Steven Snell is a web designer and blogger from New Jersey. He designs and blogs at Vandelay Design and he also runs another design blog, DesignM.ag. Steven has also done a lot of freelance writing for a number of blogs including Smashing Magazine, PSDTUTS, Web Designer Depot, Freelance Switch, Six Revisions, Noupe and others.

Steven was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule to talk with us about some of the pros and cons of focusing your efforts on a specific market.

You seem to have a heavy focus on one particular market – Church Websites. What made you decide to go in this direction?

Well, I should first point out that the percentage of clients that I have had in the last year or two that are churches is not as high as you might anticipate from the portfolio. I would say that I have an emphasis on design for churches, but I certainly don’t focus exclusively on churches. There are projects for other types of clients that I chose not to include in the portfolio for one reason or another, or that I wasn’t able to include in the portfolio. That being said, I do enjoy designing church websites because I’ve been in the church my whole life and I have an interest in working to help churches in this way. Although many churches have really stepped up the quality of their sites in recent years, the vast majority of churches are still way behind the times, if they even have a website at all.

Have you found that targeting one specific market has really allowed you to focus in on it and bring in more work?

Yes, I have found that having a portfolio that showcases sites of a specific kind is a good way to attract more potential clients. When people visit a portfolio site and they see several examples that they can relate to, I think it gives them extra encouragement to fill out a contact form and get more information. Aside from the portfolio I haven’t really done anything to target churches. I have several ideas that I had considered at one point, but the last year I’ve seen such a high percentage of churches that have extremely limited budgets to work with. The typical person that is in charge of getting a website for their church has very little knowledge of anything technical, they have a ton of features that they want to include, and they need to get it at a very low price. With the current economic situation I get a lot of inquiries from churches, but most of them are hesitant to take any action and spend the money. For that reason I haven’t taken other steps to really target churches and get more leads of this kind, although it’s very possible that I will sometime in the future.

I think regardless of what type of client you are targeting, you can always get more inquiries and more work by showing those clients that you are focused on them specifically. People like to know that they are working with a designer who understands their situation and their industry. Of course, there is a lot more to getting business than just picking a target market.

Have you found that by placing an emphasis on one market allows for greater word of mouth within that market?

One of the reasons I started to focus on churches was because I had a few clients that were churches that found me through word of mouth from family, friends and clients. So in some ways the word of mouth came first and the emphasis second. In my situation I know a lot of people that are involved with their churches, so it just kind of happened. But to answer your question, yes I do think there would be some word of mouth benefits for designers who are targeting a speciifc type of client. In my opinion (and from my experience) it is probably not as significant as the impact on search traffic and on getting visitors to your portfolio to contact you. Word of mouth advertising is great, but you can get benefits from that whether you specialize or not.

Is there any fear that by targeting one market may hinder business from people in other industries?

Yes, that is one thing that I considered before updating my portfolio site a while ago to include more of an emphasis on churches. I’m sure that it does discourage some other people from contacting me, but that is just one factor that needs to be considered. I still get plenty of inquiries from others than I’m not really worried about missising out on a few opportunities. Getting quantity of leads through my website is not really important to me because if they are not quality leads and the never become clients it just takes more of my time to respond to them and work to find the ones that will be clients. For designers who are thinking about taking a similar approach as me, I do think this is something that should be considered.

Are there any other Pro’s or Con’s you would like to share with other designers?

One con is that you can get labeled as being only able to do one thing. Another is that depending on what you are specializing in, you may be placing all of your eggs in one basket. For example, if you specialize in working with a particular content management system or shopping cart and it becomes obsolete, your services will also become obsolete. The pros are that you get to know something very well and you become an expert in a particular area, and clients like to work with people that they feel are experts. Also, if you’re specializing in something that you enjoy, you may be more happy than you would working for a wider variety of clients. A big pro, in my opinion, is that it’s easier to market your services if you have a particular target market in mind. There are so many designers out there, but specializing can give you a way to stand out and to know who you can target for your services.

Which you enjoy more – Blogging or Designing?

It depends on the day. I like blogging because I get to do a lot of different things like writing content, networking with other bloggers, managing the blog, designing themes when needed, and in the early days I did more marketing than I do now. There are some days though when I wish I didn’t have to constantly come up with new posts, but that is pretty rare. I like to design when I am in a creative mood, but when I’m not in that mindset it can feel forced. So I really like being able to do both because I can usually work on projects based on what I feel I will be most productive with at specific times.

What kind of an impact has blogging had on your design career?

Blogging has had a bigger impact on my career than anything else. I didn’t know anything about blogging when I started, but I learned as I went and things have worked out pretty well. My website is the biggest source of leads for my design services, and that is all due to the blog. Not to mention that the blog also brings in some ad revenue that allows me to keep dedicating time to it