Are you ready for a website?
Two Essential Questions That Can Make or Break Your Investment
When building a website for any reason at all, whether it is your educator portfolio, a menu website for a food truck, or a hair salon website, you have to start with clarity on two things.
You have the budget.
You’ve been thinking about this for months, maybe years.
But every time you sit down to actually move forward with your website, something stalls.
Here’s what I’ve learned after years of doing this work: it’s not about the money, and it’s not about finding the right designer. The real problem is that you’re trying to build something meaningful on top of uncertainty. And that never works.
When You Can’t Answer the Basic Questions
I ask two questions at the start of every project:
“Who specifically is this for?”
“What do they do next?”
When a client can’t answer these, the project doesn’t just slow down. It stops. And the frustrating part is that this happens right at the beginning, not later during design revisions or content creation. The stall happens before we even start because there’s nothing solid to build on.
This isn’t a designer being picky about details. This is a structural problem. If you don’t know who you’re talking to or what you want them to do, I can’t create something that works. I can make something that looks nice, sure. But it won’t actually do anything for you.
“My Business is for Everyone”
I understand the hesitation.
You don’t want to exclude potential clients by being too specific. You’re afraid that picking a lane means leaving money on the table. So you want the website to work for everyone who might need your services.
Here’s what actually happens when you try that approach: you get a cluttered, confusing mess. The design suffers because it’s trying to serve too many purposes at once. The messaging gets watered down because it can’t commit to speaking to anyone in particular.
Your visitors can’t figure out what you actually do or if you can help them. So they leave. The irony is that trying not to exclude anyone means you end up serving no one well.
A Solid Foundation is Key
I won’t start a project without this foundation in place. That probably sounds difficult or gatekeep-y, and I get why it might feel that way. But here’s the thing: I’m not doing this to make your life harder.
I’m doing this because I refuse to build something that won’t work for you. I’ve seen too many websites that look fine on the surface but don’t actually help the business. They sit there, displaying outdated and unattractive information, doing nothing to attract or inform the people who visit.
A solid foundation means you can answer those two questions.
So Now What?
You don’t need to have your entire business strategy mapped out in detail.
You don’t need months of soul-searching or a complete rebrand. You do, however, need to be able to answer those basic questions with some degree of confidence.
If you’re stuck on this, that’s normal. A lot of business owners need help getting to that point of understanding. The good news is that it’s fixable, and it doesn’t take as long as you might think.
I’ve put together a short quiz that will help you figure out if you’re ready to move forward with a website project.
Take it. See where you are. If you’re ready, let’s build something that works!
