What should a good business website actually do?

A lot of businesses know something isn’t working with their website. They’re not getting enough enquiries, the wrong people are getting in touch, prospects keep asking questions the site should answer, or the business has moved on and the website hasn’t.

The obvious response is to start fixing things. Better SEO. New copy. A redesign. More calls to action. Perhaps a complete rebuild.

But there’s a question to answer first: what does the business actually need its website to do?

A business website needs a job

Sometimes that job is generating enquiries. Sometimes it’s explaining something complicated, building confidence, supporting existing customers or helping people make decisions. Usually it’s doing several of those things at once.

So instead of asking what makes a good business website, ask what this particular business needs its website to do. If nobody can answer that, deciding whether you need better SEO, a new homepage or a complete rebuild is mostly guesswork.

The answer will be different for every business. A small practice might need people to recognise they’re in the right place, understand what’s on offer and feel comfortable getting in touch.

A B2B company might need to explain multiple products to different audiences, support a buying process that takes months and give its sales team something useful to work with. An established company might get most of its work through referrals. Its website matters when someone hears the name, looks it up and checks whether what they find matches what they’ve been told.

There are, though, some useful things to test.

Attract the right people

More traffic isn’t necessarily better. You want to attract people who might actually want what you do.

SEO, content, campaigns, referrals and reputation can all bring people to a website. But ten relevant visitors can be worth more than a thousand who were never going to buy anything.

The numbers can be misleading. Traffic can increase while enquiries stay flat. A page can rank well without attracting anyone likely to become a customer.

Traffic matters. But only if it’s bringing the right people.

Explain why you’re relevant

Getting someone to the website is only the start. They still need to work out: Is this for me? Do these people understand my problem? Do they actually do what I need?

This gets harder as businesses grow. Services pile up, audiences multiply and internal language creeps into the copy. The people inside the business know how everything fits together. A new visitor doesn’t.

I’ve seen businesses with plenty to say but no obvious route through it. The pages aren’t necessarily bad. The problem is that potential customers have to understand the organisation before they can see what’s relevant to them.

That isn’t always a redesign problem. Sometimes changing the structure, language and routes through the existing site is enough.

Build confidence

A website doesn’t have to make the whole sale. Often, it just needs to make someone comfortable taking the next step.

They might have found you through Google, been referred by somebody they trust or met you yesterday and be checking you out before replying. What they find should answer questions rather than create new ones.

That might mean relevant work, a clear explanation of how you work, evidence of expertise or useful answers to sensible questions. Sometimes it’s simply having a website that matches the business they thought they were dealing with.

Looking impressive isn’t really the point. Reducing uncertainty is.

Make the next step easy

Not everyone needs a giant BOOK A CALL button. But if somebody wants to continue, don’t make them work out how.

Depending on the business, that might mean making an enquiry, booking an appointment, requesting a demo, buying something, visiting you or finding the right person to contact. And not everyone is ready for the same next step.

Someone researching a £50,000 purchase needs something different from someone booking a £75 appointment. One website often has to work for both.

Help the sales process

A website doesn’t stop being useful because a lead came from somewhere else.

Someone gets your email and looks you up. You have a meeting and they come back afterwards. They send your website to their boss. Procurement checks you out. Someone compares you with two competitors before deciding who to call. That’s all part of the sale.

If your salespeople are constantly explaining things the website should already explain, hunting for something useful to send prospects or correcting impressions the site has created, it isn’t helping much.

This is also a useful way to identify website problems. Ask the people having sales conversations what prospects misunderstand, what they repeatedly explain and what they wish they had to send afterwards. The answers often tell you more than another round of homepage feedback.

Support existing customers

Websites tend to be built around winning new customers, but existing customers use them too. They need opening times, documentation, support, account access, product information, contact details and answers to questions.

Make those things easy to find and customers get a better experience. Somebody inside the business probably gets less work as well.

Stop creating work inside the business

A website can create work as easily as remove it. If people keep phoning with the same question, or staff are updating the same information in multiple places, something isn’t working.

Fixing it might not involve a redesign. It could mean clearer information, a better process, connecting systems, improving content management or giving the sales team a page they can actually send to people.

None of that is particularly glamorous, but it can still be valuable.

Measure whether the website is working

Once you know what the website is supposed to do, deciding what to measure becomes much easier.

If its main job is generating new business, that might mean qualified enquiries rather than total traffic. If people book through the site, completed bookings matter. If it supports a longer sales process, you might track whether the right people are reaching useful product, service or case study pages.

Some measures won’t even live in analytics. If customers stop asking a question because the website now answers it properly, that matters. If salespeople have something better to send after a meeting, that matters too.

There isn’t one set of metrics that tells you whether a business website is working. What you measure should follow from what you need it to do.

Start with the business, not the feature list

A lot of website projects start with pages, features and visual references. Should we have a resources section? Do we need a chatbot? What CMS should we use? Should there be video on the homepage?

Maybe. But those decisions come later.

Start with the business. Who needs to find you? What are they trying to do? What do they need to understand? What might make them hesitate? What would give them confidence? What should they be able to do next?

Then look beyond the visitor. How should the website help sales? What do existing customers need from it? Where is it creating unnecessary work? And how will you know whether it’s working?

Once you know that, you can talk about content, pages, SEO, design, features and technology. Those decisions now have a reason behind them.

Design matters. SEO matters. Technology matters. But they’re means to an end, not the job itself.