Charge More As A Web Designer ($30K Website Secrets!)
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How do you find clients who are looking to pay seriously premium prices for one design project think $10K, $20K or $30K for a website?
Yes, there are a select few web designers charging seriously impressive rates. But how exactly do you join that club and how do you find those big-budget projects?
But also, you might be wondering, are those projects even worth doing?
Are these websites just so massive that they'll actually take up half your year and not be profitable in the end?
Today's guest, Chaitra from Pink Pot Studio, has answers to these questions and more.
But just before we get going with the interview, I’ve got something pretttyy special for you! I asked Chaitra if she would host a live workshop and go deeper on this for my audience.
On June 11th at 12pm ET, she's going to be teaching all about how to scale your website or business by booking $10K plus websites. It's a live training, so if you're lucky enough to be watching this before the 11th of June, then make sure to sign up below!
Ok, let’s get into the interview!
Can you tell us a little bit about how you actually got into web design?
(Chaitra:) So I'm actually a computer science engineer, I studied computer science in India, did my Master's and then moved to the United States. So I've always had like a computer science web design background.
But once I moved to the States, I had like a lot of free time in the evening because I was far from my family & friends. So I started a blog and spent hours beautifying that blog with like CSS, coding, you know, the jazz and that time there was the blogger.com platform.
Do you remember that? #throwback!
So I’d spend hours coding the backend and making it look the way I wanted it to.
And so I started getting a lot of queries from people like,
Oh, how did you code this section?
Or how did you code this and that?
And so I started sharing tutorials on how to do these things on my blog.
So my readership started to grow a lot.
And eventually I opened up an Etsy shop selling blogger templates and that took off.
And so then I started doing custom websites on blogger & WordPress and things like that. And it was really going well.
I enjoyed it and I decided to try it out and see where it goes. And that's how I started my business - it's been eight years now, i haven’t looked back and I love it.
Now I'm assuming at the beginning you probably weren't charging like tens of thousands of dollars for your websites. So take me through the pricing journey from what you were charging at the very beginning to projects to more like what is like an average client investment that they're making more recently?
I love talking about this!
The first website I like charged was like for a custom website was $60.
Nope that’s not a typo!!
And this was back in 2015.
So to start off my pricing journey, I like started with $60 for a custom website, which meant it included, you know, homepage, product like blog page, everything like the services page, like the whole shebang.
And this was when I was still doing, you know, my Etsy shop part time, figuring things out.
But then when I decided to go full time with my business around like maybe 2015, 2016, that's when I'm like, yeah, $60 is not going to, you know, really be sustainable.
When you're taking you're charging $60 you're juggling multiple projects in order to make any kind of like profitable income or like feel profitable. But at the same time, you're burning yourself out like crazy. When I decided to go full time, I raised my prices to around $1200.
And people were still booking!
People were still paying!
And I'm like, gosh, what was I thinking charging so little?
But I think, you have to remember that you are on your own journey.
You learn your own lessons and you make your own, you know, errors, mistakes, whatever.
So then I started charging about $1200. This was around the end of 2015.
And then as time went on, in 2017, I raised it to around $4000 to $5000. And that was where I felt like, OK, this feels great, because obviously from $60 coming to $4000, that felt really, really good.
But even at the end of 2017, even though I was charging $4000 to $5000 it left me wanting for more. And I felt like I'd hit a plateau because I didn't know if I could charge more than that.
But I wanted my overall income to, you know, increase.
I was, I think, about at $50K or $60K that year. And I was like, even with charging $5000 dollars, I don't know how to scale more than $60,000 dollars per year without doing like passive income or something else.
And that's when I felt like I'd hit the plateau and I felt a little stuck.
And I also felt like the kind of projects that I was getting, they were fun, but they weren't really very inspiring and didn't like the future didn't feel very clear to me. And that's exactly when I also decided to, you know, grow our family.
I got pregnant with my son.
