What makes a good business website?

By Nikki Prokop, Co-founder and Creative Director, Noknok Studios

A recommendation changes the way someone looks at a website.

If a trusted friend or adviser has recommended a particular product or supplier, the visitor is not starting from nothing. They already have a reason to take the business seriously. The website becomes the next piece of evidence.

An accounting firm described as especially good with complex family businesses should have a website that makes that experience obvious. A commercial builder recommended for larger projects shows work of the scale the visitor was expecting.

But sometimes there’s a small disconnect.

The builder’s homepage is dominated by residential renovations even though most of its work is now commercial. The accountant talks broadly about tax returns and bookkeeping, while the expertise that prompted the recommendation is buried several pages deep. A business that’s grown into a substantial operation still has a website that was written when the founders were doing almost everything themselves.

There may be nothing obviously wrong with any of these websites.

They can be attractive. The information can be accurate. Every link can work.

The problem only becomes apparent when someone arrives expecting to find one business and comes away with the impression of another.

A website can be perfectly credible and still be wrong

Businesses rarely change all at once.

A new service is added because a few clients start asking for it. Then it becomes a meaningful source of revenue. A particular kind of project goes well, referrals follow and before long the company has developed a reputation in an area that barely existed when the website was launched.

The work changes first and the website tends to catch up later.

Even when a new website is being created, the same gap can appear for a different reason. It’s easy to focus on the visible decisions: colours, imagery, page layouts, whether the homepage feels modern enough.

Those things do matter because presentation influences how a business is perceived, but none of them answer the more important question of what the business actually offers and why that matters to a customer. That is its proposition.

A beautifully designed services page is still unhelpful if the important service is treated like an afterthought. A polished homepage can still leave someone unsure whether the business works with clients of their size. Clear navigation does not help when the information behind it reflects an old version of the company.

A website can look expensive and make the business harder to understand.

Most people arrive with a problem to solve

Very few people visit a business website just for fun.

The person told to check out a particular landscaper may already know that the business has a good reputation. What they might not know is whether it regularly works on projects of their size, or whether the particular expertise mentioned by their referrer is a significant part of the work they do.

A facilities manager comparing maintenance companies likely already knows exactly what they need. They are looking for evidence that the company has experience with sites like theirs and the capacity to support an operation of that scale.

A long history in business might be important if it demonstrates experience that is difficult to acquire. It matters much less if it occupies half the About page without helping someone understand the business today.

A portfolio can provide useful evidence when the projects are relevant to the work a business wants to win. Twenty attractive examples from four years ago may say something quite different.

Even familiar information can carry more weight than businesses sometimes realise. Location matters when the work happens on site. Qualifications matter when they establish competence that cannot simply be assumed. The size and type of previous clients can help someone judge whether the business is experienced in work like theirs.

This does not mean every possible question needs an answer on the website.

Some services are complicated. Some projects can’t be scoped without a conversation. There are situations where a responsible answer genuinely begins with, “It depends.”

A useful question is what someone needs to understand before they take the next logical step.

The answer will be different for a person choosing an emergency plumber and a company appointing an engineering consultant for a six-month project.

Good design can make the wrong thing clear

Presentation affects perception. Poor typography makes information hard to read. Weak hierarchy buries important content. A site that feels neglected can raise reasonable doubt about whether the information on it is current.

But good design can execute the wrong decisions extremely well.

A commercial construction company can have a beautifully designed homepage filled with residential projects. A specialist consultancy can devote its most prominent space to broad claims about service and quality while the expertise that genuinely distinguishes it appears much further down the page.

An impressive portfolio can give disproportionate attention to the projects with the best photographs rather than the ones most likely to establish credibility with a prospective client.

The designer may be doing exactly what they were asked to do.

Someone has to decide what belongs on the page before it exists

A homepage has an extraordinarily limited time to deliver its message. Seconds.

Giving all information equal weight does not avoid making a decision about what matters. It just makes it harder for a visitor to answer the questions they’re asking.

The person writing the website has to understand which parts of the business matter commercially now. They need to know what prospective customers already understand and where explanation is necessary. They need to distinguish between something the company is proud of and something a customer has a reason to care about.

A business may have been operating for 27 years, have four office locations and have grown from two employees to 35. Those facts matter enormously to the people who built it. A prospective customer is more interested in what they tell them.

Twenty-seven years may suggest depth of experience.

Thirty-five employees may indicate enough capacity to take on a substantial project.

Four office locations might be a point of pride to the business and completely irrelevant to the decision being made.

Businesses accumulate services over time.

What began as a specialist offering expands as customers ask for adjacent work, staff develop new capabilities and opportunities appear. Eventually the services page contains twelve boxes of approximately equal size.

The business itself may know that two of those services account for most of its best work, another four are usually sold alongside them, and one is barely offered anymore.

The visitor sees twelve boxes.

Deciding what to emphasise requires understanding the business well enough to make those distinctions.

It also requires restraint. A website does not become more useful each time another claim, credential, service or paragraph is added. Information earns its place by helping someone understand something that matters.

The same thinking produces very different websites

A specialist engineering consultancy may need substantial technical detail because the people assessing it are capable of evaluating that detail and may need it before making contact.

A local plumbing company has a different problem.

Someone with water coming through the ceiling is not looking to spend fifteen minutes studying the company’s methodology. They need to know whether the plumber services their area, handles this kind of problem and can be contacted without difficulty.

Neither website is inherently more sophisticated. They are doing different jobs.

A business that gets a lot of its enquiries through Google may need substantial service and location content because many visitors arrive knowing little about the company. A specialist firm that gets most of its work through referrals may find that people arrive with considerable context already.

A site still needs to work properly on the devices people use. Important information should be accessible. Pages should load quickly enough that the site isn’t frustrating to use. If search matters commercially, search engines (and increasingly robots) need to be able to understand the content.

But none of those requirements can determine which services deserve prominence, which projects provide useful evidence or how much explanation a prospective customer actually needs.

So, what makes a good business website?

By the time colours, typography, copy and code are visible, many of the important decisions have already been made: which audience matters most, which work represents the business now, what needs explaining, what can safely be assumed and what deserves the most prominent space.

A good business website represents the business accurately, makes the important parts understandable to the people the business wants to reach, and gives them enough information to decide whether taking the next step makes sense.

When someone arrives because a person they trust has recommended the business, what they find should make the recommendation easier to understand.

About the author

Nikki Prokop is the co-founder of Noknok Studios, a Melbourne web design and development studio. She writes about websites, strategy, design and the decisions that shape how businesses present themselves.

A note on AI

I use AI as part of my writing process to explore ideas, research, edit and refine drafts. The ideas, opinions and final words published under my name are mine, and I take responsibility for everything I publish.