Ask HN: Is starting a web design and hosting business viable today?

I did a bit of this a few years back - the folks who did not already have their act together on the web were easy sales, but terrible clients. (Looking for cheapest deal, wouldn't give you time to talk through their needs, just wanted you to magically put something online and have it creates sales for them.)

Or, you had people who already had their web presence figured out, and did not need much. A little SEO cleanup, maybe some content updates - not enough to sustain a business.

I ended up actually finding good clients with decent income by sliding right back into dev consulting, custom coding business-specific CRUD/LOB apps. After about 6 months, though, it was just the same old corporate coding with added sales headaches... so I just got a job and called it good.

Targeting small businesses in general is bad idea. You need to spend too much time to discover their needs. You need to flip the script by creating a cookie cutter solution for a very specific type of customer. Ex: Fence installers, AC repair shops, etc. You bring a complete package to them: site with industry specific lead capture form, content, social media, ppc campaign. They'll be happy to hear what you have to say if you present yourself as being specialized in their exact business type. You'll create value quickly for both you and the customer.

One thing to consider: in the last year and half of the pandemic if a business hasn't figured out what their web presence is or how it helps them they probably went out of business. Those that have figured it out probably have a list of pain points.

For example, small mom-n-pop restaurants had to figure out online ordering and probably went with some delivery related service to start with, should be easy to research. Huge chain restaurants have apps - what would a mom-n-pop restaurant app do for customers? Notifications about weekend specials might be neat with pics of the dish (I always have trouble envisioning what a special might be if I haven't had it before, seeing food makes me hungry). A simple interface for them to push out multi-channel notifications might solve some pain.

Or there may be small, non-retail businesses that need more than just a web presence - like a small inventory system or things related to their workflow but isn't just a simple website.

"Also I've done some research, and found many landing page and website builder tools, some of them are even free."

Yes. THe question is: do you want to compete with Wix, Squarespace and WordPress ? When you say "custom web and mobile app", how do you know that Smaller businesses really need that consistently. Most small businesses are happy with a website with Wix/Squarespace and don't really need custom web apps.

So you need to go and do some customer discovery. The question is not whether you can start a web design company, the question is who will you target and what can you offer that is not already been offered as a commodity.

I started a company like this and ran it for 2y. I spent most of my time doing sales and client management, not building or designing. Read The E-Myth Revisited for an idea of the underlying issue of being a technician vs. business owner.

The market is highly competitive. Google "web design $YOURCITY" and you'll probably find dozens or hundreds of local companies offering the same services. The winners I've seen typically focus on a niche market, which helps them break out of geographic limitations and expand up-market to more lucrative projects.

My friend just recently started a marketing company that provides websites too. But according to him most of the small businesses don’t care about having their own website. They mostly want someone to handle their social media accounts or marketing. In fact, he pushes people to use website builders for their own sites since small businesses cannot really pay for totally custom website.

That might be an angle you can try.

> But according to him most of the small businesses don’t care about having their own website.

Yeah this is my concern. But I was not able to verify this yet, I'm not really sure how to do that kind of market research.

Thanks for the input!

Also an engineer at FAANG, just started working on a startup in this space. I’ve got an idea I think is valuable, I started out thinking like you, came to the conclusion that the UX is mostly solved, but using ML, there’s a lot of value to be built on top. If you’d be interested in working on something, let me know. I’m at about a light MVP. Shoot me an email at mike97345@protonmail.com

There are tons out there. I wouldn’t worry too much about the website builder tools, you need to get clients over the millions of other small design shops.

Figure out your business plan to do that but I don’t think it’s impossible as there’s plenty around. Maybe try to launch once you have a small amount of completed jobs for a portfolio site as well.

Definitely, unfortunately I don't have many contacts with small businesses, but have at least 1-2 that I can offer a new design, even for free to get something in our portfolio.

> Figure out your business plan to do that

Any suggestions how can I learn to do this? (books, courses, anything)

I knew a person who seemed to have some success here (but I cannot verify that). She literally visited small business offices, shops etc. to pitch in person. Over time her contacts built up and, like I said, she seemed to be doing well.

I doubt just having a web presence and having people come to you is an option.

Understand your customers and what they need their website to do for them.

Any suggestions how to do that? :)

Ask them.