And so everything kind of came to a standstill around that time.
And this was also like a big turning point in my journey. I took a really long maternity break. I went completely off my business. So my leads, my inquiries, my revenue, everything kind of like went down to zero.
And it was like, OK, I learned a bunch of lessons like building my business this first time. And I really loved where it was. But at the same time, I knew I had like bigger goals. And the way I was operating was not going to work to make the revenue I wanted to make.
And as well as that, with my new lifestyle as a mom, I didn't know if I had all those hours to put into my business like before.
So this was I would say this was like the first innings of my story.
And I got from sixty dollars to $5,000.
And then after my maternity break, I was like, OK, I had certain goals.
I wanted to make six and I want to work four hours per day.
And I was like, how can I make this happen?
So when I was thinking about that, I wrote like it was a simple math. I knew I wanted to take one project at a time. So which meant like I could finish one project in a month, let's say.
And I wanted to hit $100K.
So there was no way I could do anything else.
Like the only variable here was how much I was going to charge.
And that was like you had to charge 10K. Like I remember dividing it like, you know, $100K divided by like 10 projects a year, like with a little bit of vacation time. And that's like that comes out to $10K per project.
And I was like, I can't do that 😂
Like there's no way anybody would pay me that much.
But then I thought, like, for a minute, if this is possible, everything can change for my business because this is exactly what I wanted for my business.
So instead of thinking what's possible for me and reverse engineering it that way, I was like, this is what I want. How can I get there?
So I started 2020 charging $2K. But I didn't wait for too long to increase my prices. So my first project was for $2K. The next one was for $6K. And then I booked one more, I think for $4,500 and a or $5,000.
And then I think in July of that year, I booked my first $10K project.
So after that, it's been definitely a little bit more of a smoother journey in terms of raising prices. So from $10K, I think I went to about charging $15K in 2021.
In 2022, I went from charging $15K to about $20 to $25.
And that's where I've been. I've booked a project for $30K, which has been my highest so far.
But more so, my my prices right now are between $20,000 to $30,000. And that's where I'm living. And that feels really good to me.
OK, so obviously, like the pricing changed. But what else needed to change in order to be charging those prices?
OK, so typically these projects take me around anywhere from six to eight weeks. So that's the timeline of the project. So I would say in terms of profitability, they feel very profitable to me on my end.
And I know like typically you would expect that the work for these higher ticket projects doubles. But honestly, it's been the opposite.
Like I said, my projects take this pretty much the same amount of time.
The two main shifts or the two main reasons are what changed was I think one,
#1 My positioning on how I position my brand, my business and what I provide to my clients
#2 The value that I provided to my clients in the projects and my process and what I really did for my clients.
So these two things.
So to dive into positioning.
Before I was catering to literally everybody, I was working with all creative entrepreneurs. That was my niche.
But when I decided to raise my prices, I realized that going deep is better than going far and wide.
When I was working with all creative entrepreneurs, I really couldn’t specialize in it because there are different kinds of business owners in it like photographers, accountants, wedding photographers, wedding vendors etc etc.
There are just so many different kinds of professionals there and each of these businesses have nuances to them.
They're different in their own ways.
So creating a website or building websites that cater to everybody kind of was also diluting my specialty and the knowledge I bought into their projects.
So I decided to go all in on product based businesses and work with e-commerce, Shopify businesses.
So that was one big shift I made in terms of positioning.
And the second thing was what I actually offered.
Before I was building a website which did the job, which was like, OK, you need a website. I'll build a website which has all these pages, tick, tick, tick, you know, doing the job like you have a website now.
It used to look really good aesthetically and would match the client's brand and stuff like that.
But then deep down, I'm not sure if we were catering to the business's goals and what they wanted the website to do and things like that.
Like when people usually come to web designers, when clients come to web designers, they're like, I want a website.
But deep down, it's not like they want a website just for the sake of it.
What they come for is for like deeper reasons as to how the website can really help grow their business and take their business to the next level.
