Whether you are a budding website designer yourself, or just like to find out more about what I do in a day then, read on. Take a peep through the window, and discover what a typical day is like for an experienced website designer.
The first thing that I want to say is every day is different!, even for an experienced website designer like myself!
When I first began creating websites, as a business back in 2015, I was working during the day and creating websites in the evening. When I left my job, most days were the same. I was in the house, looking after my children and naturally doing a mountain of household chores. In between all this, I was creating websites. However, it soon turned around. Before long I found less time to do chores because I was spending more time creating websites!
In addition to this I did a lot of networking. Fortunately, as I was a member of quite a few networking groups, I was the only website designer. As a result, I got lot’s of work with minimal effort. I just had to turn up and chat and the work came in.
As I became a more experienced website designer, I expanded my business. I started to offer support and training and this is when things became a bit more hectic. Indeed, as the support work increased I seemed to be working around the clock!
Nearly 10 years into my website business journey things are a lot different. Even as an experienced website designer it’s not always plain sailing. Things can get very crazy, very quickly, so let me tell you what life is like in a typical day at the office.
A Typical Office Day for an Experienced Website Designer.
When I wake up the first thing I tend to do (after getting dressed etc.) is to go for a walk. Because I spend most of my day sat behind a desk I try to get at least a 40 min walk in before I have breakfast. Then, it’s a quick clean of the house before I drive to the office.
Luckily the office for me is only a 5 minute drive away or a 30 minute walk, so sometimes if the weather is nice I walk there and home.
The first thing I do is set myself up for the day. This involves having a quick check of my emails and creating my to-do list for the day. However, this can change by the hour! I no longer work alone either. As I became an experienced website designer and my business grew I found I needed more ‘hands to the pump’! I now have a wonderful team who keep my to-do list updated and, as we all share it online, a lot of the support work get’s done by them too. As a result, I also keep an aditional list of things I’m working on upon my desk.
A great deal of my office time consist of Zoom calls, more than actually working on websites. These consist of client catch up calls (to go over where we are and make tweaks), training groups, one to one calls and, of course, the ever popular discovery call. I try to allocate my call days to a Tuesday and Thursday, but if I’ve got a few website clients currently live, it may be more. Calls are usually 10.30am until 3pm, with a break for lunch.
Inbetween calls I obviously work on websites or help out with any support work. Once my calls finish I usually have a further hour to keep on top of the websites we are creating. I usually have an hour first thing, before my calls start to do this too.
If it’s my turn to make food in the evenings (yes, even as an experienced website designer I still have to do my share of the cooking! 😂) then I’m usually home after my calls are finished to prepare the food. We cook everything from scratch and with 5 adult children living in the house, as well as myself and my husband, it requires a lot of meal planning! My husband loves to cook whilst I tend to use my Thermomix, which is a life saver! I just plan in the recipes for that week so I can just click the screen, pull out the ingredients needed and the machine does the rest of the work, beeping when I need to add an ingredient. Therefore, I can just carry on with client work, and a general clean up of the house, before everyone else comes home.
As a team, we can be working on anything from 1-8 website builds and numerous support hours for a variety of clients. We work from a list, in order of when they email with their requests, but we often get in urgent things such as sites going down, hacks etc. As the most experienced website designer in the team I usually deal with these.
A Typical Non-Office Day for an Experienced Website Designer
If I’m not in the office I’m either out with a client (although they also come to the office for meetings and training) or I’m at a networking event. As I mentioned earlier, after referrals, this is where I generate most of my new business leads.I also LOVE networking, I’m such a people person and love nothing more mixing socially with other business brains. I don’t go just to build my own business and make connections, but to learn more about what everyone else does. Consequently, I have plenty of people I can refer when my clients ask for help. Oh, and let’s be honest here, I especially love the events that involve food! 😂
If they are not all-day events, I’m usually in the office before or after. Naturally my time then is spent like the affore mentioned office day.
I try not to work evenings or weekends, but it depends on the workload. I am also trying to fit in more time to grow my own business. This involves planning blogs, social media, learning more and keeping up to date with new things in the website world (such as AI). Although I do find I get smaller tasks done quicker in the evening, whilst watching a re-run of one television show or another. I don’t tend to watch TV otherwise, preferring to go up to bed around half 9 to read for an hour.
Naturally, I also keep in touch with the team (especially Sara Roddis who is my right hand woman!). As a result we all know what we are doing, consequently getting things done to a high standard, as quickly as possible.
A Day In the life of an Experienced Website Designer
I love how every day is different. Ineed, on a lot of days, apart from a few support hours already booked in, we often have no idea where the day is going to take us or what work will get emailed through (which it does regularly every day) – great for my ADHD brain!
Before having a team, even a year ago, the majority of my day would be spent answering emails and doing support. I was doing the website creation in the evenings to try and keep on top of things. With regular breakdowns and exhaustion!
But recently, I went on my first holiday for a whole week. I didn’t have to check in with work at all, everything carried on as normal, with no massive pile of work to come back to.
It was amazing!
For some reason, as humans, we are curious about others and how their life works. So, if you are interested and want to know more about myself and the team’s typical sign up to my Weekly Website Wisdom email newsletter. You’ll also recieve website tutorial tips and all the latest website news!