When you pay for a new website, you want it to look good. Of course you do. It represents your business, and you want to feel confident sending people to it.
But once it’s live, you need more from it.
Can someone quickly understand what you offer? How easy is it to get in touch? And when you need to update something yourself, will you know where to start?
Those are the things I think about when I build a website. The design gets plenty of attention, but a lot of the work goes into what happens when people actually use it.
Start with what people need to know.
You know your business. Your visitors might be hearing about it for the first time.
It’s easy to forget that when you’re writing your own website. You’re so familiar with what you do that you skip the explanation and go straight to a clever headline.
I’d rather land on a page that tells me plainly what’s on offer. Give me enough to decide whether it’s relevant, then let me explore.
That doesn’t mean stripping out the personality. You can sound like yourself and still be clear. But if someone has to scroll through half the homepage to understand what you actually do, the page is asking too much of them.
When I’m building, I’ll question things like that. Even if it means moving a section we both liked.
Mobile needs more than a smaller layout.
A design can look great on a laptop and feel awkward on a phone.
The heading suddenly fills the screen. A row of project cards becomes a very long scroll. The menu opens, but the contact button has disappeared somewhere underneath it.
These are decisions to work through during the build.
Sometimes a section needs a different layout on mobile. An image might need a tighter crop so you can still see the subject. I’ll also look at how the interactions work when there’s no mouse, because something that appears on hover needs another way to open.
I like adding movement to a website. Used well, it gives the page a bit of character. But I don’t want someone waiting for an effect to finish before they can get on with what they came to do.
You’ll need to edit it eventually.
Maybe your services change. Maybe you’ve finished a project and want to put it on the homepage.
You should feel comfortable doing that.
With WordPress, I can build custom blocks around the content you need to manage. You can update the text and images within a layout that’s already been thought through, without having to rebuild the section each time.
I’m careful about how much control goes into the editor. Being able to adjust absolutely everything sounds useful until you’re faced with twenty settings just to add a testimonial.
If you’re an agency handing the website over to a client, you need that confidence too.
A design leaves some questions unanswered.
What happens when the real heading is twice as long as the one in the mockup?
It sounds minor. Then it pushes a button out of line or makes the mobile layout fall apart.
A website has to cope with real content and people using it in ways you didn’t expect. That means checking more than the nicest version of each page.
If somebody misses a required field on a form, for example, they need to know what to fix. They certainly shouldn’t lose everything they’ve just typed.
I enjoy that part of development. You start with a design, then work through the details until it feels ready for someone else to use.
The right setup depends on the job.
I work with WordPress and Shopify, and build bespoke websites too. What I suggest depends on what you need the site to do.
Who’s going to update it? Are you selling products? Does it need to connect to something you already use?
A fairly simple business website shouldn’t leave you managing a complicated system. Equally, if you need a custom feature, it’s worth thinking it through properly at the start instead of trying to squeeze it in just before launch.
It should still look brilliant.
I care about the visual details. If you’ve invested in a design, I want the finished website to do it justice. If we’re starting from scratch, I want us to make something that feels right for your business.
The point is to carry that care through the whole website, including the parts you won’t see in a portfolio screenshot.
You’ll notice them when you add your next project without needing help. Your visitors will notice when they can find what they need and get in touch easily.
That’s what I want to build, whether the website is for your business or one of your clients.
