July 11, 2023
Before you start out with your webdesign business I highly recommend you take some time to find yourself some good (free), and if you are in the EU: GDPR-compliant tools to manage your webdesign business. It will make your life as a webdesigner easier and more effective.
Website builder: Showit
If you want to build websites you obviously need to find that one website builder that you feel comfortable with. There are so many options out there, like:
- Showit
- Squarespace
- Wixx
- WordPress
- Shopify
- weebly
- GoDaddy
- Webflow
And the list goes oooooonnnn……
When you are trying to decide which one to go with think about the following: WHO ARE MY IDEAL CLIENTS AND WHAT ARE THEIR NEEDS? Then research specific websites for that purpose. Shopify for example lets you set up a website to sell products. So, if your clients don’t sell any products on their website Shopify obviously shouldn’t be your website builder.
There are countless tutorials on different website builders on YouTube, so go check those out.
My personal favourite is SHOWIT. I built my own website with Showit and I’m using it to build all my clients’ websites with it. It has a bit of a learning curve at the beginning, compared to other website builders. However, I truly love it because it gives you complete creative freedom to build. There are no pre-set grids where your images etc. have to fit, therefore letting you design however you want.
Want to become a Showit webdesigner as well and get one free month? Use my referral link to join the Showit family: https://account.showit.co/r/macawebdesign
Client management tool: Dubsado
I am obsessed with Dubsado as my client management tool because it let’s you do EVERYTHING in ONE place:
- Capture leads
- Send proposals
- Send contracts
- Get paid
- Automate your client workflow
Because they want you to love Dubsado before you fully commit and get a paid plan, they let you try Dubsado for free for your first 3 clients – with no time limit! I have not seen that anywhere else so far and I think it’s a great way to test out if you Dubsado is for you.
Grab your 20% Dubsado discount by signing up using my referral link: dubsado.com/?c=macadubsado
Email marketing tool: Brevo (Sendinblue)
Those of you living in the European Union (or having clients in the EU) know the struggle: Everything always needs to comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). That often makes things more complicated – and more expensive. I did some research before I found Brevo (formerly Sendinblue) which is leading European email marketing tool. They have a free plan for when you start our with a smaller email list and let you upgrade to a paid plan once you get more subscribers.
When you watch some tutorials it is fairly easy to set up. It takes some time, but hey it’s free and it’s GDPR-compliant! What more could you want!
Access Brevo here and check it out!
Appointment scheduler: Calendly
When a new clients finds your website and wants to book you, you could of course give them your email address and tell them to write to you to schedule a consultation call. You could email them back and forth 15 times until you found a date that fits both of you. Or you could simply use an appointment and call scheduler.
On my website I use the free scheduler Calendly. You can see on my Contact-page what their booking calendar looks like in action on a website.
Calendly lets you set up different types of meetings for your clients to choose from, lets you set up your availability and the length of meetings, integrates with your Google calendar, and takes different time zones of the world into consideration. It’s also super simple to use!
Make your website GDPR-compliant: iubenda
And again something for the Europeans here: Make sure your website is GDPR-compliant! That is ESSENTIAL, because if it isn’t it can get extremely expensive.
And again, there are lots of compliance solutions out there. I’m using iubenda because they offer everything from cookie solutions to data privacy notice. However, it’s not cheap in my opinion and it’s a little complicated to understand how to implement it on your website.
So, I wouldn’t say that I recommend it for the price or the user-friendliness, but the products are good. Decide for yourself whether you want to put in some money and effort. It will be worth it though in the end (with an emphasis on “the end”…).
Feel free to use my affiliate link: http://iubenda.refr.cc/macawebdesign
GDPR-compliant website analytics: TRACKBOXX
Once you have built your website you want to monitor your website traffic, using some sort of website analytics tool. Of course, there is Google Analytics. However, there seems to be a grey area as to whether it’s GDPR-compliant or not. I didn’t want to run the risk and researched GDPR-compliant analytic tools.
I came across TRACKBOXX, which is both free and GDPR-compliant. Check it out here!
Managing your work: Asana
To work effectively, manage your tasks, create to-do lists, and manage your team (in case you have one) you can use Asana. There is a free version that lets you do a lot of good stuff, and a paid plan as well.
Check Asana out here!
