Not Sure What to Fix on Your Website? Start Here
You know your website needs work.
Maybe it looks dated. Maybe you’re not getting enough inquiries. Maybe you’re getting inquiries, but they’re rarely the kind of projects you want. Or maybe the business has changed so much that the website simply doesn’t feel like an accurate representation anymore.
So what do you fix first?
This is where businesses can waste a lot of time.
Someone wants to rewrite the homepage. Someone else thinks the problem is SEO. Your sales team wants better case studies. Someone saw a competitor’s website and now wants to redesign the navigation.
Before long, you’ve made a dozen changes without really knowing whether you’ve addressed the actual problem.
Instead of starting with a list of fixes, start with a question:
What does our website actually need?
The goal isn’t to fix everything at once. It’s to understand what’s working, identify what’s getting in the way, and put your time and budget toward the improvements that matter.
Start by Figuring Out What’s Actually Wrong
Before changing anything major, diagnose the problem.
A website can underperform for completely different reasons.
You might have plenty of traffic but weak messaging.
You might have strong messaging but very little search visibility.
You might generate plenty of inquiries, but attract projects you don’t want.
Or the website might simply represent a version of the company that no longer exists.
Those problems require different solutions.
That’s why starting with “we need a new homepage” or “we need better SEO” can send you in the wrong direction.
You are prescribing the solution before you’ve diagnosed the problem.
Use Your Website Like a Customer
One of the simplest website audits doesn’t require any analytics software.
Pull up your website on your phone and pretend you’ve never heard of your company.
Start on the homepage.
Within a few seconds, can you tell:
- What does this company actually do?
- Who do they work with?
- Where do they operate?
- Why would I choose them?
- What kind of work are they capable of?
- What should I do next?
Then try to actually use the website.
Find a particular service.
Look for examples of past work.
Figure out what working with the company looks like.
Try to contact someone.
Do all of it from your phone.
This sounds almost too simple, but it’s easy to lose perspective on a website you’ve looked at hundreds of times.
A new customer doesn’t know where anything is supposed to be.
They don’t know your internal terminology.
They don’t know that the service they’re looking for is hidden under a particular menu item.
And they’re probably not going to spend five minutes figuring it out.
Talk to the People Who Talk to Your Customers
Analytics can tell you what someone clicked.
Your team can often tell you what your website is failing to explain.
Talk to whoever handles sales, customer service, or incoming inquiries.
Ask:
What questions do prospects repeatedly ask?
What do people misunderstand about the business?
What information are you constantly sending after someone contacts you?
What kinds of inquiries are consistently a poor fit?
Are customers surprised to learn you offer a particular service?
Have prospects mentioned something they couldn’t find online?
These patterns matter.
If your sales team explains the same thing during every call, there may be an opportunity for the website to answer that question earlier.
If people constantly request a service you stopped offering two years ago, figure out why they still think you offer it.
If great prospects are surprised by the scale of work you can handle, your website may not be communicating your capabilities clearly enough.
The conversations happening inside your business can tell you a lot about what needs to change online.
Look at the Numbers With Context
Now look at your website data.
You don’t need to analyze every metric available to you.
Start with useful questions.
Which pages receive the most traffic?
Which service pages are actually being visited?
Where does search traffic enter the website?
Are visitors reaching your contact page?
Are forms being submitted?
What percentage of your traffic comes from mobile devices?
Are there important pages almost nobody visits?
Has traffic or engagement changed significantly over time?
The numbers don’t automatically tell you what’s wrong.
They tell you where to look.
For example, imagine one of your service pages receives a healthy amount of traffic every month, but almost nobody takes the next step.
Generating even more traffic to that page may not be the answer.
Something on the page itself may need attention.
If lead generation is the specific problem you’re investigating, ourwebsite lead generation audit goes deeper into what to look for.
Compare the Website With the Business Today
This is where established businesses often discover the bigger problem.
Forget the website for a minute.
Think about the company today.
What services matter most?
What kind of clients do you want more of?
What work are you most proud of?
Have you expanded into new locations?
Has your team grown?
Are you pursuing larger projects?
Has your process changed?
Are you positioned differently than you were several years ago?
Now look at the website again.
Does it represent that company?
Or does it represent the company from three, five, or ten years ago?
A website doesn’t have to be broken to be wrong for the business.
Sometimes it works exactly as it was originally designed to work.
The business simply moved on.
Identify the Problem That’s Costing You the Most
Once you understand what’s happening, resist another temptation:
Trying to fix everything.
Prioritize the problems that are creating the most friction for the business.
There isn’t one universal order.
Your priorities depend on what you discovered.
If people visit but don’t contact you
Look closely at the pages that should be driving action.
Is the messaging clear?
Do visitors understand what you offer?
Is there enough proof?
Are the next steps obvious?
Does the contact experience feel easy?
