On this week’s The Engaging Marketeer, it’s a very simple podcast about websites. Now obviously, I’ve been building websites since the ’90s, and we’re now in 2025. Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of years. And I’ve seen a lot of different changes in web design, a lot of different techniques, a lot of fads come in over the years, and fads go again.
It’s got to the point where I can look at a website and tell you pretty much what year it was made based on the type of design that the website has, because of certain fads. It’s a frightening thing. It’s like carbon dating for websites.
[0:56]
So I’ve seen a lot of things come and go. And over the years, websites have become easier and easier to make. They really have. Back when I first started, you needed to be a code monkey. You needed to be able to get in there and edit the code and write HTML, write CSS, write JavaScript, write anything that you needed to do and actually make it happen.
I was originally coding contact forms using Perl or CGI. That doesn’t exist anymore. You don’t do that now. It’s just not needed. You can build a website with no technical knowledge whatsoever. And that makes it much more accessible for people, makes it much easier for people, and unfortunately means that anybody thinks they’re a web designer.
[1:33]
Now, I’m not having a whinge that, oh, people are using cheap web designers and I’m losing out on business. No. We’re not losing out on business. We’re getting the clients we want. We’re helping the clients that want to grow, and they’re being successful. That’s what we do.
I’m complaining here about the people who are missing out and don’t understand it. There are a number of people I’ve spoken to over the years — I’m not going to name them, but I am thinking of one person in particular right now. One very specific person I’m thinking of who decided that they didn’t want a professional website. They didn’t need a professional website because they got their business from other means.
[2:15]
And that’s great. That’s brilliant. I’m really happy for you that you don’t need a website. Fantastic. You get your business from other means. You get your business from, I don’t know, maybe it’s magazines. Maybe it’s networking. Maybe it’s flyers. Maybe it’s outbound phone calls. Whatever it may be, you don’t need a website. It’s not necessary.
But this particular person — and there are many like them — decided that, well, eventually at some point they were going to have to have a website. But they didn’t need one to be particularly fancy. They didn’t need a great website. They just needed one to exist.
So they didn’t want to use a digital marketing company. They didn’t want to use a web designer. And there are a lot of web designers around. A lot of really good web designers quite local to us. There are some in different networking groups. I know a lot of them. They’re really good. They’re really talented. They’ll do you a great website. Doesn’t have to be us.
[3:08]
But they didn’t want to use one of them either. They wanted to use someone that was just going to put a website up and make it there. A presence. Something where they could say, “Look, there’s my website.” Because they didn’t need it, remember — they were getting their business from other sources.
And this website was put together. It went live. And let’s just say you could tell it was made by somebody that had never made a website before. It was like my first website. It was like a four-year-old had had a go at it with some sticky-back plastic and some Sellotape and poster paints, put it together, and said, “There it is. There’s a website.”
But that’s broken. That’s broken. That doesn’t work on mobile. There’s a huge gap there. That text overlaps because they don’t understand CSS. None of it really works. It looks amateurish. It looks pathetic. Anybody looking at it will see that.
[3:54]
But they didn’t care, because that’s not where their business came from. They got their business from other areas. And I can’t really go into too much detail because if I do, people who know me will work out who this person is. And I’m trying desperately not to give away the identity of this person.
They did not need a good website because their business was coming from somewhere else.
But here’s the problem. No, you don’t need your website to generate you business. Fine, you get it from elsewhere. Yet you’ve got yourself a website that is absolutely shocking.
[4:25]
Yes, you don’t need a website to generate you business because your business is coming from somewhere else. But the problem is, what happens when those people who find you by this other means of business want to check you out?
They want to research you. They want to look at your presence online to see that you are what you’ve said you are, what you’ve been claimed to be. Are you the solution to their problems? Are you going to be the person they can rely on to fix this problem in their life that they’ve got? Whether it be a trade, whether it be a carpet, whether it be decorating, whether it be a roof, whether it be a will, whatever it may be.
Are you the person that’s going to help them? And they’ll look at you online and they’ll see this website that you’ve got that is absolute shite. And they will not use you. They will not enquire with you. They will not contact you because they’ve seen that actually, you’re quite amateurish.
[5:11]
It’s putting them off. It’s putting off your potential customers and you don’t even know it. You are completely unaware that it is happening. You have got no idea the business you are losing because your website is telling people, “Look how amateur I am. Look how much I don’t give a shit. Look how my business is my first website. Don’t use me. This is my attitude towards everything in business.”
Because remember the old adage: the way you do one thing is the way you are perceived to do everything. If somebody sees you cut corners on something you might think is insignificant in your business, they’ll think that’s what you do with everything else.
If your website is cheap and awful and doesn’t work, has broken links, broken images, text overlapping where it shouldn’t, and it just looks amateur, they will assume that is how you do everything in your business.
[6:02]
So by doing this you are losing clients. You may think you don’t need to generate business, but you definitely need it not to turn business away, because that is what is happening.
So that is a quick message to people out there that are thinking, “I don’t need a website to generate me business. I don’t need a professional website. I can just go with the cheapest knock-up, stick a page up there, and see if it just creates a bit of presence. That’s all I need because I get business from other sources.”
How much business is that turning away? Because it will be costing you business. It will be turning clients away. It will be turning customers away. And you will have no idea it’s doing it, because they just won’t contact you. They will see it, and they will not contact you. So you will be losing business because of your website.
[6:53]
So please think about that before you decide to get something just for the sake of having it because you get business elsewhere. It’s going to cost you.
So that’s been this week’s podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Leave me a comment. Leave me a review if you liked it. If you didn’t like it, don’t leave me a comment. Don’t leave me a review. And I will catch you on the next podcast.
