A Website Should Do More Than Look Good

There is a strange thing that happens when a business starts talking about a new website. Everyone starts talking about what it should look like before anyone talks about what it actually needs to do. Should it be modern? Should it have animation? Should it feel premium? Should it have video or a giant hero image? Those questions aren’t wrong, but they’re not where I’d start. A business website has a job to do, and the design should support that job. A good website should make the business easier to understand, easier to navigate and easier to contact while supporting the company’s marketing and sales efforts. Once those goals are clear, the technology, design approach, content, functionality and budget all have to fit the business rather than the other way around.

The Website Should Represent the Business

When someone lands on the site, they should be able to understand what the company does, who it serves and why it might be relevant to them. That sounds obvious, but it gets lost surprisingly often when design becomes the primary focus. A construction company doesn’t need to look like a software company, and a professional service firm doesn’t necessarily need a website full of animation. A local business serving a specific market may benefit more from clarity and local relevance than from trying to look like a giant national brand. That’s what good web design is supposed to accomplish: give the business an appropriate visual identity while making the underlying message easier to understand.

Custom Doesn’t Mean Everything Has to Be Invented From Scratch

There is also a misunderstanding about the word “custom.” A custom website doesn’t mean every single element has to be invented from scratch. It means the website is being designed and built around the needs of the business rather than forcing the business into a predetermined structure. There are good reasons to use established frameworks, content management systems, plugins and reusable components. They can save development time, control costs and make a website easier to maintain. The important question isn’t whether something was coded from a completely blank screen. It’s whether the finished website makes sense for the business. That’s why the choice between custom website design and templates should come down to what the business actually needs.

Revisions Are Normal. Endless Scope Creep Isn’t.

A website rarely comes out perfectly on the first presentation. Once the business owner sees the design in context, questions come up. A headline needs changing, an image doesn’t work, a section needs to move or something that sounded good in a meeting doesn’t feel right on the actual page. That’s normal, and revisions are part of building a website. What gets complicated is when every new idea that appears during development is treated as though it was part of the original project. Adding another page is different from changing a headline, and building a new application is different from adjusting a layout. Good planning doesn’t eliminate changes; it makes it much easier to tell the difference between improving the original project and creating a new one.

Content Is Part of the Website

One of the biggest disconnects I see is expecting the web designer to somehow produce all of the company’s knowledge, expertise, photography, service details and marketing strategy without much participation from the business. A website needs real information: service details, company information, images, project examples, customer questions and whatever else helps a potential customer understand and trust the business. A designer can organize that material and, depending on the project, create or improve substantial amounts of content, but the business still has to provide the knowledge that makes the website specific to that business. A beautiful layout can’t compensate for missing information. If you’re unsure what actually belongs on a small-business site, what a small business website should include is a much more useful question than simply asking how many pages the site needs.

SEO Should Be Built Into the Website, Not Guaranteed by It

A professionally built website should have a sound technical foundation for search. The pages should be crawlable, the structure should make sense, important content should be accessible, basic on-page elements should be handled properly and the site should work well across devices. Where things go sideways is when the website itself gets treated as a guarantee of search visibility. A new website does not automatically rank at the top of Google simply because it was built well. Content, relevance, authority, competition, local factors, technical quality and the history of the site can all play a role. I’ve written about that broader relationship in How Website Design Impacts SEO Rankings, and our guide to Technical SEO Basics Every Business Should Know goes further into the foundation underneath the visible website.

Performance and Mobile Matter

A website should load efficiently and work properly on a phone. That’s basic web development now. Large images, unnecessary scripts, excessive plugins and poorly implemented features can make a site frustrating to use, while awkward mobile navigation, difficult forms and tiny buttons can make an otherwise good website practically useless on a phone. At the same time, I don’t think a website should be designed around getting a perfect score from every speed-testing tool. There is a difference between optimizing a website intelligently and designing the entire project around a number in a testing report. The goal is a fast, functional experience for real people, not a trophy from a testing tool.

A Website Can’t Invent the Business Strategy

This is another place where website projects can go off track. A website can communicate a business strategy, but it can’t invent one. If the company doesn’t know who its customers are, what services it wants to emphasize, what markets it serves or what makes its offer relevant, the website project is going to have a harder time. The designer can help uncover some of those issues, and a good discovery process often does, but there has to be something underneath the website for the website to communicate. The same applies to leads: a new website can improve messaging, usability, credibility and conversion paths, but it can’t guarantee that every visitor becomes a customer. Many problems described as “website problems” are really business problems showing up on the website.

More Features Don’t Automatically Mean a Better Website

Businesses sometimes assume that a better website means adding more: more animations, more integrations, more sliders, more popups, more functionality and more pages. Sometimes those things are exactly what the project needs. Often they aren’t. Every feature adds complexity, and complexity can affect performance, maintenance, usability and cost. A feature should have a reason for being there. If it doesn’t help the visitor or the business accomplish something, it may simply be decoration with a maintenance bill attached. That’s also the broader lesson behind Why Most Business Websites Fail: a website doesn’t become more effective simply because more things have been added to it.

Ownership and Access Should Be Clear

Before a website project begins, the business should understand what it is paying for, who owns the domain, where the website is hosted, who has administrative access and what happens when the project is finished. The same applies to the underlying code, content and other project assets. Different developers and agencies structure ownership differently, so there isn’t one arrangement that applies to every project. What matters is that the arrangement is clearly explained before the work begins. Discovering after launch that you don’t have access to something you assumed you owned is a lousy way to learn about the contract.

Launching the Website Isn’t the End

A website changes as the business changes. Services change, employees change, locations change, new projects become available, old information becomes outdated, search behavior changes and technology changes. That doesn’t mean every business needs a giant monthly maintenance contract forever, but somebody should be responsible for keeping the website accurate, secure and functional. Some businesses need ongoing development while others mainly need occasional maintenance and updates. A five-page local business and a large website with custom functionality obviously aren’t going to have the same requirements. The important thing is knowing what needs to be maintained and what happens when something eventually breaks.

So What Should a Business Look For?

I think the answer is pretty straightforward. The website should be built around the business, communicate clearly, work properly across devices, provide a good user experience and give visitors useful ways to move through the site. The business owner should understand what they’re paying for, what is included, how revisions work, what technology is being used, who owns the various pieces and what happens after launch. There should also be a reason behind the recommendations being made. If a particular feature, platform or strategy is supposedly essential, someone should be able to explain why it matters to this particular business. “Because that’s what everyone is doing” isn’t much of a strategy.

The Best Website Projects Start With the Business

I’ve always thought a good website project should begin with an honest conversation about what the business actually needs. Sometimes that means a completely custom build. Sometimes a well-structured WordPress site is the right answer. Sometimes the existing website is worth fixing rather than replacing. Sometimes the biggest problem isn’t the design at all—it is the content, SEO, messaging or structure underneath it. That’s the approach we take at Big Orange Planet. We don’t start with the assumption that every business needs the biggest, most complicated website we can build. We start with the business, the audience, the goals and the problems the website actually needs to solve.

A good website should be ambitious enough to represent the business properly and practical enough to maintain. It should look good, but it should also communicate. It should support SEO, but it shouldn’t pretend that SEO begins and ends with the website. And it should help generate opportunities without making promises that no website can realistically guarantee.

If you’re considering a new website—or wondering whether your existing website is actually doing its job—start with the business problem, not the design. Take a hard look at what the site needs to accomplish, where it’s falling short and what would actually improve it.

If that sounds like the conversation you’re looking for, talk to Big Orange Planet. We can look at what you have, what you’re trying to accomplish and whether you actually need a new website—or simply a better strategy for the one you already have.

The best website isn’t the one with the most features or the biggest budget. It’s the one that does what the business actually needs it to do—and gives the people using it a clear reason to keep going.

This article was written by Ally Lennon, Big Orange Planet’s SEO legend—call him directly! Phone: 720-272-0770.