Building a Website? How to Make Sure It Actually Works for Your Business

If “building a website how to” is currently sitting somewhere in your Google search history, there’s a good chance you’ve already learned how incredibly easy it is to get overwhelmed.

• Pick a platform.
• Choose a template.
• Write some copy.
• Upload your photos.
• Connect your domain.
• Add a contact form.

Hit publish. Done… right?

Not exactly.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned from designing websites and working with small business owners is that a website can look great and still do a pretty terrible job for your business.

Because there is a whole layer of website strategy that most DIY website builders don’t teach you. Your website needs to help the right people find you, quickly understand what you do, trust that you’re legitimate and know exactly what to do next.

And that takes more than choosing a nice font and dragging a few sections onto a page.

So if you’re building your own small business website, here are a few things I want you to check before you obsess over whether your buttons are the perfect shade of beige.

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1. Can I figure out what the hell you do?

Start here. Open your homepage and pretend you know absolutely nothing about your business.

Within a few seconds, can I figure out:

• Who do you help?
• What do you actually do?
• What problem do you solve or result do you provide?
• And where should I go next?

This sounds ridiculously simple, but it’s one of the most common problems I see. Especially in the coaching, wellness and creative industries.

We love language like:

Step into your power.

Come home to yourself.

Create the life you were meant to live.

Beautiful.

• But what are you selling?
• Are you a therapist? Yoga teacher? Business coach? Breathwork facilitator? Photographer? Interior designer?

Your website should not require visitors to investigate.

Your homepage headline has a job

Your main headline should help orient people. As a simple clarity exercise, try filling in:

I help [WHO] achieve [WHAT] through [HOW].

That doesn’t mean this has to become your final website headline. It probably won’t. But if you can’t fill in that sentence clearly, your website copy is probably going to struggle too.

Clarity first. Clever can come later.

2. Your homepage is not your autobiography

Your homepage does not need to tell visitors every single thing you’ve ever done. Its job is to orient them.

Think of it like the lobby of your business. Someone walks in and needs to quickly understand:

• Am I in the right place?
• Can this person help me?
• Where should I go next?

A simple homepage might move through something like:

The exact order can vary depending on your business. The important part is that there is some logic to it.

Every section should help answer the next question your potential customer is likely to have.

3. Stop getting cute with your navigation

I love creativity. I do not love having to solve a riddle to find your Services page.

Your main website navigation should generally be boring enough that people immediately understand it.

Think:

Home
About
Services
Shop
Blog
Contact

Not:

My World
The Journey
Possibilities
Magic
Explore

People have been using websites for a long time. They have developed expectations about how they work.

Use that to your advantage. The goal is not to make someone admire how original your navigation labels are. The goal is to help them get where they need to go.

And while you’re there, look at how many things you have crammed into your main menu. If there are 14 choices screaming for attention, you may need to simplify.

4. WTF is an H1?

This is one of those website details I find many DIY business owners have literally never been taught.

An H1 is the primary heading or title of a webpage.

An H2 is used for the major sections underneath it.

An H3 can organize subsections.

And your regular copy should generally be formatted as paragraph or body text.

Think of it like a book.

H1 = book or chapter title

H2 = major section

H3 = subsection

Paragraph text = the actual content

Here’s where people get tripped up: Heading structure is not just about how the words look.

You can make a paragraph font gigantic and bold, but that doesn’t automatically make it an H1. You can also style an H1 so that it doesn’t look enormous. The visual style and the underlying structure are two different things.

That underlying structure helps browsers, search engines and assistive technologies better understand the organization of your page.

Keep it simple

For most small business owners, I recommend having one obvious primary H1 for each page, then using H2s to organize the major sections below it.

Not because Google is sitting there waiting to punish you for accidentally having two H1s. Because giving a page one clear primary topic and organizing the information beneath it simply makes sense. For humans and machines.

5. Your website has to build trust before someone ever contacts you

We make incredibly fast decisions online. Before I contact you, book with you or hand over my credit card information, I’m collecting little clues.

