Your Website Might Not Be the Problem
Sometimes the website is ugly.
Let’s get that out of the way first.
Sometimes it genuinely is slow, dated, awkward to navigate, impossible to update and hanging on by the digital equivalent of sticky tape.
In which case, yes.
We probably need to rebuild it.
But quite often someone will come to me saying:
“I think we need a new website.”
And when we start talking, the website turns out to be only part of the problem.
Perhaps people are visiting but not enquiring.
Perhaps the homepage looks perfectly respectable, but nobody can work out what the business actually does.
Perhaps there are fourteen services competing for attention.
Perhaps the business has evolved, but the website is still speaking to the customer you had five years ago.
Perhaps you’ve got plenty to say but no clear idea what should come first.
Or perhaps the website is simply reflecting a bigger brand problem.
Which is why, before I redesign your website, I want to understand what isn’t working.
A prettier website won’t fix a confusing business
This can be an uncomfortable truth.
You can have:
Beautiful photography.
Beautiful typography.
Beautiful animation.
Beautiful buttons.
Beautiful everything.
And still have a website that doesn’t work.
Because if the visitor lands there and thinks:
“What exactly do these people do?”
we’ve got a problem.
Your website has a very small window to help someone orient themselves.
Who are you?
What do you offer?
Is this for me?
Why should I trust you?
What should I do next?
If those answers are buried under clever copy, too many services or five competing calls to action, design alone won’t save it.
It might make the confusion prettier.
But it’s still confusion.
Start with the journey
One of the first things I look at when planning a website is the path we want someone to take.
Not simply:
Home.
About.
Services.
Contact.
That’s a sitemap.
I’m interested in the journey underneath it.
What does someone need to understand first?
What might stop them from enquiring?
What questions will they have?
What proof do they need?
Where do we need to build trust?
What is the most useful next step?
When those things are clear, the website starts becoming much easier to design.
Because we’re no longer arranging boxes on pages.
We’re guiding a conversation.
Your navigation is part of your messaging
Businesses grow.
And websites grow with them.
A new service gets added.
Then another.
Then another.
Someone creates an extra page for a campaign.
A new audience arrives.
There’s an old offer we don’t really sell anymore but nobody wants to delete it.
Before long, the navigation bar looks like a filing cabinet.
This usually isn’t a design problem.
It’s an editing problem.
What matters most now?
What belongs together?
What should be prominent?
What can move into the background?
What can disappear entirely?
One of the most valuable things we can do to a website is remove things.
Less competing information.
Less duplication.
Less work for your visitor.
More clarity.
The website should sound like the business
This is another big one.
Sometimes I meet a business owner who is warm, funny, knowledgeable and incredibly easy to talk to.
Then I open their website and apparently their business is:
“A leading provider of innovative solutions committed to delivering exceptional outcomes.”
Who is this person?
Where did they go?
Your website shouldn't sound like a committee wrote it during a particularly long Tuesday meeting.
It should sound like you.
Not exactly like you talk over coffee — there’s still some structure required — but recognisably you.
Clear.
Human.
Confident.
Useful.
Because a brand isn’t only how the website looks.
It’s how the business communicates.
Design works harder when the message is clear
Once we know what the website needs to say and what we want people to do, design suddenly has something useful to work with.
We can create hierarchy.
Emphasise the right things.
Build moments of personality.
Use imagery strategically.
Make important information easy to find.
Create calls to action that actually make sense.
Now the website isn’t simply attractive.
It has direction.
And that is the point.
Sometimes you do need a new website
I’m not trying to talk you out of one.
I design websites.
That would be a fairly questionable business strategy.
But I am interested in making sure we solve the right problem.
If your site no longer reflects the business, we should fix it.
If the navigation is a mess, we should fix it.
If the messaging is vague, we should fix it.
If your brand has changed but the website hasn’t, we should fix it.
If the whole thing needs rebuilding from the ground up, excellent.
We’ll do that too.
But we’ll know why we’re doing it first.
Because a good website isn’t simply a collection of pages.
It’s your business having a conversation with someone while you’re not there.
And that conversation needs to make sense.
Thinking your website needs a refresh?
Before you change the template, let’s work out what’s actually getting in the way.
JÜBE combines brand strategy, messaging and website design so your site doesn't just look better — it communicates better too.
On-brand. On-message. Online.