If You’re Investing in a Website, Make It Work Hard for You
If you’ve put money into a website, surely you’d want it to perform at its absolute best?
Too often though, businesses treat their site like a box to tick. “Nobody really looks at it,” they say. But here’s the thing: your website is not just a brochure. It’s your most visible sales and brand asset—and if it isn’t pulling its weight, it’s holding you back.
We see it again and again: websites fail not because of bad design, but because the thinking behind them isn’t clear. No audience clarity, no messaging strategy, no real plan for how the site supports the business. That’s why projects stall, launches drag, and results never materialise.
This is where strategy makes the difference. When you know your audience, nail your message, and structure your site for conversions, everything else flows. Without it? You fall into the traps below.
1. The “Shove It All On” Problem
You think you need more buttons. In reality, you need more clarity.
When you don’t know your customer—or what they’re really looking for—the default is to stick everything everywhere. Cue a site plastered with “Get a Quote” buttons in the header, sidebar, footer, and pop-ups.
Instead of making the call to action clear, this overwhelms visitors. They land on your site with a problem to solve—but they leave unsure whether you can actually help.
The fix: start with user personas. These give your design team a gold-dust insight into what matters most, so they can build pages with hierarchy. It means headlines that grab attention, content that flows, and buttons that appear in the right place at the right time.
2. Grey, Grey, Grey
You’re blending in when you should be standing out.
Grey might be timeless in interiors, but online it often drains energy. Add in DIY website builders and “inspiration” lifted from competitors, and the result is a sea of near-identical, lifeless sites.
Light grey can be elegant as a background—but as a brand colour it’s emotionless. Your site should give off personality, energy, and trust. If your colour palette leaves people cold, they won’t stick around long enough to buy.
3. The “It’s All About Me” Trap
Your site talks about you. Customers want to hear about themselves.
It’s natural to want to shout about awards and achievements. But most visitors are asking one thing: can you solve my problem?
A website stuffed with “we, we, we” reads like a vanity project. Flip it around. Replace “we” with “you” and see how it instantly feels more relevant.
This is called customer-centric design—making choices based on what your audience needs, not what your CEO prefers. The result? A user journey that feels natural, empathetic, and persuasive.
Why This Matters
Your customers aren’t blind. If your site isn’t selling, the answer isn’t more buttons, more grey or more bragging rights. The answer is strategy.
When you design around customer pain points and guide them through a clear journey, the next step (getting in touch) feels obvious. That’s when your website stops being a liability and starts being the lead-generating tool it was meant to be.
