opened a criminal investigation into the Jan. 5 episode. A preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board suggested that the Max 9 plane might have left Boeing’s factory in Renton, Wash., without the panel bolted down.

Boeing also faces potential legal repercussions from crashes involving its planes. The Justice Department said this month that Boeing had violated a 2021 settlement reached after two 737 Max plane crashes killed hundreds in 2018 and 2019, and could be prosecuted on a criminal charge of conspiracy to defraud the F.A.A.

The Justice Department found that Boeing had failed to “design, implement and enforce” a compliance and ethics program that was a condition of the settlement. The company plans to contest the department’s determination.

That 2021 settlement had been criticized for being too lenient on Boeing and for being struck without consulting the families of the 346 people killed in the Max crashes, which were in Indonesia and Ethiopia and led to the grounding of the 737 Max fleet for 20 months. An investigation determined that both crashes involved the mistaken triggering of a maneuvering system designed to help avert stalls in flight.

Mark Walker is an investigative reporter focused on transportation. He is based in Washington. More about Mark Walker

Niraj Chokshi writes about aviation, rail and other transportation industries. More about Niraj Chokshi

Boeing: A Company in Turmoil

Plan To Fix Safety Issues: Boeing’s top executives delivered  a plan to improve quality and safety to the F.A.A ., vowing to address systemic issues that have damaged the company’s reputation and put the manufacturer at the center of several federal investigations.

Settlement Violation: The Department of Justice said that Boeing was in violation of a 2021 settlement  related to problems with the company’s 737 Max model that led to two deadly plane crashes in 2018 and 2019.

A New Investigation: The F.A.A. has opened an investigation  into Boeing after the plane maker told the regulator that it might have skipped required inspections involving the wings of some 787 Dreamliners.

A Huge Loss: Boeing reported a $355 million loss  for the first three months of the year, as it deals with a quality crisis stemming from a Jan. 5 flight during which a panel blew off one of its planes.

A CEO to Fix Boeing: The plane maker, which is searching for a new chief executive, is likely to consider a small number of people , including several former Boeing executives.

Find the forms you need

*  FOR TIMES YOU CAN DISENROLL: If you don't have creditable coverage for 63 days or more, you may have to pay a late penalty when you sign up. For example, creditable coverage from an employer or union should pay, on average, at least as much as Medicare's standard prescription plan. You can generally keep your coverage without paying a penalty if you enroll in Medicare prescription drug coverage later.

You are leaving Aetna® for InstaMed.com

Aetna handles premium payments through InstaMed, a trusted payment service.

Aetna handles premium payments through InstaMed, a trusted payment service. Your InstaMed log in may be different from your Caremark.com secure member site log in.

You are leaving Aetna® for PayerExpress.com

Aetna handles premium payments through Payer Express, a trusted payment service. Your Payer Express log in may be different from your Aetna secure member site log in.

You are now leaving Aetna®.

The information you will be accessing is provided by another organization or vendor. If you do not intend to leave our site, close this message.

You are now leaving our Medicare website.

You are leaving our Medicare website and going to our non-Medicare website. If you do not intend to leave our site, close this message.

You’re leaving Aetna® for Caremark.com

Caremark.com is the secure website where Aetna Medicare SilverScript members can manage prescriptions, sign up for mail delivery, view order status, find drug pricing, and identify savings options.

You are now leaving Aetna® for CMS.gov.

The Appointment of Representative form is on CMS.gov . To view the form just  select “Continue”. If you do not intend to leave Aetna Medicare, close this message.

You are leaving Aetna.com for AetnaBetterHealth.com

You are leaving our Aetna Medicare website and going to an Aetna Medicaid website. If you do not intend to leave the Medicare site, close this message.

Aetna® handles PDP premium payments through InstaMed, a trusted payment service. Create an account or log in to manage your existing account. There you can set up automatic payments, update your payment method and more.

Go to account

Choose a state to view plan details

View PDP Plans

View plans for another state

Want to see options for a different location? Select a state below to update coverage details.

Explore plans

Estás saliendo de nuestro sitio web de Medicare.

La información a la que accederá es proporcionada por otra organización o proveedor. Si tu intención no era salir del sitio web, cierra este mensaje.

Enrollment pages temporarily unavailable

Our plan selection pages will be down for maintenance starting Friday, April 16, at 9 p.m. and returning by 1 p.m. Saturday, April 17.

Request a call

Are you an Aetna Medicare SilverScript member?

Yes, I'm a member   No, I'm looking for a plan

Session Timeout

Fifteen minutes have passed since you took an action on this page. To protect your privacy, we will log you out in 2 minutes.

What kind of plan are you looking for?

Select your plan to request a directory.

• Medical and/or drug

Directing to payment site

We’re bringing you to our trusted partner to help process your payments. This site has its own log in. It may be different from your Aetna secure member site log in.