And I think that was one portion I was not paying as much attention to until this point.
And so from now on, I was like, instead of building just pretty websites, let's build powerful websites, which will take the business's bottom line from like point A to point B, you know, like wherever they want to go.
So I started digging more into their goals, who their audience is, how they interact with the client's website.
Where is the gap right now?
What are the problems they're facing?
And then creating a website based on a website strategy that will get them to their goal.
So that second thing was massive clients started seeing transformations and results like massively like the revenue numbers went up, sales orders used to go up and whatever the problems were were being solved.
Sometimes their problems were like, we're getting inundated with frequently asked questions or like inboxes, inquiries in our inbox, like customer service requests, and we don't have the personnel or the, you know, the staff to cater to that.
How can you help with that?
So then we created a frequently asked questions page.
We made sure to solve those frequently asked queries throughout the website and automatically those problems would reduce.
But everybody's problem is different.
Not everybody's coming to you for “I want more sales”.
Some companies have lots of sales coming in, but they have other problems like the one that I just mentioned.
So getting deep into the client's problems and why they want a website, what the website needs to do for them. That was like a big time game changer in what we provided for our clients.
So leading through value, that was another thing that changed everything.
So those were like the two main levers that we moved.
You decided to specialize in e-commerce websites on Shopify in order to have higher prices. Can you tell me, is everyone charging high ticket prices specializing in that? Is that the only thing that you can do in order to charge $30 K projects or are there other niches too?
Yeah, this is such a great question. And I love talking about this.
I definitely don't believe that e-commerce is the only niche you can charge higher prices in.
So here's what I believe.
Every niche, every target market has a spectrum, every target market, name it. There are people who are ready to pay $15 K for a website. Then there are people who are ready to pay $5 K for a website. And then there are people who are not ready to spend more than a couple hundred dollars on their website. And this is true for every niche.
Even if you take Shopify product based businesses, there are people who are happy buying the $300 templates on Shopify and are like “I don't want to put any more money into this”.
At the same time, there are people who are investing $100 K into their website as well.
So every niche, and I've observed this over and over again, as I've worked with more clients inside my program and even like inside the industry, when I talk to other designers about who they're working with, how much they're charging, this is kind of the spectrum, like even inside the program that I run, which is called the High End Web Designer, we work with web designers helping them raise their rates to $10 K plus.
And in that group we have web designers specialising in working with so many different niches from nonprofit organizations to, you know, wedding photography, there are just so many different even the paramedical tattoo industry!! there are just so many.
It just depends like on who in the spectrum you're talking to.
So even in Shopify, if you're talking to the spectrum of people where they want to just spend $300 on a template and they are okay with it, you're going to attract those people.
And you might end up thinking like even in Shopify, there's nobody paying $100 K or, you know, $30 K or $20 K.
But I think every niche has a spectrum and it totally depends on who in the spectrum you're talking to. So if you want to attract more of the higher end clients, you need to move towards talking to the higher end of the spectrum, understanding what problems and what goals these people have and talk to them specifically because the goals and problems these people have is very different from the goals and problems that other people in the other parts of the spectrum have.
When I was just starting, I could not have known like what their problems and goals were. And so it takes like talking to people who like actually do serve those clients to really figure out like what is it that you're solving? Because it's hard to imagine before you've gotten there, if that makes sense.
What are the mistakes that you see people commonly make that stops them from being able to achieve this type of price point?
I think the first thing and I made this mistake too, when I came back from a maternity break, I was like, okay, I need to charge $10 K.
How do I do it?
A lot of advice that I got was around mindset, like, oh, believe in your worth, believe in, you know, that you can charge more, go on the call, ask for it with confidence, like quote confidently and things like that.
And that is important.
I am a huge advocate of mindset, but charging more is not just about the mindset part.
And that is one mistake I made.
Like without even understanding what I went on to some of my first few calls after my maternity break. And I'm like, oh, this is going to be $8-$10,000.
