“What websites do you like?”
If you’ve ever reach out to a website designer, there’s a good chance you got asked that within the first few emails. It’s become so standard it barely registers as a question anymore — more like a formality, the website equivalent of “and how would you like your steak.”
So you did the completely reasonable thing. Opened Pinterest. Saved a board of sites you loved. Pointed at a colour palette, a layout that felt “clean,” a homepage with an animation that made you go yes, that, exactly that.
There’s nothing wrong with gathering inspiration. I do it constantly.
But if that’s genuinely where your website project began — with “what do you like” instead of “what does your business actually need this page to do” — that might be the entire reason your beautiful website isn’t doing much for your business.
Pinterest is brilliant for inspiration. It’s a terrible strategist.
I want to be clear about something before I sound like I’m coming for Pinterest, because I’m not. I use it almost every day. It’s a genuinely excellent tool for exploring typography, layout ideas, photography styles, colour combinations — all the visual language of what you want your brand & website to feel like.
What Pinterest cannot do, and was never built to do, is know your business.
It doesn’t know your ideal client, or the specific objection that’s quietly stopping someone from enquiring, or the exact question running through a stranger’s head three seconds before they decide to leave your homepage instead of scrolling further.
A website doesn’t succeed because it resembles someone else’s website. It succeeds because it makes the next decision feel obvious to the specific person looking at it. Pinterest can hand you the visual language for that. It can’t hand you the strategy underneath it — because that part isn’t visual at all.
Before I design anything, I map two things
Long before I open a design file. Long before a single font gets chosen. I answer two questions.
1. What’s the one decision this page needs to make easy?
Every page on your website has exactly one job. Not six. One.
Your homepage isn’t there to explain every single thing you’ve ever offered since you started your business. Just like your About page isn’t there to walk someone through your entire life story before they’ve decided if they care yet. And no… your services page isn’t there to demonstrate how many industry terms you know.
Each page exists to move someone one specific step closer to saying yes — whether that’s booking a call, joining your list, or clicking through to the next page in the sequence. When a page tries to do six jobs simultaneously, it reliably does none of them particularly well. This is not a hot take. It’s just what happens when you give someone too many things to decide between at once.
2. What does someone need to believe before they’re ready to say yes?
This is the question I genuinely wish more designers asked, because it’s the one that actually determines whether a website converts.
People don’t move through a decision logically first and emotionally second. It’s the other way around — they feel their way to a decision, and then build the logical justification for it afterward. Which means before someone ever fills in your contact form, they’re silently running through questions like:
Does this person actually understand my situation, or are they guessing?
Am I in the right place, or is this for someone slightly different from me?
Can I trust this person with something that matters to me?
Is this actually worth what it costs?
Will this solve the specific thing I’m struggling with — not a version of it, the actual thing?
Your website needs to answer those questions — in the right order, before the ask — or the contact form is just sitting there, hopeful and mostly empty.
Design doesn’t create clarity. It amplifies whatever’s already there.
Here’s the sentence I’d tattoo on the inside of every website brief if I could: design doesn’t create clarity, it amplifies it.
A stunning website cannot rescue confusing messaging. It just makes the confusion look more expensive. Beautiful typography does not fix an unclear offer — it just renders the unclear offer in a font people compliment. The most gorgeous, buttery-smooth animation in the world will not convince someone to enquire if they’re still, three scrolls in, wondering what you actually do.
Design should strengthen a strategy that’s already working. It cannot replace one that was never built in the first place. This is, genuinely, the entire difference between a website that gets compliments and one that gets clients — and it’s rarely visible from the outside, which is exactly why it’s so easy to miss.
Why Go Live Week starts somewhere completely different
When people hear “brand and website in a week,” they tend to picture a whirlwind of colour swatches, mock-up approvals, and rapid-fire design decisions.
That is not what actually happens. Not even slightly.
Before we build a single thing, we map:
The specific action each page needs to make easy — not generally, but for your actual ideal client, in their actual situation.
The beliefs your website needs to build, and the order they need to build in, so nobody’s asked to trust you before they understand you.
The questions your ideal client is already carrying around in their head before they’ve even found you.
Where the friction currently lives on your existing site — the exact moment where curiosity turns into someone quietly closing the tab.
How your messaging, your brand, and your website structure work together instead of quietly undermining each other, which happens far more often than anyone likes to admit.
Only once all of that is settled do we start designing anything.
Because the goal was never simply to hand you a prettier website. The goal is to hand you a business that’s easier to understand, easier to trust, and easier to buy from — which, it turns out, is a completely different project from “make it look nice.”
Your Pinterest board isn’t the problem
Honestly — bring it. Show me every font you’ve saved, every layout that made you stop scrolling, every brand whose vibe you’ve been quietly obsessed with for a year. We’ll absolutely use it as creative direction once the strategy is settled.
What we won’t do is confuse the inspiration for the strategy itself, because they’re doing two completely different jobs. One tells us what your brand should feel like. The other tells us whether a stranger will actually book you.
The websites that generate consistent enquiries were never built around aesthetics alone. They were built around the actual person using them — what that person needs to believe, in what order, before they’re ready to say yes. That’s where every website that actually works has to begin, whether or not the Pinterest board comes along for the ride.
Ready to launch a brand and website that works as hard as you do?
Go Live Week combines strategy, branding, and website design into one focused week — giving you a business that isn’t just beautiful, but genuinely built to convert.
Starting at $3,000–$4,500 depending on scope.
Just need the website, not the full brand rebuild? See Go Live Week — Website Edition →
The First Question Your Website Designer Asks Might Be the Reason Your Website Doesn’t Work
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