Before I Design Your Website, I Need to Understand Your Business
One of my favourite things about being a website designer is that I get a little window into businesses and industries I might otherwise know absolutely nothing about.
Over the years, I’ve built websites for architects, authors, builders, artists, medical practices, coaches, film production companies, not-for-profits, ecommerce businesses and even an animal communicator.
They’re all completely different. And before I can design a good website for any of them, I need to understand how their business actually works.
That’s why, when you contact me about a new website, I’m probably going to ask you quite a few questions.
And not many of them will be about what colour you’d like your buttons to be.
A good website starts long before the design
When people think about website design, it’s easy to think about the visual side first. Colours, fonts, photographs, layouts and all the things that make a website look polished and professional.
Obviously, those things matter.
But a beautiful website that leaves visitors wondering where to go next isn’t doing its job.
Before I start designing, I want to know who is going to use the website. Why are they coming to it? What are they looking for? What do they need to know? What might make them hesitate? And, ultimately, what does the business want them to do next?
That might be to make an enquiry, book an appointment, buy a product, request a quote, join an organisation, view a portfolio or simply pick up the phone.
Until I understand that, I don’t really know what I’m designing.
This is where UX comes in
UX stands for user experience, which can sound much more technical than it needs to.
For most small business websites, I think of it much more simply:
Can the right person find the right information and take the right next step without having to work too hard?
But there’s another part of good UX that I think is just as important: answering people’s questions before they even have to ask them.
A really well-planned website anticipates what a visitor is likely to be thinking as they move through it.
Do you work in my area?
Is this service suitable for me?
How does the process work?
What happens after I enquire?
How much does it cost?
Can I book online?
Do I need to provide anything first?
What if my situation is slightly different?
You don’t necessarily need a giant FAQ answering every conceivable question. It’s about putting the right information in the right place, at the point where someone is most likely to need it.
If someone has to stop, leave your website and email you to ask a basic question before they can continue, there’s a good chance the website could have answered it for them.
That’s something I’m constantly thinking about while I build.
Every website has a customer journey
You might also hear people talk about website funnels.
That can conjure up images of complicated marketing systems, but a customer journey doesn’t have to be complicated at all.
Someone might find one of your services through Google, read about it, visit your About page to see who they’re dealing with, look at some previous work and then make an enquiry.
Another visitor might land on your homepage, browse your products, choose one and buy it.
Someone visiting a medical website might need to find a particular service, check some patient information and then book an appointment.
Those are all customer journeys.
The important thing is that at each stage, the website should give the visitor enough information and confidence to take the next step.
That’s where understanding the business becomes so important. If I know the questions customers regularly ask, the things that cause confusion and the information people need before they’re ready to commit, I can build those answers into the journey.
A good website shouldn’t make someone repeatedly stop and think, “Okay… what now?”
It should keep answering that question for them.
The words are part of the user experience too
I don’t just design the website and then leave a collection of empty boxes for you to fill.
For many of the websites I build, I also write or heavily refine the content.
Sometimes I’m working from an existing website. Sometimes a client gives me notes, emails, documents or rough ideas. Sometimes we start with very little at all.
My job is to take all of that information and work out how to communicate it clearly to the person actually using the website.
And this is another reason I ask clients so many questions.
Often, the information that feels completely obvious to someone who works in a business every day is exactly the information their customer doesn’t know.
A client might not think to mention something because, to them, it’s just how things work. But a potential customer has never been through their process before.
So I want to know:
What do customers ask you all the time?
What do people misunderstand?
What do you normally find yourself explaining on the phone?
What does somebody need to know before they can book or buy?
Is there something customers often assume that isn’t actually correct?
Those answers can be incredibly useful website content.
Because good website copy isn’t simply describing the business. It’s having a conversation with the customer when you’re not there to have it yourself.
It should answer one question and naturally lead into the next.
What does someone need to know first?
What will they probably wonder after that?
What information will reassure them?
And once we’ve answered those questions, what should they do next?
That’s why content, UX and design are so closely connected.
Sometimes my questions change the website completely
This is also why the website structure a client initially imagines isn’t necessarily the structure we end up building.
Once I start asking questions, we might discover that what looked like one audience is actually three completely different audiences.
Perhaps they need different information. Perhaps they enter the website in different places. Perhaps one wants to buy something while another needs to make an enquiry.
Suddenly, putting everything on one generic Services page doesn’t make much sense.
We might need separate pathways, different pages and different calls to action.
That’s not making the website complicated for the sake of it. Quite the opposite.
We’re making it simpler for the person using it.
I get to learn about some fascinating businesses
This part of the process is also one of the things I genuinely enjoy most about my job.
To build a website for an environmental film production company, I need to understand what makes that company different, who commissions its work and what potential clients need to see before getting in touch.
For a museum-related not-for-profit, I need to understand why people visit the website. Are they joining? Renewing a membership? Looking for an event? Finding out what the organisation supports?
An animal communicator is completely different again. The service may be unfamiliar to a new visitor, so the website needs to explain how it works, answer questions, establish trust and make booking feel straightforward.
An architect may need their projects and imagery to do much of the talking.
An author might need to tell their story, showcase their books and sell directly from their website.
I’ve worked across all sorts of industries over the years, and every project requires me to learn enough about that particular world to make good decisions about the website.
I’m certainly not going to emerge from the process qualified as an architect, doctor, filmmaker or animal medium.
But I do need to understand the business well enough to explain it to someone else.
And I love that.
Design should support the journey
None of this means I don’t care how a website looks. I absolutely do.
I want the websites I build to look polished, professional and individual to the business. I don’t believe every Squarespace website should look the same, and I don’t build sites around a rigid template that dictates where everything has to go.
But the visual design comes with a purpose.
A big heading should be big because it’s important.
A button should be prominent because that’s where we want someone to go next.
A section might be short because we don’t need to tell someone everything at once.
A homepage doesn’t need to contain every piece of information about your business. Sometimes its job is simply to give people enough information to confidently choose where to go next.
Good website design isn’t about squeezing your business into a predetermined layout.
It’s about understanding the business well enough to create the right layout in the first place.
So yes, I’m going to ask you lots of questions
If you contact me about a new website and I reply with a list of questions, there’s a reason for it.
I’m not just collecting information to fill some pages.
I’m trying to understand your business, your customers, what makes you different, what people need from your website and what you ultimately want that website to achieve.
I want to know the questions your customers already ask you and anticipate the ones your website visitors haven’t even thought of yet.
From there, I can start mapping out the structure, the customer journey and the content.
Then I design.
My process is really:
Understand the business → understand the customer → anticipate their questions → map the journey → structure the website → shape the content → design around it.
In reality, those stages overlap and evolve as the website comes together. But the first one always matters.
Before I can work out what your website should look like, I need to understand what it needs to do.
And getting to learn about so many completely different businesses along the way is one of the best parts of being a website designer.
Ready to build a website that actually works for your business?
If you’re planning a new website, or your current one looks good but doesn’t quite guide people where you need them to go, I’d love to hear about your business.
We’ll start with the questions. Who are your customers? What are they looking for? What do they need to know? And what do you want them to do next?
From there, I can help you turn all of that into a clear, well-structured Squarespace website with the content, customer journey and design working together.
