30 Services to Upsell as a Web Designer

Web Designers often need to upsell some further services to make a project worthwhile due to the fierce amount of competition we face as everyone and their dog is now apparently a web designer.

We've put together 30 different upsells for you to sell to your clients to help raise your game (and hopefully profits)!

1. Web Hosting

By far, the most popular additional upsell for web designers would be the web hosting. Usually web designers offer shared hosting packages as these types of web hosting usually comes with some form of cPanel for users to login and manage their website with. However, better quality servers such as Virtual Private Servers (VPS) or even dedicated servers are also available for the higher end clients that expect higher performance from their website.

2. Domain Names

Selling the domain names with a marginal service charge on top is always a viable upsell for web designers. However we always try to avoid handling the domain name for clients for a number of reasons:

• Confusion over who owns the domain name
• If clients ever want to move away/let the domain expire they can do on their own accord
• If I (myself) pass away - dreary I know but still a real possibility!
  I wouldn't want to hinder any of my client's businesses as there domain could expire and potentially be bought by a competitor.

3. Logo Design

Getting a logo is always a popular up-sell for any web-designer as a logo design is an initial start for the identity and branding of the company.

4. Photography

Regardless of whether you supply commercial photography photography or not, photos of the client and their company always put the website one step ahead of their competition. Even if you do not provide this type of service, it can always be outsourced by contacting a local photographer, getting prices and adding your margin on top.

5. Email Addresses

We see far too many companies still using a Yahoo or Gmail account to run their company and emails from. Offer your web design clients a professional domain name email address(es) that look miles smarter.

[email protected]

Based on your client's needs, their emails may need to integrate with Gmail or Outlook 365 which you can become a reseller of. Or maybe they could suffice with a standard cPanel email address. Giving the client options makes you look more professional and gives them the option to always upgrade at a later time.

6. Written Creation

Creating content for a website would primarily consist of written content; explaining about the client's product or services they have to offer. Creating written content is often one of the most time-consuming tasks as you may have to undertake a lot of time researching around in regards to:

• What their services/products are
• Writing specifically for their target audience
• The features and benefits of their product/services
• Content being created specifically targeting keyword(s)

7. Social Media Management

If the client doesn't have any social media platforms, a social media management plan would often start by creating these accounts of popular platforms including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The client may also not have the time or expertise to create a fruitful and engaging social media campaign. Creating the content and scheduling these posts throughout each day at specific times could see high client rentention rates/sales boosts and be used as other means of communication between the customer and the company.

8. Landing Pages

Although landing pages may have been initially part of the web design; this isn't often the case. Landing pages are specifically created to maximise on conversions and are highly sought after when a customer wants to utilise Adwords and other PPC avenues.

9. Search Engine Optimisation

Setting up a search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign for clients is often a popular one for the primary reason that it can bring customers a lot of business if they're website ranks for popular key terms in the SERPs. Broken down, these SEO campaigns entail a lot but to give a scarce overview here's a short list:

• Keyword Research
• Conversion Tracking & Performance
• Content Marketing Strategy
• On-Page SEO
• Off-Page SEO
• Monthly Reporting

10. Analytics

Setting up analytics for your customers to track their websites performance is highly recommended. Popular analytical software such as Google Analytics requires minimal setup but with huge insights. Tracking what pages are being viewed and through what channels provides the client with a great overall view of their audience and can influence further decisions for their marketing strategy.

11. Call Tracking Solutions

Call tracking works by having further mobile numbers that then route through to another number. These types of solutions work for various scenarios including:

• Customers don't want to provide their mobile/private numbers online
• Having dedicated lines for different members of staff i.e. support or renewals/sales
• Customers have setup a new marketing channel i.e. first TV advertisement and want to track/attribute how many calls they get to this marketing campaign to judge effectively whether it was effective or not

12. Website Maintenance

Website maintenance is an extremely broad expression but we'll try to cover the essentials. These maintenance upsells could also be split into further types of packages ranging from basic right through to advanced including the following:

• Plugin updates
• Weekly/Monthly Backups
• Browser Testing
• 24/7 Website Monitoring
• Performance Reporting
• Minor updates/tweaks
• New pages being added
• Phone/Email Support
• Comment Moderating
• Database Optimisation

13. Setup of Google My Business / Bing Places

Getting your business on Google My Business and Bing Places will mostly only apply to SABs - Service Area Businesses; more specifically local businesses offering services around their local area. However many companies still aren't aware that this is another avenue to advertise your website which can be setup completely free.

