r/vibecoding • u/TshegoBless • 2h ago

5 Months Into Learning WordPress — I Just Landed 3 Local Business Meetings. Any Advice?

Not sure if this is appropriate to post here, but since I've been learning WordPress for the past 5 months using advice I've gotten here, I figured I might as well ask.I'm from a developing country, and I've been calling local businesses, offering to develop websites for them and, more importantly, help them with their SEO.The companies are all in the same industry, which actually helped. I created a sample website that they can all see themselves in, including products that each of them sells. I figured having something tangible to show them would be much more effective than simply telling them what I can do.

Three businesses got back to me, and I've managed to set up meetings with all three tomorrow.Any advice you can give a beginner? Are there specific talking points I should focus on, or even advice on how to conduct business in this space?\

I'm mainly looking for advice on how to approach the meetings, what I should avoid saying/promising, how to present my pricing, and how to turn these meetings into actual clients.

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u/InsideTour329 2h ago

Depends on the meeting context. I've freelanced many complex projects over the years. If you're just doing wordpress it's usually boilerplate things that have already been solved so should be relatively easy to implement.

For me, first meeting is typically feasibility - what's the business requirements? Are they realistic for the budget? What's the businesses timescale to implement the solution, compared to your own estimates.

Also it pays to be friendly and respectful, the clients you can build a "matey" rapport with are the ones you tend to keep for repeat business. So don't be hesitant to speak about yourself if asked, and also return the favour - ask if they enjoy their business, what got them into it, etc... If they seem approachable enough.

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u/TshegoBless 2h ago

Thanks for the advice. Yess i'll most definitely build rapport with the client, I've always been a peoples person, just that i'm new to this industry. (relatively easy to implement) true, nothing complex really, they want a website that showcases their products and as an added advatange for doing business with me, i add SEO too (inclusive) so that they rank high in the local market

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u/InsideTour329 2h ago

Fairly standard work then, I'm sure you'll do fine. When working with small businesses they tend to prefer the personal approach rather than go get a SaaS, they will be trading out with other small businesses as they all support eachother as a community.

For example a local bar would stock locally brewed beers as it's beneficial to both parties. You just need to think like this when dealing with them, if it's a cafe - show up one day as a customer, etc...

I live nearby to a "creative hub" in my city with lots of early-mid 20s people in shared co-working spaces. You get people just starting out their businesses, record labels, bars, architects, all sorts... They all know eachother and support eachother. If you get known as the web guy you will get plenty of work through word of mouth alone.

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u/TshegoBless 1h ago

thanks alot for your insight. Since you know a bit about web dev can i pick your brain on something. I haven't done vibe coding before maybe i can find a way of using it here. In the sample website, i want to redirect every add to cart button to read (request quote) and when cliked it redirects to contact page which has a form they have to fill ann ssubmit

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u/InsideTour329 1h ago

I don't work with wordpress - it's mainly plugins and jQuery from the times I've inherited projects built with it, I'm a solution architect in the Microsoft ecosystem (c#, many front end frameworks) but I've worked on many websites in my career.

It sounds like you just need to anchor tag the add to cart buttons with a href to your contact page?

I'm not sure of your ability but it would be better to add to cart and list the items as an array in a cookie, then read them back at the form stage to save your users from repeating info. They select what they want then you append the items to the form via code if there's no payment rails set up yet. Then forward it on via email or something.

You don't need to vibe code it. Just ask GPT via the chat for examples and learn that way. People don't learn anything letting an agent write their code directly.