*For plans that include Resources For Living benefit

Resources For Living is not available for members with Aetna Part D (prescription only) plans, Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs), Institutional Special Needs Plans (I-SNPs) or Medicare Supplement plans.

*For member example stories

These examples are based on the actual experiences of members who have used Resources For Living. We’ve changed their names and some details to help protect their identities.

More From Forbes

5 chatgpt prompts to skyrocket your personal brand and digital reach.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

5 ChatGPT prompts to skyrocket your personal brand and digital reach

Everyone wants to be famous online but not everyone knows where to start. But start you should. Your income and revenue can be supercharged by building a personal brand. The more people that are familiar with you and feel like you represent their best interests, the more your marketing costs reduce to zero and the more your business can grow. It’s an undeniable relationship.

Use these ChatGPT prompts to get on track with your personal brand and reach more people than ever. Copy, paste and edit the square brackets in ChatGPT, and keep the same chat window open so the context carries through.

Supercharge your brand and reach: ChatGPT prompts to get famous in your niche

Know what you stand for.

The best personal brands act with intention. You can’t show up online and start complaining about your energy supplier and commenting on your soccer team. You’re better than that. Use this prompt to get clear on what you do and don’t stand for, the content pillars you’ll adhere to, and the vibe you’ll bring to every platform. Don’t deviate from this plan.

"Generate a detailed outline of my personal brand, including my values, the core messages I want to convey, and the 4 distinct content pillars I should focus on. Describe the tone and vibe I should maintain across all platforms. My business is [describe your business] and we help [describe your target audience] achieve [outcome you help them achieve].”

As Russia s Armored Vehicles Get Worse Ukraine s American Made M 2s Destroy Them Faster

Microsoft issues new warning for 70% of all windows users, biden vs trump 2024 election polls trump and biden tied if rfk jr is on the ballot, find new audiences.

New pockets of customers could exist everywhere. Your business doesn’t have to serve the same audience, location or need it always has. Get ChatGPT to suggest new places to show up and new avenues to explore. Broaden your horizons to grow your personal brand. Go where the money is by experimenting in new arenas.

"Identify new target audiences for my company and, by extension, my personal brand. Provide a list of potential niches, platforms, and locations where I can expand my reach. Consider my current audience, my business goals of [describe your business goals], and suggest areas where my brand could naturally extend and thrive."

Make an outreach plan

You have your content pillars and your new set of audiences, now make the plan for how you engage. Posting and ghosting isn’t the way. For maximum chance of success, slide into DMs and engage in a deeper level there. But selling straight away won’t do you any favours. You have to have a strategy. Use this ChatGPT prompt to get your custom prompt, and create a series of messages that get your audience familiar with your ethos and business. Engage from the heart but stick to the process. Here’s how.

"Create a prompt that I can use in ChatGPT, for engaging with my new audience on social media. First, I should be required to complete square brackets with specific details about my company and audience. When ChatGPT has this information, this prompt will require ChatGPT to draft a series of initial messages to send in direct messages. The message should build rapport and provide value without being salesy, so this should be reflected in the prompt. The prompt should also generate follow-up messages that gradually introduce my business offerings."

Send more emails

Founders don’t email their list enough. Scared of bombarding subscribers, they rarely hit send, and they shy away from an email marketing plan. Don’t make that mistake. Instead, find ways of adding value to someone’s world, so you’re welcomed into their inbox every time. Use this prompt to ideate your next three emails and send them within the next two weeks.

"Generate ideas for my next three email campaigns to my subscriber list. Focus on adding value with engaging content that will keep my audience interested and lead them to take the action of [describe your main CTA]. The three emails should follow the “problem, agitation, solution” framework, where email one describes a problem I know my target audience has, email two describes how this problem proliferates in their life, and email three introduces the solution which my business provides. Based on what you know about my audience, create three options for the problem to address and I will pick one of them for the first series of three emails."

Dig into the metrics

Skyrocket your personal brand by doing more of what’s working. Do more of what’s working by assessing the data. Separate emotionally from what performed well. This isn’t about self-worth, it’s about being open to trying different things and being okay to not get it exactly right every time. After all, who does?

"Analyze the metrics from my recent [social media posts/email campaigns]. Identify the top-performing content and provide insights into why it was successful. Suggest ways to replicate this success in future content. My goal is to increase engagement and reach within my niche. [Paste information from your content, or upload a CSV file of metrics including impressions, email titles, social media hooks, open rate, click rate or engagement rate]."

ChatGPT prompts to build your personal brand: get intentional today

Build your personal brand and never look back. While other people are paying for ads, struggling to sign clients and wondering when the next enquiry will arrive, you’ll be swamped with leads, knee-deep in opportunity and scaling your business beyond where you thought possible. Know what you stand for, find untapped audiences and make your outreach plan. Send more emails, learn from every post, and keep on going. Start right and start today.

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.