And they were like, okay, sounds good. But no 😂
Because as much as I was confident communicating what I wanted to charge, I truly didn't understand why they should be paying that much.
And not did they understand.
And if I don't understand why should they pay so much, how am I going to communicate it?
What is the value in my services?
What am I providing uniquely?
And how is that helpful for them?
Why is it worth $10 K for the business to invest in a website?
So that was one thing. So I feel like with mindset and confidence and things like that, you need to back it up with value and strategy. And that's what I think infusing website strategy into my process was a huge, huge thing. And the mistake I was making was first just focusing on confidence.
But combining mindset and value and website strategy was the missing piece.
And that made the raising of the prices so much more smoother and easier.
And also the second thing I see people do is when they decide to charge $10 K, they feel like they should go there overnight or just with one step.
And it doesn't happen that way, because obviously with one project to another, you're building your own conference, you're building and owning in on your processes. You're also building the portfolio, you're building the case studies. And so from project to project, I would suggest going in like a stair stepping fashion to $10 K.
So if you are, let's say at $2K right now, I would raise it to $5K, then go to $7K and then go to $10K.
Not that you have to go like this, but if you feel like there are gaps to fill, then I would suggest going through a stair stepping process so that as your process is improving, as your process is refining, your confidence to kind of quote these higher prices also kind of organically coming with you.
You're feeling true to quoting those prices.
You truly believe in the value that you're sharing with your client as well. Because sometimes if you truly don't believe that the project is worth $10 K and you're quoting on the sales call, the energy passes on.
I'm not sure if your client will be able to see that value.
So as you come on par with the process that you're creating and with the value that you're creating for your client, I think raising your prices naturally and organically and stair stepping to $10 K is one of the ways I would recommend doing that.
Saying that many people in the program have also come at $2K and within a couple months raised it to $10 K for like within a couple of projects, that's totally possible too.
But you just want to check in with yourself on what's feeling good to you.
So that's what I would do.
And third mistake is also waiting too long to raise their prices.
There's no rule that says you have to book four projects at $4500 before you raise it to $7000 or anything like that.
I think these are unspoken rules that we just set for ourselves like, oh, if I've not done five projects at $5K, then how can I just raise it?
I just raised my prices. There's nothing like that.
It's all about value based pricing.
So focusing on the value that you're creating for the client and pricing on the basis of that is what would lead to an ideal scenario in terms of pricing both for the client and for you.
I would definitely recommend, pricing based on value than pricing based on the amount of time you're putting into the project or the deliverables into the project.
Okay, coming back to the strategy piece. I know people are going to watch this and they're going to be thinking like, what does that even mean?
And can you give me an example from a client where it's like the thing that you did in the website specifically led to an outcome, which is like, again, damn, that was a great use of $25,000.
So one of the examples I gave was just now when we said a client came in, they had lots of sales. They were already in the millions making sales.
Her main issue with her website was not that the website wasn't making sales. Her main issue with the website was we get a truckload of inquiries in our inbox on where to find this, where the shipping is, like when will it be shipped and like just normal questions about products, services, and things like that. And I have exclusively two people dedicated to responding to these emails. And if you think about it, two full time employees were dedicated to just responding to client service requests.
That's a lot of expense for the company, two full time employees.
The same time or the same resources of the two full time employees could be easily used for something else that needs more attention in their company, if this could be solved using the website.
So what we did was we embedded a frequently asked questions page, answered all the frequently asked questions on that page and put links to that in the website, wherever we felt like people were dropping off into like clicking into a custom contact form or sending an email or things like that.
And these are things you study through things like heat maps and analyzing their analytics. So you want to get the information.
Obviously, the business owner will be able to tell you a lot of things too, but also diving deep into their backend and seeing like, okay, from which page are they jumping into creating the contact form?
So making sure you embed some of the links to the frequently asked questions on that, right on these pages so that, okay, before they create a custom form, they can go and check out the frequently asked questions.
