Buddy Web Design

This is the first of our newsletters for 2017. Breaking with tradition the past few months have seen us not doing a regular monthly newsletter. (I guess we came to a point where we wrote just about everything we can write about small business web design and SEO.)

We have decided to change our own focus and not only build websites for clients but more actively recruit other people who would like to start their own web design businesses.

With high unemployment in South Africa many people are forced to start their own business as an alternative to continue looking for work. The majority of our clients are such small businesses.

The partners of Buddy Web Design are also license holders of Kwikwap. Kwikwap offers a great opportunity for South Africans to enter the world of web design.

With high unemployment in South Africa many people are forced to start their own business as an alternative to continue looking for work. The majority of our clients are such small businesses.

This year marks 10 years for the partners of Buddy Web Design in the Web Design industry. The first important lesson we would like to share with prospective agents or web design consultants is that one should learn from those who have already walked the walk and managed to run successful web design businesses. Experience has shown us that only about 1 out of every 20 people who start with Kwikwap remain in the web design industry as active web designers.

God willing, the next few weeks and months will see us writing newsletters on the topic of starting and running a small web design business as we seek to attract people to join us in what we are doing. As our newsletters become blog entries on our website, it becomes the content of our websites which decides what kind of visitors we attract trough search engines like Google.

We will also be writing an ebook on the topic which will be a compilation of these newsletters and a little more in depth research on the topic. This research will include the gathering of statistical data trough surveys. We will really aim to bring something superior to the world wide web when it come sto the topic of web design.

In the long run this is what will establish our website as an authority on the subject , which will ensure a steady stream of visitors to our website. The last few months has seen a decrease in our own website traffic resulting in fewer requests for a quote for web design. The fact that we moved our business from Cape Town to the Helderberg and that we neglected to ensure our Google my business page gets moved as well might have contributed to the decrease in web design traffic.

It could also be that the economy is under general pressure and that there are fewer and fewer people starting their own businesses. (December and January are definitely difficult or slow times for many mall businesses.) But with all difficulties and difficult times there are also opportunities. Tough times sees smart people increase their spending on advertising. This is the area which you least can afford to cut spending when their is a downturn in the economy.

The current drought in the Western Cape have seen people in the borehole drilling business doing extremely well and even moving their businesses from the northern parts of our country down south. One can only wonder what will happen when the rainy season starts?

The time is now for the people in the roof repair business to fix their websites and website rankings to ensure once the first proper rains start to fall that they have enough work generated via their websites. There is a definite need for more more roof repair businesses in the Western Cape as we have found that the current roof repairers hardly put any effort into their websites once the rainy season starts and there is a demand for their services.

The next few days will see us working on the outline for the series of newsletters / The Ebook for 2017 on running your own web design business. Most of the principles for running a web design business can also be applied to any other service orientated business and we will also include tax and administration advice as Francois is a past qualified accountant. Francois will, God willing qualify as an accountant again during the latter part of the year and maybe be able to offer accounting and taxation services to small businesses in the Western Cape as well.

Please share our newsletter on Social Media or pass it on to friends who might be in the market for a website or consider a career in web design.