14. Email Signature

Email signatures are a great way to neatly show your branding in a subtle way but also to protect you in terms of legal advice. Email signatures help you identify the person you're talking to alongside the title they hold at the company. Templates can be taken from online or you could custom design your client's own.

15. Content Delivery Network (CDN)

CDN's are used to improve the loading times for all users visiting your web-pages. These CDN's work by storing your website throughout different locations in the world. For example, your CDN servers could be spread equally through Europe, America, Asia and Oceania. As a result, if a user from London visited your website, the CDN would be served from the closest server (Europe), whereas someone connecting from Australia would be connecting with the Oceania CDN server.

CDN's offer excellent page speed results with both free and premium versions being available. These solutions include CloudFlare, BunnyCDN and MaxCDN.

16. HTTPS / (SSL)

At Rushax, we always include HTTPS or SSL inside our pricing when starting a brand new web design project. However we've added it inside this list as there are different versions of HTTPS / SSL certificates that you may not have been aware of.

17. E-Commerce

Allowing the customers to pay online for items improves your profitability due to you not having to pay salaries for sales team.

18. Booking Facilities

More often than not, client's want customers to be able to book using their website. This may be for a restaurant wanting to book appointments or simply a discussion session for the client to meet their prospect about their services. Integrating these services into their daily calendar (iCal or Outlook) could see this upsell go for a little more too.

19. HR Software

Becoming a referral through affiliate programs with HR software could bring you a nice little extra earner when selling a website as it's often the case that they're looking to revise other software/procedures. You could even create your own HR software and try to upsell them onto your own platform for a monthly retainer fee.

20. Videos

Creating extremely quality video content may need a professional photographer/videographer to capture the content but there are also gigs on places such as Fiverr that will create nicely animated videos using templates that may be on the more cost-effective scale for you and your client.

21. Customer Relationship Manager

For medium-large scaled businesses, customer relationship managers (CRMs) could be a great upsell if they don't already have one. Depending on their services, you could recommend a CRM based on their needs. To list a few:

• HubSpot
• Zoho
• Salesforce
• Insightly

If your customer has web forms, you could also upsell integrating these into the CRM platform to be handled directly by their Sales team without trawling through emails and adding the leads themselves.

22. Adwords / PPC

A biggun', is the Adwords and Pay Per Click area. Customers often want calls instantly from their website without setting up an SEO campaign. By carrying out a PPC campaign on Google Adwords and Bing, customers can pay for leads to come in instantly.

23. Graphics, Animations, Banners and Advertisements

Keeping visitors engagement high with each page they view can be aided by visually appealing graphics. If you offer graphic design services as well, it may be worth transforming some of the written content into digital art form. These can increase the likelihood of users converting and staying on the page longer.

24. Email Marketing Campaigns

If your customer wants to utilise their existing contacts, email marketing could be a great upsell for re-targeting purposes. There are many different email marketing platforms depending on your client's needs but here's a few:

• MailChimp
• MailerLite
• SendGrid
• Pardot

25. Reputation Management

We've all read online reviews and hopefully you know it can have a huge impact of whether you decide to purchase or hold off. Reputation management services include:

• Recovering from negative reviews online
• Improving their online reputation

Reputation management helps your client's companies trust and credibility and can make a huge difference.

26. Cyber Security

Although many platforms have a lot of cyber security prevention systems pre-built in, new exploitation are coming out every month. All causing their website to be penetrable and potentially destroying their business overnight if a hacker finds his way in. Getting a cyber security team to carry out a penetration test will expose all the exposed vulnerabilities of the website. Upon fixing these vulnerabilities will lock down their site evermore protecting their business and livelihood.

27. Spam Prevention

Spam is annoying right? Your client's (if they haven't already) will think so too. Whether spam comes through directly to your inbox or from a contact form on your website, there are software out there to prevent spam as much as possible such as Google's free Recaptcha or premium subscription models such as Sucuri or CleanTalk.

28. Business Cards

As you're building their new website, this may be the time that companies want to re-brand their existing business cards (if they have any). As you've hopefully compiled a colour pallet specifically for their brand, designing a business card shouldn't be too difficult as another premium upsell.

29. Wireframing

Before starting a web design, you always have the option of implementing a wire framing strategy as part of the initial designing phase. These wireframes map out how each page/page template would look on desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

30. Press Release

After you've created your client's masterpiece website, they'll most likely want to tell every friend, accomplish and family member about it. Mention to them that press releases are available to get the word out in public/online newspapers about their newly re-designed website.

31. Live Chat Installation

There are a variety of different live chat applications that can be installed for free including Tidio and Tawk.to, but other premium services

Have any other ideas about what other upsells other web designers can offer to their clients? Let us know in the comments section below.