That was one thing.
And another example is like when the same client also needed, she was going to build custom furniture for the clients. And whenever clients wanted something custom of something that she was selling, they would write an email and then she would respond back. And then she would, there would be like a back and forth of an email thread on like, okay, what customizations do you want? And they would send back emails and they would send back like photos of what they wanted and things like, and that's like a back and forth process so long that it can go up to like even 50 to 100 emails threads.
And it's very hard to fulfill these orders when there's no structure, especially if she needs to pass on this information to another employee, that employee now needs to go through 100 emails in order to understand what the customizations need to be.
Now, if another employee needed to come in and fulfill this request, they could just come look at the form that the client submitted and be like, I have all the information I can take it off.
So that way the CEO of the business was so freed from a lot of these requests and it freed up her time and it was able to free up this to employees time who were busy responding to emails. So this is one classic example of how solving problems need not always be related to like, you know, sales or orders.
But at the same time, there have been plenty of other ways. For example another brand were selling lip balms.
And we saw that certain lip balms were also being bought with certain scrubs.
(There are apps that help us combine these things).
So when you go through past order data and sales data, you can see like, okay, everybody who buys such and such a lip balm also is very interested in the matching scrub of that lip balm.
And so whenever they were on the product page of that lip balm, we started suggesting,
“oh, you might also like this scrub”.
So this automatically led to them buying bundles of this and led to increase in sales and also led to a more streamlined checkout experience instead of them having to go search for the scrub separately.
You want to minimize the user journey as much as possible and try to guess what the user wants when they're on your website and make their shopping experience as smooth as possible.
You mentioned mindset is a huge factor. Can you give us some quick tips of what mindset things worked for you in order to get yourself to the place where you're like, yeah, $25,000 sounds like great price.
Okay. This, I think both of us will agree, like we've been in Mariah Coz’s programs. And one thing she always says is, “stay out of people's other people's wallets”.
And one of the big mindset shifts that I had to make initially was like, I would never pay $10K for a website. So nobody ever would.
And that makes total sense because I'm a web designer. So yes, obviously I wouldn't pay anybody else to do my website because I could do it myself.
Like it feels like something easy and basic. I can do it myself.
But this is the thing.
It feels basic to you for a reason because you're an expert at it.
And just because it's basic to you doesn't mean it's basic to your client.
If they're coming to you for help, that means, you're considered an expert in it and they need help from an expert on it.
And so truly understanding what you create is of value and charging accordingly is very, very important.
And the second thing is like many times when we see an inquiry or when we go on a sales call and talk, I used to kind of assume that this is how much this person, you know, will be ready to invest in a website.
I don't know how we would arrive at those calculations maybe because they mentioned in the form that this is my budget or things like that.
Usually in inquiry forms, they have like, oh, what's your budget?
And you give like three, four options and they check out a particular option.
I stopped asking for that option because when they check under $5K and they come on a sales call, you already have that thing in your mind that this is how much they're ready to willing to put into the website.
But then when you dig deeper, you realize that what you can do for them and what they need is completely different from what they are actually asking for or what they think they need.
So staying out of people's wallets, not assuming what they can or cannot afford because we might be totally wrong or we might be totally off and instead communicating value and what we can do for their business, how we can solve problems and then coming from a place of that value and then letting them decide if they can afford it or not is had to be one of my biggest mindset shifts.
I was I would be like, oh, this person probably can afford $4K.
So they can't even afford $10K.
But we never know what they can or cannot afford.
And it's very rude for us to assume that as well.
There have been many times when people have come into sales calls and they're like “I want to stay under $2000”. And then when we got into the value and when we when I kind of walk them through what the website can do for them, they were like, yeah, $8,000 sounds totally doable. I'll figure it out. Let's do this.
So I know you said big misconception is these bigger projects have insane number of deliverables. What is the typical number of deliverables for say like a $20K project? How big is that project or that website often?
