Escort Website Design & Marketing Services Blog

Back in 2004 we expanded our adult website design company, Blue Design Studios to start offering sites specifically to escorts. Initially we just brought the same model of custom website designs that suited our adult site clients but today Escort Design is 100% template-based. The shift has been a gradual one and we’ve learned tons along the way. So why’d we make the shift?

Custom designs are expensive!

Our custom designs could take weeks to create and involved a designer, a project manager and a programmer to complete. Hiring staff that can do all of these things at a quality we were happy with was certainly not cheap. Of course in order to pay all these people and have anything left over it meant we needed to pass these costs onto our customers. Although we did make sales at that $1200-$2400 price range, we knew that these prices were a significant cost to independents and many new escort agencies.

Even if the price was within reach, we doubted whether our clients were seeing a true return on their investment. Large adult affiliate programs have websites that see millions of visits per month and each visitor has the potential to signup and spend $20+ per month, if they can increase their conversion rate then there is literally tens of thousands of dollars a month to be gained from a stunning design. Escorts on the other hand have sites that generally see significantly less traffic so to make the $2000 profit to pay for a custom design was not so easy to come by.

Restricted client numbers

Although we had plenty of resources available through Blue Design Studios, because each project benefits only one client there is a limit to how many clients you can take on. We were happy satisfying our small client base but we knew the quality of our designs would be of interest to so many more escorts and agency owners. Now, instead of a new design benefiting 1 client it benefits 100s! This means we can take the same approach to detail with our templates as we did with our custom designs.

Content Management System difficulties

Our custom designs looked fantastic but the difficulty in creating an easy-to-use content management system for each was near-impossible. This was not a problem with the adult design business because most of the clients ran their own content management systems but the majority of our escort clients had no such expertise. With custom designs you’d basically need a custom CMS to match if you wanted it to be easy to use. The costs involved with creating the software and providing support for clients was not something we wanted to expose ourselves too.

We learned what was important…

The greatest benefit to offering custom designs to escort clients initially was that we learned what pages were important to an escort business. Today the pages we offer include the disclaimer/warning, home, about, gallery, model profile (agencies), bookings and links pages. We knew these were the most important because they had been constantly asked for by our custom design clients.

…and created the Content Management System around that

Having fixed agency and independent website offerings means that we are able to offer stunning designs that don’t look like templates. An example of this freedom is shown below, we know the exact width that the footer menu will take up so we are able to space it perfectly and add a design feature in the middle. A CMS that allowed for adding 15 pages to the menu wouldn’t be able to create such a look because you would need to leave space “just in case” someone wanted a very long footer menu.

Instead of designing with “just in case” in mind, we take the initiative and design what we know works well – after all, if you are buying a site from us, aren’t you paying for our design expertise?

Recently apple announced they have sold three million iPads in 80 days, this is a revolution in computing. One of the most profound changes the iPad brings is the way people consume the internet. Not only can you now comfortably lie in bed or on the couch to browse the web but the 3G version allows you to conveniently browse the web practically anywhere (try comfortably working from your laptop the next time you’re in a taxi). I believe the number of people browsing the internet from tablet computers in the near future is only going to increase as the idea catches on.

Seeing as escort-related searches are massive, we can only assume that as time goes on people are going to be looking for escorts using their iPad. Thankfully the iPad browser is awesome so if your site looks good on a normal computer it’ll most likely be fine on the iPad.

Here’s a screenshot from one of our client websites, all of our escort template designs are iPad compliant and will show up much the same as on any other computer:

Time to dispel that fearful voice in your head saying you can’t do it, let me help you…

“I don’t know anything about the internet, I could never manage my own website”

Really? So how did you find this article? If you know how to search the internet and use email then you know enough to manage your own website. Gone are the days when you had to be a geek locked in your mum’s basement to create and manage your own website. Products like our new escort website manager take the pain out of managing your website.

Basically if you wanted to update your site in years gone by it would look something like this:

Yeah, looks like fun doesn’t it?! Thankfully companies like us hide all of this code behind beautiful, easy-to-use user interfaces. This means that your website still looks amazing and gets love from google but now to manage and update it you see something like this:

Makes managing your website look a bit easier? I hope so, it took us ages to make…

About a week ago I was asked a simple but excellent question by a customer:

“Why do you charge a monthly price for your websites [rather than an up-front cost]?”

Here’s the response I gave:

We used to sell our template sites for $500-$1200 up front before switching to the pay-as-you-go monthly fee. For years the old model was mildly successful but we came to the realization that the industry we operate in unfortunately has a lot of dodgy characters, this made asking you to trust us and lay out a large sum of money up front troublesome. To be honest I think it was just the quality of our designs that enticed anyone to order with the old model, sending a faceless company $1000 was a huge leap of faith.

Trust and industry-related issues aside I think the number of small businesses that can afford to drop $1000 on a website for no guarantee of return is significantly less than those able to spend $33 or $66. Even if they could afford it, was it really the best way they could spend that sum of money? The old pricing model meant that you had to spend time to make a decent return from your website whereas now – especially with the free trial – you are profiting from their sites much quicker.

The switch has really helped to change the dynamics of our relationship with clients. We now have a financial (in addition to the moral) incentive to give you the greatest chance of success. Previously we received 100% of our payment once the design was finished but now we don’t see a cent unless you are completely satisfied with the product month to month. This means that our success relies on your success. Not only this, we had created what we believed to be the best combination of high quality escort templates and a simple-to-use website manager – to have worked so hard and only see a small number of people enjoy it was heart breaking.

So far the switch we’ve made from the old up front pricing that favored us, to the client-focused approach of free trials and low monthly fee have seen us grow our user base by an amount we never thought possible. From now on the first questions we’ll be asking before making updates to our product or pricing is ‘are we focusing on what’s best for us in the short term? Or what’s best for clients in the long term?’ It’s easy to forget that without clients you don’t have a business!

More important than any financial success is hearing words like these without even asking for testimonials:

“I’m really pleased with how the system works and fully intend to keep my business with you once the trial period is over. You’ve been very helpful all round and I’ve recommended you to other ladies in the business.” – Alex

“Just wanted to thank you for making your service SO accessible and simple to use for the novice user! I can’t thank you enough, I look forward to many years of working with you, and will DEFINITELY be recommending your service to all my friends!” – Chrissy

“My girlfriend runs an agency in the New York area. She says your company is one of a kind and worth every penny. I would have to agree.” – Diamonds & Pearls Agency

For us this is the real measure of how successful the new pricing has been, the fact that clients appreciate that we are focusing our product on what’s best for them – because by definition it’s what’s also best for us!

Next time you’re brain-storming ways to make more money for your business, why not try focusing on what will benefit your clients and giving gifts. You might just get pleasantly surprised…

The other day I wrote about why you need a links page on your escort site, today I’ll be talking about how to add text links, banners and link codes to your website.

These are the links I’ll be using as examples:

1) Text link

the text “Escort Design”

will link to http://escortdesign.com

Escort Design

2) Banner link

this image:

will link to http://escortdesign.com

3) Link code

this code:

will create this link: