5,000 clients and counting: WordPress web designer Ben Temple reveals his secrets to success

When Ben Temple was deciding on a career after university, he hadn’t heard of WordPress.

Yet, today, he runs a successful WordPress web design business. His client count has tipped over the 5,000 mark and he has built sites for mega brands like The AA, the NHS and Universal Music Group.

His journey to where he is today started with a helping hand from what some might call fate.

“After university I moved around a bit,” Ben (pictured above) told tsoHost. “I went traveling. I worked in the buying department of Toys R Us. Then I found myself working for a marketing company for a couple of years.

“A lot of their clients started to want WordPress websites. I had used things like Dreamweaver in the past, so I did a lot of learning and started building the sites for them.”

As the months went on, it wasn’t just expertise that Ben developed, but a passion for WordPress itself.

“I quickly started to realise that WordPress was becoming the most popular platform out there,” Ben said. “I thought it was a really good tool for businesses. I found an affinity for the software.”

After a few years at the marketing company, Ben felt ready to branch out with a company of his own.

“One day, I just knew that it was meant to be that I would start my own company,” he remembers.

More than 10 years on from that epiphany, Ben has developed a unique approach to his web design business.

For many clients, he doesn’t just take a design brief and go away to work on it independently before returning the results for sign off.

Instead, he regularly builds sites alongside the clients, involving them in every design decision in real time and training them up on how to use their website as they go along.

“What my clients like the most about what I do is that I mostly build websites sitting alongside them, either physically sat next to them, or on Zoom,” Ben explains. “I take them through every stage of the build, allow them to choose the design as it goes along. Then I give them the keys to the site.”

Ben develops sites from scratch and also works to enhance existing sites for clients.

“I like ripping up websites and making them more accessible and easier to use. I really enjoy giving a website a revamp and showing it a little bit of care and attention,” he told us.

[Pictured above: a screenshot from Ben's own website]

While Ben has worked with mega brands, as mentioned above, he also enjoys working with small businesses.

“Every client is different,” Ben said. “So every session is different. The possibilities for websites is almost endless.

“You can turn a basic website into everything from an ecommerce site to a memberships site to an e-learning platform. I like the challenge of doing it differently each time.”

In his decade of business, Ben has faced his fair share of challenges.

“One client gave me a week to build a very large website,” Ben reveals. “It was something that would usually take me four to six weeks to do. I managed to do it in a week. That was one of the biggest challenges I’ve taken on.

“I remember another client telling me that they wanted their website to feel like home, but they didn’t really give me any more information than that.”

For the past 10 years, tsoHost has been a reliable partner to Ben.

“I’ve been using tsoHost for 10 years now,” he reveals. “Hosting, SSL certificates and domains are the main three products that I have.

“When I first started building WordPress sites, I used a hosting company that I found out was just one guy who was based in London, and he would sometimes take four days to get back to my support tickets.

“So, I went online to research good hosting companies and tsoHost was in the top few.

“I’m a big fan of the support at tsoHost. Being able to contact the guys pretty much 24 hours a day is great. If you’re up later at night, there will usually be someone on the support chat who can help.”

As he moves into his second decade of business, Ben hopes to develop leaner ways of working.

“When you run your own business, you have to wear different hats. You have to be the salesman, the accountant, the ticket support person. You’re doing all the jobs, all at once. So, I’d like to develop more automated processes in the future.”

To find out more about Ben’s WordPress web design services and training, visit his website WordPress No Stress.

To discover the webhosting, affordable domains and SSL certificates that Ben relies on to run his business, visit our product pages.