Some thoughts on website development for small businesses

I've done a small bit of this over the years, but I've stopped because I don't enjoy the work. If someone was interested in doing this here are my suggestions:

Business validation/market analysis

I found that there was real demand for websites, ecommerce, email address setup, and Google Maps setup for local businesses. People actually reached out to me through word of mouth and referrals, but Facebook groups are the most effective place to look for leads. The local and even national competitors in this field are generally all pretty amateurish.

Why I didn't like the work

For starters working with clients is stressful. Getting their business means negotiating. They tend to not really see it as a collaborative thing so you end up having to pester them for even basic stuff like a few images relating to their business. And they tend to have absolutely no ability to even use a computer so they struggle with that. Feature creep is also a massive issue.

It's also just stressful to make the sites. There's almost always going to need to be some sort of graphics work involved which requires a very specific non-programmer skill and is insanely time consuming. You have to figure out what the site will look like, write the content, and continuously get feedback and iterate. It takes as many hours to make a very simple website 3 page for a small business as it does to make a reasonably ambitious coding side project. All this means that it's very difficult to get an hourly wage of a reasonable dev job

Building from scratch is a mistake

My biggest mistake was that I was trying to code the websites from scratch. It made every site a software development project instead of a "how to make this business more money" project. I would absolutely recommend dropping your ego and using Wordpress instead of something like React or 11ty. Yes you won't be able to make things as unique and perfect but no one cares. The bar for these sites is very low, and a thoughtfully made Wordpress site will be much better than most local business websites.

If you are successful a client will ask you to make a site where they can sell things or a site where they can easily write and update a blog. Building a good ecommerce application or a blogging engine in React is a monumental undertaking and you will likely fail, just use Wordpress.

Marketing thoughts

• Every client wants a custom email address with Gmail - this is a service you can provide.
• Provide a set of services, not just "I will build you websites". Be able to implement each service quickly.
• Because a smart local biz web developer will use Wordpress they can market quick turnarounds.
• Transparent pricing is underused by competitors but most sites take roughly the same amount of time.
• Understand exactly how you will make your clients money.
• Focus on your own site - at the very least it should have good SEO otherwise why would anyone hire you?
• Price things slightly hire than you think.