Do your forms ask for too much?
If you have traffic but very few inquiries, our guide onwhy your website isn’t generating leads goes deeper into those issues.
If you’re getting the wrong inquiries
Look at positioning.
Does the website clearly communicate who you serve?
Are you emphasizing the kind of work you actually want?
Does your portfolio reflect the scale of projects you’re pursuing?
Are you giving people enough information to determine whether they’re a fit before contacting you?
More leads aren’t necessarily the goal.
Better opportunities may be.
We’ve covered this in more detail inHow to Attract Better Leads Through Your Website.
If people don’t understand what you do
Look at messaging and structure.
Your homepage and core service pages should make your important offerings easy to understand.
Remove vague language that could describe any competitor.
Use the words your customers actually use.
Give important services enough room to be properly explained.
Clarity beats cleverness.
If your best work is invisible
Update your proof.
Your business may have completed incredible projects over the last several years, but a prospective customer can’t give you credit for work they can’t see.
Add current projects.
Improve photography.
Strengthen testimonials.
Show recognizable clients when appropriate.
Make sure yourwork reflects the kind of work you want more of.
If the website is frustrating on a phone
Use it on a phone.
Not just the homepage.
Navigate through the site. Read a service page. Open the menu. Fill out the form. Tap the phone number. Look through projects.
Mobile usability isn’t a finishing touch.
For many visitors, that is your website.
If people can’t find you
Then visibility may deserve more attention.
Make sure your important services actually have useful pages.
Use clear page titles and headings.
Improve internal links between related content.
If you serve a local or regional market, make it obvious where you work.
And don’t create dozens of nearly identical pages just to insert different city names.
Our guide tolocal business website design covers those fundamentals in more detail.
Fix the Highest-Impact Problems First
Once you’ve identified the major issues, ask two questions:
How much is this problem hurting the business?
and
What would it take to fix it properly?
A buried phone number might be easy to fix and worth doing immediately.
Rewriting confusing service content may require more effort but have a much larger impact.
Replacing outdated photography could require coordinating a professional shoot.
Restructuring the entire website might require something much more substantial.
Not every improvement needs to become a major project.
But don’t prioritize something simply because it’s easy either.
Changing a button color might take five minutes.
That doesn’t mean it’s more important than realizing your homepage is speaking to the wrong customer.
Pay Attention to What Happens When You Start Fixing Things
This is one of the most useful parts of the process.
You start making improvements.
And then you see how the website responds.
Sometimes things go smoothly.
You rewrite a few important sections. Update projects. Improve the contact experience. Reorganize some pages. The site starts feeling substantially better.
Great.
Keep going.
Other times, you change one thing and discover three more problems.
You try to improve the homepage messaging, but the existing layout can’t support what you need.
You add a service, but the navigation is already overloaded.
You update the portfolio, but the way projects are structured makes everything difficult to manage.
You fix one mobile issue and discover the same problem across half the website.
That’s when you need to ask whether continuing to patch the existing site is actually the best use of your time and money.
Decide Whether to Optimize, Refresh, or Redesign
Once you’ve done the diagnosis and addressed some obvious problems, you should have enough information to choose a direction.
Usually, that means one of three things.
Optimize what you have
The website is fundamentally solid.
Maybe it needs better messaging, stronger service content, updated projects, improved calls to action, or some usability fixes.
You don’t need to rebuild a healthy website simply because there are things you could improve.
Keep optimizing it.
Give it a larger refresh
The underlying structure works, but the experience needs significant attention.
Maybe the brand has evolved.
Photography is outdated.
Several major pages need to be rewritten.
The navigation needs to change.
New services need to be incorporated.
A larger refresh may be enough to bring the website back in line with the business.
Redesign it
Sometimes the individual problems all point back to the same thing:
You’ve outgrown the website.
The structure no longer makes sense.
The design doesn’t represent the company.
Adding or changing content is unnecessarily difficult.
Important parts of the customer experience need to be rethought.
And fixing individual issues increasingly feels like working around the website rather than improving it.
If that’s where you land,Your Business Has Grown. Has Your Website Kept Up? is a good next read.
Stop Guessing About What Your Website Needs
It is easy to build an endless website to-do list.
Rewrite this headline.
Add this page.
Improve SEO.
Replace these photos.
Move this button.
Start a blog.
Change the navigation.
The list can go forever.
That’s not the goal.
You need to understand what your website is doing well, where it’s getting in the way, and what deserves your investment next.
Sometimes the answer is a handful of targeted improvements.
Sometimes the site needs a larger refresh.
And sometimes you discover you’ve been patching a website the business has already outgrown.
All three answers are useful.
AtLEPP, this is how I approach website improvements. Start with the business, understand the problem, and then determine what the website actually needs.
Not the other way around.
If you’re looking at your current website and aren’t sure what actually needs to change,get in touch.
We can start there.
