Most website projects that go wrong do not go wrong because the design was poor or the developer made mistakes. They go wrong earlier than that. They go wrong before a single wireframe is drawn or a line of code is written, because the thinking that should have happened first did not happen at all.
I have worked on enough website projects to recognise the warning signs early… e.g. a brief that focuses entirely on aesthetics, a client who couldn’t articulate what they want the website to do, a timeline that leaves no room for strategy, a budget that has been allocated almost entirely to design and build, with nothing set aside for the thinking that makes both worthwhile.
This post is about those warning signs. I’m not discouraging you, but if you understand where projects fail, then you can make sure yours does not.
The brief is about looks, not outcomes
The most common brief I see goes something like this: we want something clean and modern, easy to navigate, that reflects our brand. Sometimes there is a list of pages and competitor sites for reference. What is almost never in the brief is a clear statement of what the website needs to achieve.
- What do you want visitors to do when they arrive?
- How will you know, six months after launch, whether the site is working?
- What does success look like in concrete terms e.g. more enquiries, better quality leads, higher conversion, increased average order value?
These questions matter enormously, and when nobody asks them at the start, the build that follows has no real target to aim at.
A website that looks exactly like the brief asked for can still be a failure. A website that achieves what the business actually needs is a success, regardless of whether it matches the mood board. The brief needs to be about outcomes, not appearances.
Nobody has done the work on messaging
Design without messaging is decoration. You can have the most thoughtfully crafted layout in the world, and if the words on the page do not speak clearly to the right person about the right thing, it will not convert. This is the piece that most website projects underinvest in, and it is usually the piece that determines whether the site works.
Messaging means knowing who you are talking to, what they care about, what questions they have, what would make them trust you, and what you want them to do next. It means being able to describe what you do in a way that is specific enough to be meaningful and clear enough to be understood in seconds. That level of clarity does not happen by accident. It requires thought, and often it requires someone pushing back on vague or comfortable answers until something sharper emerges.
When a project skips this work and goes straight to design, the messaging gets written under pressure, usually by whoever is available, in whatever time is left at the end. The result is copy that is generic, safe, and forgettable. The design wraps around it and makes it look polished. But polished and forgettable is still forgettable.
The customer has not been considered seriously
Most websites are built from the inside out. The business owner thinks about what they want to say. The designer thinks about what looks good. The developer thinks about what is technically correct. The customer (the person who will actually use the site and decide whether to get in touch or buy) is often an afterthought.
This shows up in all kinds of ways:
- Navigation is structured around how the business organises itself rather than how customers think.
- Content that leads with credentials rather than with the customer’s problem.
- Calls to action that are convenient for the business to offer rather than easy for the customer to take.
- A homepage that answers the questions the business owner thinks are important rather than the ones a first-time visitor actually has.
Before any website project begins, it is worth spending serious time with this question: what does a person who has never encountered your business before actually need to see, feel, and understand in order to trust you enough to take the next step? The answer shapes everything, and most projects never ask it properly.
The timeline does not allow for thinking
Website projects are often driven by external deadlines asuch as a product launch or a conference. These deadlines are real, but they create pressure that consistently pushes strategy to the margins. If the site needs to be live in six weeks, the temptation is to start building immediately and think later.
The problem is that later never really comes. Once the build is underway, every conversation is about whether this feature works, whether that page looks right, whether the launch date is still achievable. The strategic questions (who is this for, what should it do, how will we know if it is working) get squeezed out entirely.
A realistic timeline for a website project that is going to work builds in time for discovery before design begins. there should be enough structured thinking to get the brief right, understand the customer, and establish what good looks like. Everything that follows is faster and better when that groundwork has been done.
The existing site has not been properly understood
If you already have a website, it is a source of information that most projects ignore. Your analytics will tell you which pages people visit, how long they stay, where they leave, and what they searched for to find you. That data is a map of what is working and what is not. Building a new site without looking at it is like planning a journey without checking where you currently are.
The audit does not have to be exhaustive. But it should answer the basic questions:
- What content is getting engagement?
- What content is being ignored?
- Where are people dropping off?
- What does the search data suggest about what your audience is actually looking for?
Those answers should shape the new site.
There is no plan for what happens after launch
A website launch is not a marketing strategy. It is the beginning of one.
The businesses that get the most from their websites are the ones that treat the launch as a starting point and continue to invest in the site afterwards, such as updating content, analysing performance, improving the pages that are not converting, and building on the ones that are.
Most website projects end at launch – the team disperses, and the client moves on to the next thing. The site sits more or less as it was on day one, slowly drifting further from where the business is. Six months later, the conversation about whether the website is working starts again. And nobody has the data to answer it properly because nobody set up the measurement at the start.
What should happen after launch should be part of the project plan from the beginning, not an afterthought once everything else is done. You should conisder how the site will be maintained, what will be measured, and how the content will be kept current.
The common thread
All of the failure points above have the same root cause: the project started with execution before the thinking was done.
The design began before the strategy was clear. The build began before the messaging was right. The launch happened before anyone had agreed on what success would look like.
Slowing down at the start of a website project may feel counterintuitive. There is always pressure to get moving, to show progress, and to have something to look at. But the businesses that end up with websites that actually work are almost always the ones that resisted that pressure long enough to get the foundations right.
If you are thinking about a new website and want to start with the right questions rather than the wrong ones, get in touch. That conversation is always worth having before a brief is written.
