Founder & Chief Executive Officer
I do not care whether you build your own website or hire somebody to do it for you. This is my number one piece of advice either way.
Build it from your customer’s perspective. Building it from your own is what makes a site come across as salesy, and the difference shows up in everything from the navigation to what you put on the homepage.
A site built from their side answers their questions, lays out your services plainly, shows them what other clients have said, has blogs ready for them, and gives them an obvious way to get in touch. That combination produces a better experience, and somebody having a better experience is considerably more likely to decide you are the right choice.
One question sorts this quickly. Walk through your website and ask whose questions each page answers.
A site built from your perspective talks about your history, your values, your process, and how long you have been in business. All of that has a place, and none of it is what somebody arrives wanting.
A site built from their perspective opens with what you can do for them, addresses the thing they are worried about, and makes the next step obvious. The information about you still appears, positioned as evidence that you can be trusted with their problem rather than as the main event.
The shift is small in wording and large in effect. One version asks to be admired. The other offers to help.
Summary Walk your site and ask whose questions each page answers. Information about you still belongs there, positioned as evidence you can handle their problem rather than as the main event.
The research on what visitors actually want is more lopsided than I expected.
Clutch surveyed 612 US respondents who visit at least five websites a day and found 94% named easy navigation as the most useful feature of a website. Clear product and service descriptions came in at 91%, and an attractive, current design at 83%. The same survey found half of respondents would not return to a site containing irrelevant information.
Easy navigation sounds unglamorous next to design decisions, and it is the thing people rate highest. Somebody who cannot find what they came for leaves, regardless of how good the site looks. So the structure question comes before the aesthetic one, which is the opposite of how most website projects get discussed.
Summary Clutch’s survey of 612 frequent website users found 94% named easy navigation the most useful feature, ahead of clear descriptions at 91% and current design at 83%. Half would not return to a site with irrelevant information.
The highest-value pages on your site are the ones answering something somebody genuinely wondered.
Those questions are already known to you, since clients have been asking them for years. What this costs. How long it takes. What happens first. Whether you work with businesses like theirs. What goes wrong and how you handle it. How you differ from the cheaper option.
Putting plain answers to those on your site does two things at once. It helps somebody decide, which is the point. It also removes the friction of having to ask, which matters more than people credit, since plenty of potential clients will leave rather than send an email to find out your pricing.
Summary Your highest-value pages answer questions clients already ask, including cost, timelines, and what happens first. Plain answers help people decide and remove the friction of having to ask.
Each of the standard website elements improves when you consider who it is for.
Your services list belongs in language your customer uses rather than internal terminology, with enough detail that somebody can tell whether it applies to them. Testimonials work hardest when they describe a situation a reader recognises rather than simply praising you, since a reader matching themselves to a past client is what builds confidence. Blogs give somebody a reason to arrive before they are ready to buy, and half of Clutch’s respondents said they find blogs helpful for ongoing insights.
Contact deserves particular attention. A phone number, an email address, and a location signal that you are real and reachable, and hiding any of it behind several clicks adds friction for no benefit. Make the next step obvious on every page somebody might be reading when they decide.
A capable web developer can build all of this properly, and strong website design is largely the discipline of arranging these elements around the visitor rather than around your own org chart.
Summary Services in your customer’s language, testimonials describing recognisable situations, blogs for people not ready to buy, and contact details that are visible rather than buried. Half of Clutch’s respondents found blogs helpful.
This part surprises people, and it is the strongest practical argument for the whole approach.
Content written to answer your customer’s questions is the same content that performs in search, since somebody typing a question into Google is looking for a page that answers it. A site full of pages about your company history matches very few searches. A site full of pages answering real questions matches a great many.
So the customer-perspective website and the findable website are the same website. Search engine optimization has material to work with when the pages genuinely help, and a good SEO company will push you toward exactly the content your visitors wanted anyway. The same holds for AI tools, which surface content that resolves a specific question and have nothing to extract from a page describing how passionate your team is.
Building for your customer is not a trade-off against being found. It is the mechanism.
Summary Pages answering customer questions match what people search, while pages about company history match very little. The customer-perspective website and the findable website are the same website.
Worth doing this yourself, since it takes under an hour and the results are usually clear.
Open your homepage and time how long it takes to understand what you do and who you do it for. Try to find your pricing, or any indication of cost, and count the clicks. Try to find a phone number. Read your services page and mark every sentence that is about you rather than about the reader. Then look at your navigation labels and ask whether somebody unfamiliar with your industry would know what each one leads to.
Better still, ask somebody who does not know your business to do all of that while you watch without helping. Their hesitations will tell you more than any analytics report, and the places they get stuck are your priority list.
Summary Time how long your homepage takes to explain itself, count the clicks to find pricing and a phone number, and mark every sentence about you rather than the reader. Then watch somebody unfamiliar try the same thing.
Whether you build it yourself or hire somebody, build your website from your customer’s perspective.
Answer their questions. List your services in their language. Show them testimonials they can recognise themselves in. Have blogs ready for the people who are not ready yet. Make contacting you easy. Keep the navigation simple, since that is the thing visitors value above everything else.
Do that and the experience improves, which is what makes somebody feel you are the right choice.
Sources:
Clutch, survey of 612 US respondents who visit at least five websites a day (94% named easy navigation the most useful website feature, 91% rated clear product and service descriptions useful, 83% rated attractive and up-to-date design useful, 50% find blogs helpful for ongoing insights, and 50% said they would not return to a site containing irrelevant information).
https://clutch.co/resources/top-6-website-features-people-value
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