[Vitruvius Web]

I've been thinking a lot recently and researching the web design industry itself and found it is almost vital to research your competitors in order to provide a service which is worthy of stealing a little market share in order to keep your business a float. I thought a topic on industry tips may bring up some useful discussion and ideas for people to help them succeed, hopefully people will feel free to provide their ideas/tips and results here too.

I started blogging recently for my web design company and thought it would be a great idea to use my blog to record all my methods for gaining success in my local market so then other people starting web design businesses themselves could learn a lot from my blogging and avoid mistakes.

My blog can be found here Vitruvius Web Blog

The first entry I wrote is a short step by step guide on how to analyse competitors in your local market with limited knowledge in order to gain an insite into where gaps in the market may be and avoid making mistakes which can cost you sales.

I hope people find this information useful and I also urge people to join in and give there ten pence worth as im sure there are so many good ideas and experiences you can post to help other people in their struggle for recognition in the web design industry.

[mr p]

Hello vitruvius, always good to share your experiences on climbing the greasy pole of web design, so nice one.

One thought i had on your blog post was that even though it's useful to know what other companies offer, you should concentrate on what you're good at first and then over time build up your other skills. Specialise rather than spread your services too thinly at the beginning, if you see what i mean. Especially if you're a very small company.

When I first started out i found it was sometimes easy to get lost in what other, far better web designers and companies were doing and lose focus on my own plans.

Not normally the cheesy type but this saying always got me back on track: "follow your dreams, not the competition."

[Acuity]

thanks for the read, some good tips in there

[wizely]

I commented on the blog!
It's a nice article and it's what a lot of folks skip-over (like going straight to Photoshop!) so it's good to remind them.

At this very moment I'm writing a 'questionnaire' to send to a client (although focused on understanding potential my client's target market) so that I can really plan their promotional copy. It sometimes comes in handy having been a Business Analyst for many years!