Let's Talk: Niching Down Your Services to Get Ahead with Web Designer Connie Holen
This conversation was spurred from a larger interview with website designer and digital marketer, Connie Holen of Pixality Design.
Is Your Business Niche Enough?
Photo by Jade and Matthew Take Pictures for Pixality Design
Connie Holen, a website designer, digital marketer, and owner of Pixality Design asked herself this same question a few years ago. She had a web design business that took on a wide array of clients, and she was burnt out.
“Things were great starting out. Working with whoever came across my path gave me a ton of experience and insight into working with various industries. The bad thing was that every time you work with someone from a different industry, you’ve got to learn about that industry. So there was a lot of background research that happens; a lot of getting into the tools and technologies that they use to run their business and figuring out what the best digital solution is for them - and that takes a lot of time to piece all of that together. On the other side, my prices were not large enough to put in that time and charge for it, so I was not making enough with the amount of work I was putting in to each client/projects.
I realized early on that I’m never gonna be the best designer out there. When you start comparing, you’ll likely never be able to compete on pure design talent. So you find another way to compete and having a niche/expertise was a way to do that.
“I felt like I was getting price shopped and really didn’t have a way to stand out.”
After taking a good look at my business (I completed a full business audit), I realized I couldn’t keep going at these prices. So I asked myself, “How can I make more money with either the skills that I have or skills that I can relatively learn quickly?” —Connie H.
Erica: How did you go about niching your business and what made you decide on the health and wellness space?
Connie: The decision was actually very intentional. I was a web designer working with all types of business and decided something needed to change.
Step 1: Look back on your favorite clients.
I felt like I was getting price shopped and really didn’t have a way to stand out so I very Intentionally looked at the clients I had over the last year and picked out my favorites. I narrowed it down to a local hair salon and a yoga studio I had worked with.
Step 2: Discover a common problem / pain point.
Once I narrowed it down, I went out and very methodically set up some interviews with business owners in those health/weallness niches to try and identify one single big problem I could solve (or at least figure out how to solve and form my business around).
The thing that I really stumbled upon was with this MindBody software, which I had worked with once before and was really tricky for a lot of studio owners to use. It’s really complex and not super easy to setup, integrate, or look nice.
Step 3: Become an expert in solving that problem.
So, I spent several months playing around with it and put my flag out there by saying, “This is who I work with, this is what I specialize in.” I knew early on that I wanted some type of brick and mortar business - I feel like they’re really down to earth and they really got the idea of a customer experience that they wanted to provide to their people within their location and then translate that into the digital realm. Once that snowball started getting bigger pretty quick, then the referral snowball started. I got certifications along the way to make that even more of an expertise. It was very intentional to specialize in something but also validated those ideas with research.
Photo by Jade and Matthew Take Pictures for Pixality Design
E: How did you know that you made the right move for your business?
C: The big game changer for me is I don’t have to go out and convince someone to work with me. When they contact me, it’s generally, “When can we get started?”. It’s me screening them to make sure that they’re the right fit. I don’t have to have hard sales calls because I’m not really competing against anyone that doesn’t have the expertise that I have.
By niching down, you do have to say no to some things that seem cool but would take a ton of time to learn the ins and outs of that business. Overall, it’s been a huge upgrade in my business.
E: It sounds like you had make the pivotal decision to turn from a craftsman (a skilled worker) to a business person. You understood that the gap between your skillset and the “best of the best” is too great to try and overcome, so you then asked, “How can I pivot my business in a way that is going to give me the income I want and need without trying to beat the skillset of everyone else?”
C: Exactly. Quality of design is such a hard thing to compete on. When you’re working in a creative industry, there definitely needs to be a certain level of design that you’re continuing to hone. It’s not like you ever stop being a craftsman. What positioning myself has done for me is actually let me be more creative, because I now have more time and margin in my projects because I’m not doing all of that basic research. It lets me play around creatively a bit more because I have more time.
Ask yourself: Are people going to pay me for that extra design and creativity that I have? Or are they gonna pay me because I can also advise along the way of other things that will affect their bottom line?
That’s more the direction I went. When you move more into the “looking at their website as a tool” and how it can help them, you can expand your services that way. Not necessarily always in the vertical of just “super awesome design” but you can expand into other ways you can help their business holistically.
E: Now that you focus on a certain type of client, how do you keep things fresh and challenging?
C: Once you’ve gotten really familiar with an industry, you can play around a lot more with how you push design because you’re not spending as much time researching things.
But, I also get to go deeper. Once I build a website with clients, that has evolved into them coming back and asking, “Okay what can we do next? We want to keep working together.” and that led me to adding on digital marketing services to what I do.
Two ways I’ve done that: I went out and took a really hefty course on Facebook ads and Instagram ads and a little bit of Google ads. That’s been a really great skill to add to my arsenal because now I can continue to work with clients on not just building a website but getting traffic to that website.
The second part of that is consulting on and managing automated emails (like welcome emails and win-back emails).
Identify your niche, and then expand your offerings by constantly allowing them to ask the question, “What’s next?”
You can learn more about Connie Holen and her web design business Pixality Design here, or you can follow her on Instagram.
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