The Catch 22 of Online Businesses

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This is a catch 22 dilemma that most people face when starting an online business…

When you’re just starting out, should you invest in web design or focus on getting clients first?

It can be hard to figure out what you need to invest into your business first: getting a professional looking website or getting more experience in gaining clients.

Do you need a nice website to get clients? Can you charge more if you do? How do you earn the money to invest in a website when you’re just getting started?

Let’s face it, we all want everything done yesterday.

The Catch 22 of Online Businesses

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Online Businesses Aren’t Built In a Day

We all want to have a full consulting or coaching practice, a bunch of recurring revenue, all of our products created and ready to buy, sales pages and videos recorded and edited.

We want a beautiful polished website with amazing photos, stat.

Obviously each of these things take time and can’t happen simultaneously. That means you need to take it step by step one step at a time.

Because of that, it can be hard to decide what to work on first.

This is where the chicken or the egg dilemma of your business website really shows up.

As you know, your website is your storefront on the web.

It does the selling for you, and it’s important for it to be professional and to communicate well with your ideal clients… so that they know that you are the ideal provider for them.

If you have a poorly performing website, then you might not get the clients or customers that you’re looking to get.

On the other hand, if you don’t have customers paying you… you can’t invest the money you aren’t earning to have your website professionally designed.

So what’s the solution?

Start off with a simple website that you know how to edit. Then put your energy toward writing copy for your website that is clear and compelling.

You don’t need to spend a ton on the design of the site or to hire a copywriter from the get-go. Your company and brand is likely to change fairly quickly, so you don’t want to be tied into an expensive brand that doesn’t reflect your current direction.

The next step is to begin actively seeking out and having sales conversations with potential clients. This will mean putting yourself in uncomfortable situations where you need to ask for the sale, but it will help you actually make money that you can use to grow.

Once your website has been professionally done, with great compelling copy then it becomes possible for your website to do more selling for you.

But when you’re just getting started you might not know exactly who your ideal customers and clients are, so it doesn’t make sense to spend tons of money getting your website to look super polished.

The reason is that your language might change, your ideal avatar might change, you might need to change colors and even the direction or the entire focus of your business.

I’ve found that business is more of an evolution and a reinvention process that it is a linear straightforward process.

So while it might be tempting to invest a lot of dough into your first business website, I recommend that you instead focus on getting clients or customers first.

Once you’ve been able to earn some money from working with clients, you can reinvest back into your website to get even more customers, more easily.

This also be the best route to gain clarity in your business, which is something that is absolutely priceless, and happens at every step of the way as you build your business.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments:

Let me know if you experienced this chicken or the egg website problem? Do you often wonder if you should be doing one thing before the other and if so what have you decided to do about it?

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I’m the founder of a tech startup called AccessAlly, a powerful course and membership platform for coaching industry leaders.

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