They Say They Want a Website. They Mean Something Else.

For the first few months of doing this, I thought my job was building websites. A local business had no site, I built one, they paid me, done. Simple. Then I started actually listening to what people said in the first call, and I realized almost nobody who reaches out wants a website. They want what a website is supposed to fix, and those are two very different things to design around.

The tell is always the same. Someone messages back after I’ve pointed out their business has no clickable site, and the first thing out of them is some version of “yeah, I want a website” or “I’ve been meaning to get one.” That sentence tells you almost nothing. A landing page with their hours and a phone number technically satisfies it. So does a five page site with online booking and a blog. Both are “a website.” Only one of them is going to change anything about how their business runs, and you cannot tell which one from that first sentence alone.

So I stopped starting there. Before I mention a single price tier or ask how many pages they want, I ask one question: when someone searches for your business and can’t find a real site, what do you think they do next? It sounds like a small thing, almost a throwaway, but it moves the conversation out of features and into what’s actually broken. People stop describing a website and start…