As a Showit website designer, you know how rewarding yet time-consuming your work can be. Juggling multiple client projects, meeting deadlines, and operating in your flow design state can feel overwhelming. What if there was a way to cut your workload in half without hiring a white label designer? After working behind-the-scenes, streamlining and simplifying dozens of online businesses, I’ve learned how to run a lean, efficient and profitable business. In this guide, I’ll walk you through a practical approach to streamlining your workflow, so you can focus more on what you love – designing!

Step 1: Assess Your Time

The first step in cutting your workload is to understand where your time goes. Use a time-tracking tool, like Toggl (it’s free!), to track how long it takes to design client websites and identify where you spend your time each day. This might seem like an unnecessary task, but after a week of tracking, you will gain invaluable insights into your workflow. I tracked every single second of my client work for years that it became second nature. I was able to pin point what tasks I spent the most time on and get a birds eye view of any bottlenecks that were slowing me down.

ACTION ITEMS:

• Set Up Toggl: Create projects and tasks that align with your daily activities.
• Track Everything: Log every minute you spend on design, meetings, emails, revisions, social media and other tasks.
• Review the Data: At the end of the week, analyze the data to identify patterns and bottlenecks

Why This Matters

Understanding how you spend your time is crucial for identifying inefficiencies. You’ll be able to pinpoint exactly where your time is going and make informed decisions about how to improve your workflow.

Step 2: Categorize Your Tasks

Once you have a clear picture of how you spend your time, categorize your tasks into three groups: Do, Delegate, Delete.

• Do: These are tasks that require your unique skill set and creativity, such as designing websites and creating custom graphics.
• Delegate: Tasks that can be outsourced or handed off to a team member, like inbox management, social media scheduling, or administrative work.
• Delete: Identify tasks that don’t add value to your projects or can be eliminated altogether. Maybe offering 2 rounds of revisions to your custom website projects is slowing your design process down by 3 days – and the revisions your clients come back with at this stage are always so small and nit picky. You could cut that out, offer 1 round of revisions and cut your design process down by a few days.

Example

• Do: Custom design work, client meetings, strategy sessions.
• Delegate: Inbox management, accounting, social media management.
• Delete: Unnecessary meetings (do you *really* need to offer sales calls?), redundant revisions

Step 3: Streamline and Simplify

With your tasks categorized, the next step is to streamline your “Do” tasks. Ask yourself:

• Is this task repeatable? Are you doing this task over and over for your clients?
• Can I simplify it? Are there any steps you can cut out to make this more efficient?
• Is there a tool or resource that can automate this? Can you automate your monthly invoicing instead of manually sending PayPal invoices each month?

The Designer’s Toolkit: Your Secret Weapon

One of the most time consuming tasks of a Showit website designer is—drumroll please—designing! You love designing and don’t want to outsource it by hiring a white label designer, but starting every project from scratch is getting overwhelming and you’re on the edge of burnout. This is where The Designer’s Toolkit comes in. This toolkit includes dozens of pre-built, commercial-use Showit canvases that are already mobile-optimized for you. You can plug and play sections for each part of your client’s website and completely customize it to match their brand. You’ll never state at a blank Showit page again.

Benefits of The Designer’s Toolkit

• Cut Your Workload in Half: Jumpstart your design process with pre-built canvases. Just search through the canvases to plug and play with every section of your client’s website. When you’re in a creative rut and think of where to start, or know exactly what you want and don’t want to design from scratch, The Designer’s Toolkit has you covered.
• Quality: Each canvas is professionally designed and mobile-optimized. You’ll love clicking over to the mobile view after customizing the canvas and realizing there’s minimal, if any, changes you need to make to the mobile layout.
• Flexibility: Easily customize canvases to fit your clients’ needs. Just because they are pre-built doesn’t mean they’ll look cookie cutter. Customize each Showit canvas with your client’s brand colors, fonts, stock photos, move items around and you’ll be left with a strategically built website with a custom feel.

Streamline Your Workflow Today

By assessing your time, categorizing your tasks, and streamlining your workflow with tools like The Designer’s Toolkit, you can cut your workload in half and focus on the tasks you love doing. Start today by tracking your time with Toggl, and see how quickly you can streamline and simplify your workflow.

View The Designer’s Toolkit

Ready to revolutionize your design process? Explore our library of pre-built Showit canvases and see how The Designer’s Toolkit can help save you hours on every project.