Okay. So like in my case, I work on Shopify. So I would say typically I would say eight pages and maybe three to four app integrations and website strategy is the huge part of it.
So in terms of deliverables, the website strategy part is one of the major things.
And I think that carries the value on its own.
And once that is done, then we're building out the website.
That's like about eight to 10 pages, three to five app integrations. Pretty much that.
(Paige:) The value is in solving the business problems, increasing the revenue through the strategy and like, does it mean the website is suddenly like a 50 page monster or something?
(Chaitra:) No absolutely not.
And my websites never have like fancy animations or crazy coded effects or anything like that. They're as simple as simple can get, because I've also realized that the more animations and more these effects, it slows down the page speed. It slows down the website. It's unnecessary. The job can be done based on the business goals without all these things.
So like just to clarify, my websites don't have all those things.
Okay. So if someone's reading and they're maybe charging $2,000 for a website right now and they want to be charging more like $10K or $15K or $20K for projects in the not too distant future, what specific steps do they need to take?
There are lots of steps and I'll briefly get into it. But before that, I want to talk about the amazing training we'll be doing together in June. I think that is the perfect training that will break this down! I’ll be going through the exact steps you need to take in order to consistently land $10K websites in your design studio. So definitely make sure to come to that training.
And the second thing in terms of exact steps, which again we'll be breaking down more in the training, I would focus on is positioning.
So instead of appealing to everyone, I would start to think about a specific target market that you would specialize in and you would be able to help them a little bit more than any other target market.
And while considering this target market, I would definitely think about who you're interested in helping with and who you probably have a little bit of experience already.
Like if you already have some case studies, portfolio examples, or things like that, and also think about the market size, the profitability in that market, does that market look like something that you would want to grow in another five to 10 years?
Consider all these factors while deciding on a target market.
But I would definitely go deeper and start to think about how to position for a particular audience and think about the problems and solutions and the goals of that particular audience, right?
So that way you can specifically talk to their goals and problems.
And when you talk specifically to them, you attract them, they come to you.
You don't even have to go finding them.
They'll come to you when you talk about it.
So your content, your marketing, when you focus it around their problems and goals, they'll find you. You don't need to find them. So that's the first step, I would say positioning.
And then definitely pricing.
Start to think about what pricing makes sense to you and what is good for your business and your lifestyle instead of thinking about like,
"Oh, what can I price so that the client would pay that?"
Instead, like turn it around like,
"Okay, I'm running a business. It needs to be profitable. So what do I need to charge in order to have a profitable business? And what do I need to do in order to attract those clients?"
So think about pricing, start raising your prices. I know it feels like intimidating at the beginning because it almost is like, "If I raise my prices and nobody books, then what do I do?"
The reality is whenever you raise your prices, nobody books. That always happens 😂
For the first couple of projects, you're going to hear no's.
As you raise your prices, hearing no's is like a common part of the process.
And I think many of us back off during that time and go back to what we were charging before. But that's the whole thing.
If you wait a little bit longer and stick out the new price for a little bit longer, you'll find the new audience that is ready to pay that price.
Again, you need to tweak your problems and your messaging and your marketing according to the prices and the raising of the prices and all that as well.
So definitely pay attention to pricing and do it in a way that aligns with you and not the other way around. Build a business that aligns with your lifestyle.
And I think the third thing would be process.
Definitely think about your process and how you can improve it in order to solve problems and not build websites that just look pretty, but also create powerful websites that will take your client's business to the next level.
Because when they see value, when they see return on investment, that's when you'll start to attract clients that are ready to put in that money. If they invest $10K and are able to make a huge ROI on it, then investing $10K is a no-brainer for them.
So the more of these case studies and more of these testimonials you add to your portfolio, you'll attract more of them to your business.
(Paige:)I'm so excited for the training that we're both doing.
So if you're reading this before June 11, click below & go register yourself. We'd love to see you there!