• Does this feel like a legitimate business?
• Do I trust this person?
• Does this website feel current?
• Can I easily figure out how to contact them?
• Are there testimonials?
• Do the links work?
• Does the site feel secure?
• Are there weird formatting issues everywhere?
• Is the copyright notice from six years ago?

None of these things alone necessarily kills a sale. Together, they matter. Trust is often built through a bunch of tiny details.

Consider whether your site includes things like:

• Testimonials or reviews.
• A clear About page.
• Real contact information.
• Professional photos where appropriate.
• Secure forms.
• Working buttons and links.
• Clear service information.
• Policies relevant to your business.
• Evidence that there is an actual human and functioning business behind the website.

6. Yes, you need to think about the boring legal-ish stuff too

This is usually the part nobody gets excited about when building their website. It still matters.

I’m a web designer and digital marketer. I am not your lawyer, and the exact requirements for your website will depend on your business, what information you collect, the technology you use and where you and your customers are located.

But small business owners should at least be thinking about things like:

• Privacy policies.
• Terms or terms of use.
• Cookie and tracking disclosures.
• Refund or return policies if you’re selling online.
• Email marketing consent.
• Accessibility.
• What information your contact forms are collecting.
• What analytics and advertising tools are installed on your site.

This becomes especially important once your website starts collecting personal information.

If someone gives you their name, email address, phone number or other information, you should understand what you are collecting, why you are collecting it and what happens to it after they hit Submit.

And if your website uses cookies, analytics or advertising technology, throwing up a cute banner that says “By using this website you accept cookies!” is not automatically a complete compliance strategy. This is an area where your specific business and location matter.

For my own website clients, I use compliance tools rather than pretending I’m qualified to personally write privacy law. Because I’m not.

7. Check your website like a customer, not its creator

When you’ve spent 17 hours moving a photo three pixels to the left, you stop seeing your website objectively.

So periodically, actually use the thing. Open it on your phone.Click every important button. Fill out your own contact form. Look at your navigation. Read your headline. Try to book yourself. Try to buy your own product.

Ask someone who doesn’t know your business particularly well to look at your homepage for five seconds, close it and tell you what they think you do.

You may be surprised by the answer. One of my favourite website exercises is simply asking:

Did my website say what I thought it said?

Because what feels incredibly obvious to you after living inside your business for years may not be obvious to a stranger who landed there from Google 11 seconds ago.

And this is still only part of the picture

This is where websites start getting interesting. Because homepage copy, navigation and headings are important. But they’re only one layer.

There are also questions like:

Can Google actually understand what your pages are about?

Are your page titles and metadata configured properly?

Are your images slowing your site down?

Does your website actually work properly on mobile?

Are important pages being indexed by Google?

Is your site structure helping or hurting you?

Are your calls to action leading people through an intentional customer journey?

Are all your pages trying to do 17 different jobs?

Do you know what Google Search Console is telling you?

And perhaps the biggest question:

Is your website simply sitting on the internet, or is it actually functioning as part of your marketing system?

These are the things most small business owners were never taught when they decided to DIY their website. And frankly, you shouldn’t need to become a web developer to understand them.

You just need to know what to look for.

Give your website a reality check

That’s exactly why I created Website Reality Check.

It’s my practical masterclass for small business owners who built their own website, inherited one they don’t really understand or simply want to know whether the damn thing is doing what it’s supposed to do.

We get into the pieces I’ve touched on here, plus the stuff I deliberately haven’t unpacked in this article, including SEO, website structure, technical website health, mobile experience, search visibility, customer journey, calls to action and the behind-the-scenes details that can quietly affect how well your site performs.

The goal is not to turn you into a web designer.

It’s to make you a much more informed business owner.

So you can look at your website and know what needs fixing, what you can handle yourself and when it might be time to bring in some help.

Website Reality Check is $44 CAD and available to watch on demand.

Because your website does not need to be perfect.

It needs to be clear, trustworthy and capable of doing its damn job.

GET THE WEBSITE REALITY CHECK MASTERCLASS