We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful KP. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with KP below.

KP, appreciate you joining us today. Taking care of customers isn’t just good business – it is often one of the main reasons folks went into business in the first place. So, we’d love to get a conversation going around how to best help clients feel appreciated – maybe you can share something you’ve done or seen someone do that’s been really effective at helping a customer feel valued?

At Inkpot Creative, one thing that we absolutely value the most is the customer experience. We always want a client to know how well appreciated they are from the second they reach out.

We have a really set-in-stone process that we use for each of our project types, and of course, each one also includes sending a client appreciation gift right after a client signs their contract to work with us.

Each box consists of an on-brand rainbow-colored custom box, usually fun apparel of some sort from another LGBTQIA+-owned business (since Inkpot Creative is also an LGBTQIA+-owned business), custom stickers, other small trinkets, and a hand-written note that can double as wall art by a client’s desk.

Our clients are always so elated when they receive the unexpected gift on their porch because it stands out amongst other packages! It’s almost like getting a rainbow surprise right at their doorstep and immediately gets them even more excited for the project starting. It also truly lets them know that yes, we are a small business, and we are so incredibly grateful that they’ve chosen us out of the sea of other great web designers to design the website of their dreams.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I’m KP (she/her/hers) and I’m the founder and web designer behind Inkpot Creative, a web design studio that brings together strategic user experience with beautifully clever design.

The business was founded in summer 2020, after I graduated with my B.A. from Simmons University in Boston. I spent a month or two after graduating trying to apply to about 150+ different jobs and only got a handful of interviews. Since it was the beginning of the pandemic, it was really hard to get a job anywhere.

After some searching, I ended up landing an awesome internship with an instructional design agency and quickly realized that I could run my own business. Before long, Inkpot Creative came to be, and I’ve been running it ever since! I’ve also been lucky enough to add my girlfriend to the business as a contractor finally. She is now the project manager and developer for our clients!

We specialize in website design on the Showit platform as we’ve found it’s best for creative entrepreneurs, who we normally work with. We strive for our clients to get a site that feels like home while also calling in their ideal clients. In addition, we are starting to offer design education for aspiring web designers and Showit website templates for newer entrepreneurs who want to DIY their site.

Most of our clients come to us with websites that they DIYed a few years ago that they have outgrown. Sometimes the design is no longer in line with their style or they’ve truly just realized their not a good match for their current platform. (A lot of our clients are coming from Squarespace or WordPress and aren’t happy that they can’t fully customize things easily.) So, we move them over to Showit, which is a lot more intuitive to design on, and really ramp up their website with visual interest to keep people scrolling. We aim to have the websites feel unexpected while still being strategic.

One of my favorite analogies is travel, since that’s something I love most. So, when you’re traveling to a new place for the first time, you’re in awe of almost everything you see because it’s unexpected and different. My goal is to make my clients’ website have that same exact feeling.

What sets Inkpot Creative apart from other web design studios is a few things. First of all, I have a background in layout and print design and had interned and worked at a few different publishing houses before starting my own studio. So, clients get to rest assured that their layout flows nicely and makes sense while staying cohesive. We also take a unique approach to our websites because we do extensive research to make sure they’re different and interesting. We add fun hover effects (like patterns hiding behind images that you can click on), pops of color to draw a user’s eye, and movement through video and GIFs in a way that’s not overwhelming.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Historically speaking, the majority of my clients have initially found me through social media. What’s helped me to foster an audience on social media is being really clear on my ideal client. I prefer to work with clients who are making a difference in their industry; they’re changemakers. I want to work with clients who don’t just ask for pronouns on their contact form but actually use them, those who really want to stand out and stop blending in (so many sites look EXACTLY the same nowadays), and who are also preferably in a creative space, like photographers, copywriters, and coaches.

My best advice is to get really clear on that ideal client for your business. Think about your dream client’s likes, dislikes, where they shop, what they like to do in their free time. From there, get clear on where they might be. For instance, I tend to work with a lot of Gen-Z and Millennial clients. I’m not necessarily going to find them on LinkedIn, so instead, my focus is on Instagram and TikTok. Post where your people are, and use your messaging to speak directly to them.

Also, don’t be scared to show your face! I didn’t show my face on my Instagram stories even for the first few months of my business, and once I finally started doing it, I made so many more connections.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Truthfully, when it comes to my website design, the most rewarding aspect is getting messages from clients after seeing just the home page saying that their jaws dropped because it was everything they wanted but couldn’t put into words. Luckily, we are able to do this with our clients because of the strategy we put behind our designs, meaning we have a clear starting point when we start to mock up the website!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://inkpotcreative.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/inkpotcreative
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/inkpotcreative
• Other: https://tiktok.com/@inkpotcreative

Image Credits
All brand photos were taken by the AMAZING Jas (they/she) from Jas K Productions (https://www.jaskproductions.com/).