If you’ve been a freelance web developer for awhile or already run your own successful web development business, you may be starting to think about the next step. You already solve complex problems for your clients by developing websites and managing other digital solutions. Why not reframe what you do and become a freelance web consultant?
Developing a web consulting mindset — and commanding the corresponding higher rates from clients — is more than just changing up the title on your business cards. It involves changing your approach from “practitioner” to “partner and advisor.”
Web consulting builds on your existing web development business by using the skills you already have. But rather than only executing a project for client, you’ll also be advising them on the best solution to their business needs.
Read more: Get More Freelance Consulting Jobs by Saying “No”
What does a freelance web consultant do, anyway?
The term web consultant encompasses a variety of potential services, from website design to SEO and marketing strategy. A web consultant may be brought in for a single project or be kept on retainer to act as an advisor as a client’s business grows.
The main difference is this:
- A web developer is hired to build a completed website to a client’s specification.
- A web consultant is hired to help achieve a vision around a client’s web presence.
Often, the consultant is also a developer, though the primary value of their services are aimed at helping clients find the right solution — even if that solution doesn’t include the consultant being the one to write the code.
As a freelance web consultant you’ll need to go beyond web development skills and have knowledge in all major areas of websites including design, development, marketing, research and analytics. You’ll also need to be a good project manager, so you can either handle these elements yourself or manage contractors.
For example, imagine a client is tired of their outdated website. As a web developer, you might simply rework the existing content into a more contemporary responsive website. As a web consultant, you might quiz the client on their goals for the redesign, make suggestions to help them meet those goals, then handle the web development yourself while contracting out the new logo design, copywriting, SEO research and PR.
Making the leap from a freelance web developer to a web consultant requires a shift in how you see yourself. You’re no longer selling your skill set, you’re selling your expertise. You’re no longer just a coder, you’re an educator and strategist. You’re no longer just a service provider, you’re now a business partner.
This shift in mindset will change how you quote your services, how you talk about your work and how you develop your network.
Get inspired: A Digital Strategy Consultant Describes Her Mid-Career Jump to Freelancing
Reframing your pricing
As a freelance web developer, you probably based your pricing structure on industry standard numbers like hourly rates and set project fees. But as a web consultant, your rates should be based on the value that you provide to your client.
That’s a completely different way of thinking for a lot of freelancers. Instead of charging an hourly rate or estimating how long it will take and charging a set fee based on that number, you consider what the new website’s return on investment will be to your client.
If, for example, you believe your strategy and design work can help them realize a 10% growth in their business over the next year, try to get some solid numbers from the client. What does that 10% growth translate to in dollar value? Then, pitch your client a web consulting fee that equals a percentage of that growth and point out that the project will practically pay for itself.
Read more: Demystifying Consultant Pricing Models (Finally)
Reframing your past work
How do you demonstrate your expertise to potential clients? Start by putting your web consultant hat on and taking a look at your portfolio. Consider how you can reframe the work you’ve already done to showcase not only the skills you used, but also how you helped previous clients strategize or gain a better return on investment for their projects.
One way is to describe pieces in your portfolio as mini case studies. Rather than simply showcasing a client website and stating that you developed it, tell a short story about the client’s business problem and how your development work provided them with a solution. Highlight any strategy you assisted with or suggestions you made.
Bonus points if you reach out to the client to get a testimonial or quick interview on how the project was successful. (Plus, this gives you a golden opportunity to explain that you’re transitioning your business and ask for referrals from satisfied clients.)
Read more: How to Make a Great Consulting Website
Reframing your team
You may have been getting along fine as a solo developer for most of your career, but as a freelance web consultant your network becomes critical. You’ll need a team of experienced people who can fill in the gaps in your own skills, or to whom you can outsource specific tasks you may no longer have time for.
This doesn’t mean you have to start an agency and hire employees, however. This means building a network of trusted professionals that you can either partner with or hire on a contract basis.
