4 Ways Web Designers Can Add Value For Clients Using Marketing Intelligence
New and experienced web designers alike are discovering that competition is heating up. Today, being good at making a no-code drag-and-drop website look good isn’t enough. The typical web designer offers a range of design, UI, and UX-based services, and many dabble in content marketing and advertising as well.
As the demand for design services has increased, new entrants armed with specialized skills have made business competitive for established designers. Indeed, offering new, value-added services is a great way for web designers to distinguish themselves from the competition.
Every client wants to generate more revenue, and most web designers neglect the business impact their designs bring. By tying design choices to marketing intelligence, designers can add another dimension to their offering and generate more value.
Here’s how designers can use marketing intelligence reports to boost their clients’ businesses and generate more revenue.
Competitor Keyword Research
When designing a product page or a landing page, keyword optimization is essential. Most designers either receive keyword information from their clients or conduct surface-level research to identify possible opportunities.
However, marketing intelligence reports allow designers to dive deeply into the keywords around which competitors are optimizing their pages. These reports also display traffic numbers and engagement levels to optimize around. For instance, a competitor’s web page might be receiving a lot of traffic but low conversions.
By dissecting these numbers, designers can bring data-backed design choices to their clients and increase website effectiveness. For their part, clients will know that their designer understands the business value of design choices and can rest assured they’re in good hands.
Offering value-added services like these also allow designers to charge more and reduce the need to onboard more clients, boosting business efficiency.
Partnership Research
Every web-based business has to build online relationships to drive traffic and boost awareness. Designers can create a great-looking website, but these designs are useless unless the right affiliate relationships are in place. For instance, if a brand decides to partner with another business that is a mismatch in terms of audience and voice, a web designer’s design choices will not affect the bottom line.
Offering insight into the best affiliate partnership opportunities available for a business is a great way to boost client ROI from a design service. Often,
If the partner is a poor match, a designer can highlight this point using data such as engagement metrics, percentage share of traffic, and so on, gleaned from competitor partnership data. Marketing intelligence reports thus do much more than just provide numbers.
They give web designers the ability to inform their clients of the direction their brands must take to present maximum appeal to their customers. It’s safe to say that most web designers in the marketplace are not offering these services, and they’re a great way for a new designer to stand out from the crowd.
Benchmarking
Conversion optimization (CRO) is a big deal in e-commerce, and many designers find themselves on the wrong end of these metrics due to a lack of market insight. Marketing intelligence reports help designers discover benchmarks and align their design choices accordingly.
For instance, a designer can create two versions of a page to split test effectiveness. If both pages receive similar levels of engagement, the designer might think they’ve done a good job. However, what if both these levels are well below the industry or competitor average? Clearly, these design choices don’t benefit the client.
Exploring the design elements and other facets of the competition’s most effective pages is a good way to inform design decisions. Benchmark reports highlight whether a problem exists or if a designer’s choices are top-notch.
Aside from copy and page flow, even visual elements like colors and fonts play a role in CRO. Benchmark reports give designers industry-average numbers that they can use to either replicate or emulate competitor designs and boost their conversions. The result is a happy client and more business for the designer.
Paid Ads Performance
Web designers offer input into paid ads copy and design as a part of their service portfolio. Most of these inputs typically take the form of graphic design choices such as the right colors to engage an audience and the placement of copy, and so on.
However, offering insight into the competition’s best ads and tailoring a client’s ads to mimic those is a value-added service that will benefit all parties immensely. Why redesign the wheel if a designer can spot what works immediately and recreate that design? A client, in this case, is guaranteed high conversions and low CPAs since the designer has evidence that their choices work.
Bringing data-backed choices like this is something very few designers do currently. Data is all-important in a paid ads strategy, and designers can expand their footprint by offering more services that increase a client’s bottom line.
Well Rounded Skills
While design skills and artistic ability matter to a web designer’s business, developing well-rounded skills is important given the increasing competition in the marketplace. Thanks to the advent of website design platforms and sophisticated graphic design services with simple UIs, designers cannot rely merely on their artistic skills anymore.
Marketing intelligence reports will add a new dimension to their business and bring value to clients.
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