Useful thinking for people building businesses.
No generic business inspiration. Just practical arguments, questions and tools to help you make better decisions.
Before you commission a website, answer these five questions.
A website project becomes expensive when the business has not agreed what the website is for. Before asking for designs or prices, settle the following:
- What must change? More qualified enquiries, stronger credibility, easier recruitment or something else?
- Who must act? Which audience matters most and what is stopping them moving forward now?
- What are you asking them to buy? Is the offer clear, distinctive and supported by credible proof?
- Who owns the content? Who will write it, approve it and keep it useful after launch?
- How will you judge the result? What will success look like six months after the site goes live?
Answer those properly and the brief becomes clearer, proposals become easier to compare and the finished website has a job it can actually perform.
A startup does not need everything. It needs the right next thing.
Begin with the customer problem, the offer and a credible route to the first sale. Test the assumptions that would be most costly to get wrong. Only then decide which brand, website and marketing work is essential.
Keep three lists: what unlocks the first customer now, what becomes useful once you have evidence, and what is simply an attractive distraction. Early momentum usually comes from doing fewer things with more intent.
More marketing will amplify the business you already have.
If the offer is unclear, the website does not build trust or enquiries are handled slowly, buying more traffic simply sends more people into a weak journey.
Follow the customer from first awareness to the sale. Find the point where confidence or momentum is being lost. Spend against that specific problem, agree what improvement should look like and review the result before increasing the budget again.