Don’t just think about your team in terms of the people that can work for you. As you grow your web consulting business, you may also want to find a mastermind group to act as a sounding board for ideas. This group of trusted advisors can be a powerful tool in helping you fully shift into a consultant mindset.
Ready to take the plunge? Check out our post on the best marketplaces for independent consulting jobs and get started finding your first clients.
Jessie Kwak author bio
Jessie Kwak is a freelance writer and novelist living in Portland, Oregon. She writes for B2B brands in educational technology, SaaS and related industries. You can learn more about her work at www.jlkwak.com.
Thanks for the great tips! I do have a question however that I think
you could probably answer. I was wondering,
Is web design dying? Is custom design gone? How do we convince people that custom design is better than the 10 buck template deal online?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
This question gets right at the heart of why we started Nation1099. There is so much opportunity to thrive as freelance creatives, but there is also tremendous downward price pressure in certain areas, so we need an ENTREPRENEURIAL and STRATEGIC approach to our freelance businesses. The “back office stuff” — accounting, writing good contracts, finding insurance — is the easy part to figure out. How to position our services in the market is a lot harder.
Design isn’t my domain, so I hope other web designers and developers weigh in. But where I do work (freelance writing) has a similar dynamic. Certain parts of the work have been commodified because technology makes it easy for a lot of supply to come into the market and makes it easy to use “rinse and repeat” solutions. How do we thrive with that downward price pressure on our services?
I can think of two basic approaches. One is to find the limited number of clients who want bespoke solutions — who get why that is important and a good investment. Partly we’ll have to take on some responsibility for customer education. Two is to think of our work as made up of links in a chain and to let the less valuable parts of the chain go while we concentrate on working higher in the value chain. Many of us are thriving by selling strategy and planning and helping to our clients put those commodity solutions in place.
I suppose that second solution is sad if you are put off by disposable blog content (as I am) or generic design templates. (Confession: we are using an off-the-shelf theme here at Nation1099.) But . . . there are probably creative compromises to be made in there that provide satisfying work. Custom cabinets for my kitchen are great. But a carpenter or decorator who can tell me how to get a custom look with my limited budget out of the Home Depot cabinets is providing a valuable service.
I completely agree with Robert here. Coming from a freelance writer’s perspective, I think educating clients is important. But I also don’t think it’s worth the energy to try to convince a client who’s happy paying $10 for a theme or $50 for a blog post about the value of good design and well-written content. Instead, I go looking for the companies that already know the value of having a well-designed, well-written website.
They’re definitely still out there. In fact, I would say the ubiquity of cheap solutions is a selling point for those of us who sell custom work. After all, if all your competition is paying bottom dollar for design, hiring a designer to custom-make your own site is a way to stand out from the competition.
Thanks Jessie. I was thinking . . . when I do get into those direct conversations of trying to communicate the value of my team’s service, I often refer to the old 80/20 rule. An off-the-shelf solution will get them 80 percent there, but the last 20 percent requires 80 percent of the effort and attention (and therefore unanticipated labor costs on the client’s end). A custom solution gets you all the way to the goal without any of the agita of implementing an off-the-shelf solution. In my line of work, off-the-shelf would be intelligible and grammatically correct $50 blog posts that have no connection to the client’s business or marketing strategy.
That’s a great question “Fingerprint”. Being a freelancer myself I have struggled with this before. To answer your question, web design will never die because
1) it is not feasible for businesses to do everything themselves. They all need “experts” who can do the job better than them.
2) After reading this article you should be convinced that you should grow your skills to fit the shoe of a Web Consultant who can understand and communicate well with the clients. Trust me people know comfortable with computers still hesitate to do websites on their own. They need someone to talk to, who can answer questions in person and someone who they can trust. This has been my experience.
3) it also depends on the type of customers you are targeting. If you only target big businesses then you may not succeed. Rather target small businesses and institutions who needs the skill sets that you posses.