26 Years a Web Designer, and I Only Just Built My Own Website

15 Sept

Why Shore Design Dorset ran on word of mouth for over a decade, and what changed when that finally wasn't enough.

If you're a small business owner who's built a following on Facebook or Instagram but never quite got round to a website, this post is for you, because I was exactly the same, and I'm a web designer.

A Web Designer Without a Website

I built my first website in 1998, in Dreamweaver, for my dad's business. In 2012, I built one for Yarrells School, where I worked part-time, this time in WordPress. Somewhere around then, what would eventually become Shore Design Dorset started, more as a hobby than a business, helping friends out here and there with a logo, a poster, a bit of web work.

It grew slowly into an actual business. But for years, one thing stayed the same: I never built a website for it. I told myself the money I saved not having one, I could pass on as a discount to my own clients instead. It felt like a sensible trade-off at the time.

Word of Mouth Worked, Until It Didn't

All my work came from word of mouth. People tagging me in posts. Friends recommending me to friends. For a part-time, hobby-grown business, that was more than enough.

But I started noticing a pattern. People would see my work in a Facebook post, love it, sometimes even message me directly, and then nothing. No follow-up. No booking. The interest was there, but it had nowhere to go once the initial message faded.

Going Full-Time Changed the Maths

Earlier this year, I made the decision to run Shore Design Dorset full-time rather than alongside other work. That decision made one thing obvious: word of mouth alone wasn't going to be enough to sustain a full-time business, however well it had served me as a side project.

So, after 26 years of building websites for other people, I finally built one for myself.

What Changed

The difference wasn't subtle. Suddenly I looked like an established business rather than "just someone on Facebook." People could see a proper portfolio, check I was legitimate, and find me on Google when they searched for a web designer, rather than relying on stumbling across a post in their feed at the right moment.

That's when enquiries started turning into bookings, not just likes and comments.

357 people found my business through Google Search and Maps in the last 6 months, searching for a service, not people who already knew my name.

283 website visits since building my site in July, proof that once people hear about me, whether through Facebook, word of mouth, or Google, they now have somewhere real to go and check me out.

What This Means If You're in the Same Boat

If you're getting attention on social media but not quite getting the follow-through, a website doesn't replace what you're already doing on Facebook and Instagram. It just gives people somewhere to land when they're ready to say yes, a place that works for you around the clock, shows up in searches you'll never see happen, and turns a passing "I love this" into an actual enquiry.

I understand the hesitation firsthand, because I held off longer than most people in my line of work probably would have. But once I finally did it, it paid for the years I put it off.