Selecting a niche for your website builder business
If you run an agency or want to get into the business of building websites, you might have stumbled across website builders to assist you in your work. These tools are excellent for saving time and delivering value to customers. They create an end product that is high in quality, without requiring the difficult process of complete custom development.
Using a website builder can save time, but if you don’t know how to approach the design and development of a website for a certain niche, you may find yourself in over your head. Knowing how to deliver on expectations of functionality and design can be a significant aspect of what you provide to your customer.
In this article, we’ll go over how you might select a niche for your agency or business using website builders, and why it would be valuable for you to do so.
CREATING WEBSITES AND WEBSITE BUILDERS
Many agencies and web developers have adopted website builders into their workflow. These tools minimize custom development and provide great design out of the box. They are an obvious choice for businesses that make websites for multiple clients without an excess of custom features or functionality.
Many popular website builders in the market cater to specific segments. You have website builders that are predominantly focused on helping consumers create websites, and you have website builders of medium complexity that can accommodate both business and consumer use cases. And of course, you have enterprise-like website builders that are focused mostly on providing value to larger enterprise clients.
Which type of website builder you choose will most likely depend on the niche you want to serve with your business. If you wish to build websites for restaurants, for example, you’ll most likely want to select a website builder that can easily accommodate adding high-resolution imagery, maps, and files like PDFs for menus to your websites.
WHY SHOULD YOU SELECT A NICHE?
When running an agency or a business that builds websites, you’ll likely want to specialize once you start regularly delivering sites to clients. Selecting a niche allows you to not only specialize in saving time and costs with regards to development but also to give you more direction and chances for success when marketing and selling your business to potential clients. Without a clear focus on the segment you want to sell into, you might find that there is a lot of competition in this business, and often they can show great examples to help customers see the value that they can deliver.
By selecting a niche, you increase the odds that customers will be able to look through your catalog and see something similar to what they want in a website. You also help to ensure that you don’t wind up with projects that take too long to complete and underwhelm your clients when it comes to quality. Selecting a niche is the perfect way to streamline your business.
But if you’ve not had a clear direction up to this point, you might be wondering how you can select a niche in the first place. What should you take into account when thinking about niches that are right for your business?
HOW TO SELECT A NICHE?
When it comes to selecting a niche, you might think that you need to do some complex marketing research. But you can start now by following the process we’ll outline below.
Pick something you enjoy working with. If you enjoy food, for example, think about building websites for restaurants. If you’re passionate about non-profits, think about the organizations you could build websites for and start looking to win clients. When selecting a niche the most important aspect of your selection is your interest in the subject matter. If you aren’t working on projects you enjoy, you won’t see the same kind of success you’ll see if you work on things that spark your interest. So evaluate what matters to you, and select some ideas based on your interests.
Work with what you know. That is, build websites using the website builder that works best for you, and build websites you know how to build. If you’ve only built brochure websites in the past, it would be wise to stay away from a niche that requires complex app development, or back-end functionality that you are not used to delivering in an end product. These complex issues will affect your ability to make clients happy and will put a strain on your business.
Determine if you could make money in this niche. If you’ve got some ideas for niches, you’ll need to make sure your business can make money. Understand what you’ll be able to charge in your niche, and what the demand for websites looks like. If you choose a competitive niche with consumer clients who don’t pay much, and low demand, you won’t make money.
Understand your competitors. This is an essential part of dominating the niche you’ve chosen. Understand what works for your competition and try to provide value in a way that customers in the niche will value. Understanding your competitors is also a great way to see whether or not a niche can make you money.
CONCLUSION
Running an agency these days requires knowing how to use the right tools for the right job. That’s why it’s so essential to select a niche if you are relying heavily on website builders for your agency projects.
Using a website builder saves time, but if you don’t know how to approach the design and development of a website for a certain niche, you may find yourself in over your head. Delivering on customer expectations of functionality and design is a major part of what makes or breaks an agency.
Use the basic process we’ve outlined above to select a niche that will work for your business and help you better utilize website builders for design and development.