Who it's for
Different trades, different problems
A therapist and a plumber both need a website, and almost nothing about the two jobs is the same. What follows is what I have learned about each — the mistakes that come up over and over, and what a site has to do to be worth having.
Private practice
Therapists
Someone looking for a therapist is deciding whether to talk to a stranger about the worst thing in their life. Your website is where they work out whether that stranger might be you — and most of that decision happens before they ever pick up the phone.
Trades and home services
Trades
Your customer is standing in a flooded basement holding a phone. They are not reading your About page. They want to know that you cover their town, that you can come out, and what number to call — and if that takes more than about ten seconds they are calling whoever is next on the list.
Clubs and nonprofits
Nonprofits
A service club website has a problem no business has: the person who built it stops being on the board, and nobody knows the password. Three years later the events page still lists a pancake breakfast from 2022 and nobody can log in to fix it.
Food and drink
Restaurants
Someone is hungry, holding a phone, and choosing between you and one other place. They want the menu, your hours, and where you are. Almost every restaurant site I have looked at around here makes at least one of those three harder than it needs to be.
Not on the list
Yours isn’t here?
These are the ones I have seen enough of to say something useful about. The work is the same underneath — a site designed for your business rather than picked off a template, built to work on a phone, and handed over to you completely.
If your trade is not listed it is not a problem, it just means I have not written the page yet. Tell me what you do and what is wrong with the site you have.
Does your website actually belong to you?
Half an hour on the phone, free, no pitch. Worst case you leave knowing exactly what you do and do not own.