We were lucky to catch up with Arsh Sanwarwala recently and have shared our conversation below.

Arsh, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been drawn to the world of business and entrepreneurship. The freedom to carve my own path and control my destiny was more exciting to me than anything else in life. However, starting my own UX/UI and web design agency was far from my initial plans.

My journey began at a startup called Influence Hunter as an Account Coordinator. My day-to-day tasks involved managing campaigns with influencers and handling operations – pretty far removed from anything design-related. Although my background was primarily in marketing and sales, I was looking to make a change and pivot my career into UX/UI design at that time.

One day, the team at Influence Hunter floated the idea of redesigning their website. They asked around if anyone knew good agencies to hire. It was like a light bulb turned on inside me. I saw a golden opportunity and knew I had to grab it. I made a bold move and told the co-founder that I would redesign the website for free if he allowed me to include it in my portfolio. Caught off guard yet intrigued by my proposition, the co-founder gave me the go-ahead. Just like that, I was off to the races.

I dove headfirst into the project, pouring extra hours on top of my regular duties. I was clocking in at least 70-80 hours a week, immersing myself in A/B testing, conversion-focused design principles, conducting focus group sessions, studying copywriting techniques, analyzing data through heatmaps, and more. The website redesign was very successful, with a 385% increase in conversions (booked calls), 255% increase in monthly website traffic, and a substantial impact on revenue.

The co-founder was so impressed that he started recommending me to several people within his network. Suddenly, I found myself juggling my day job with freelance projects. But the thing was, I loved every bit of it. The projects were challenging, the clients were great, and the work didn’t feel like work at all. As more satisfied clients led to referrals, I found myself in a snowballing situation with more work than I could handle on my own.

That’s when I decided to hire my first employee. Fast forward to today, I’m proud to have built a talented team of designers and developers, working with clients globally from Toronto to Los Angeles to Estonia.

I’ve always been grateful for my first client and for the co-founder trusting me. We’re still in touch to this day and continue helping each other grow our businesses.

Arsh, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

ThrillX is a top web design agency based in Toronto, Canada. Before starting my agency, I had been fortunate to design websites and mobile apps for some of the world’s top companies including Fortune 500/1000 brands.

However, I noticed that many digital solutions weren’t maximizing business goals, be it e-commerce purchases, product demo sign-ups, or brand awareness. Businesses seemed to be operating in the dark, making decisions based on guesswork rather than relying on data-driven strategies. Seeing this significant missed opportunity was frustrating.

ThrillX was established to address two major industry issues. The first is the “leaky bucket syndrome”. Investing in an unoptimized website is like pouring water into a leaky bucket. We’ve seen brands pour thousands into marketing budgets (or plan to) and chase more traffic, yet their websites are not properly optimized and they convert that traffic at low or average numbers. Second, customer acquisition costs have gone through the roof. Acquiring traffic is becoming more expensive and competitive every day which makes it crucial to optimize your website’s conversion funnel to maximize ROI on each visitor.

We help eCommerce and B2B brands turn their websites into revenue-generating machines. We do this through a data-centric approach and our rigorous discovery and strategy process. We immerse ourselves in your business and make sure we know it inside and out before we even touch a single pixel of code or design, We help write all of the main messaging on your website, ensuring it resonates with your target audience and motivates them to take action.

Clients are always astounded when I tell them they can watch recordings of users on their website, see exactly where they click/navigate, track how far they scroll, etc. It amazes me how many businesses are unaware of the gold mine that is user behavior data and miss out on massive growth opportunities. We employ various quantitative and qualitative research methods like heatmaps, A/B testing, user interviews, and surveys, combining them with human psychology and behavioral science to create conversion-focused websites.

My proudest moments are watching businesses transform. Like our e-commerce client who added nearly a million dollars to their bottom line through our Conversion Rate Optimization work in just a few months. Or Influence Hunter, who was able to finally feel confident investing in digital marketing after our website redesign, changing the course of their business and boosting their inbound leads substantially.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

We follow the same advice we preach to our clients – diversifying customer acquisition. We obtain leads through a variety of different methods including SEO, paid review sites, cold outreach, referrals, etc.

What’s more important is our strategy to actually convert leads into clients. We offer a free detailed website audit with no obligations or strings attached, providing actionable conversion-focused improvements that you can make straight away. We touch on everything from structure, layout, messaging, imagery, navigation, conversion-funnel optimization, call-to-action buttons, and even SEO strategies. These are items that are often overlooked and very few people in the industry talk about.

Our team has audited and analyzed hundreds of websites. What we found are several consistent and key patterns of top websites that outperform the competition by miles. We infuse these principles and fundamentals of a high-converting website into each of our projects combined with data analysis to drive our decisions.

Offering audits has been a complete game changer for our business. For our cold outreach campaigns, we send out personalized Loom video website audits. These are sent to people that we have never spoken with before. Out of the people that actually watch the video recordings, 80% of them get back to us asking to jump on a call to learn more. A large percentage of those turn into clients.

In case you are interested in learning more about our free website audits, please check out our page here – https://thrillxdesign.com/free-website-review/

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

The biggest misconception I had to unlearn was the idea that being an entrepreneur meant creating the next Google or Microsoft. I’ve got friends who are entrepreneurs too, all busy building digital products and software businesses. They sometimes look at my business and say it’s not scalable or it’s just a “lifestyle” business.

Here’s my take. Running a business, whatever it is, is tough as nails. Doesn’t matter if you’re selling hotdogs or hot tech. As entrepreneurs, we all face the same hurdles – attracting and keeping customers, figuring out marketing and sales, wrestling with cash flow, hiring the right team, etc. It’s all the same game. But I love what I do. We are continuously growing, both in our client base and our expertise, all while delivering top-notch services that our clients rave about. The rewards, both personal and financial, have been worth it for me.

The beauty of running ThrillX is the immediate, tangible impact we can make on our clients’ businesses. While my startup friends are busy pitching to investors and hunting for their first customers, we’re already deep in the game, helping real businesses both big and small transform their digital presence and thrive online. Our approach is focused on partnering with our clients and becoming an extension of their team.

Do I think I’ll be running ThrillX forever? Not necessarily. As an entrepreneur, I always have an eye on the horizon. I’ve got ambitions to scale, run, and sell multiple businesses someday.

I’ve learned that you don’t need to squeeze into a pre-defined ‘entrepreneur’ box. The real entrepreneurial journey is about creating value, making an impact, and enjoying what you do. And that’s exactly what we do every day – we create value for our clients, we make a real impact on their businesses, and we love every minute of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thrillxdesign.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thrillxdesign/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arsh-sanwarwala/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCElGI8MBLFcDtMbnyKkK3pA
• Other: Free Website Review – https://thrillxdesign.com/free-website-review/ Clutch Reviews- https://clutch.co/profile/thrillx Case Studies – https://thrillxdesign.com/work/