<h1 id="11c0abfd-840d-4eab-aa52-a23f2ffdcb25" data-toc-id="11c0abfd-840d-4eab-aa52-a23f2ffdcb25" style="text-align: left; font-size: 32px; line-height: 1.2;">Stop Designing Websites. Start Building Pages That Sell.</h1>Gone are the days when every business needed a complicated website.If you're running a growing service business, what do you actually need your website to do?You need people to understand who you are, trust that you know what you're doing and take the next step.That's pretty much it.Unless you've got a warehouse containing thousands of products, you probably don't need something resembling an enormous online catalogue.You need a page that does its job.<h2 id="8cfd66b0-e5fb-4501-b66d-126cd8fe9e4f" data-toc-id="8cfd66b0-e5fb-4501-b66d-126cd8fe9e4f" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Less is more, especially now</h2>People are overwhelmed with content.And now that AI can generate vast amounts of the stuff at the press of a button, I think simplicity has become even more important.Whether you're selling a service, product, course, coaching programme, community, lead magnet or something else, your landing page needs to answer a handful of pretty basic questions:<ul><li>Who are you?</li><li>What do you do?</li><li>Who do you do it for?</li><li>What problems can you solve?</li><li>What do other people say about you?</li><li>What should I do next?</li></ul>You don't necessarily need 27 pages and a navigation menu that looks like the contents page of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.You need enough information to help somebody make a decision.<div data-youtube-video="" style="display: flex; justify-content: flex-start;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/A8vbPUWEpKk" start="0" width="640" height="480" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" style="max-width: 100%; text-align: left;"></iframe></div><h2 id="9347aa2f-1d54-41a9-b214-d0152f631aa0" data-toc-id="9347aa2f-1d54-41a9-b214-d0152f631aa0" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Building websites has changed massively</h2>There's traditionally been a fairly obvious problem here for small business owners.Most of us are good at the thing we actually do.We're often pretty shit when it comes to technology.Historically, that meant getting somebody technical involved to design the page, build it, make it work and find somewhere for it to live.That process has sped up massively.AI and other technology can now do a lot of the heavy lifting involved in creating a landing page. It's reached the point where I can teach non-technical people how to build their own pages relatively easily.That doesn't mean everybody suddenly wants to become a web developer.Plenty of people will quite rightly say, "Can you just do it for me?"Fair enough.The important bit is that if something takes less time to create, it can also become more cost-effective to create.And there's another benefit that's easily overlooked.<h2 id="157bf683-8df3-481a-9e92-03bbbf848c0b" data-toc-id="157bf683-8df3-481a-9e92-03bbbf848c0b" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Your website is going to change</h2>Businesses don't stay still.You might launch offering one particular service or product, then discover your customers want something completely different.You add things. Remove things. Change direction. Find new customers. Develop new offers.Your website needs to keep up.I've seen this with a craft business that originally focused predominantly on cake toppers and celebrations. As the business expanded, it moved into home products, drinkware, keepsakes, seasonal products, items for businesses, clubs and groups, and bespoke work.The website wasn't particularly old before fairly substantial changes were needed.Historically, every one of those changes could have meant more development time and more expense.The technology available now makes those changes much quicker.So we're not only talking about making websites cheaper and quicker to build.We're talking about making them easier to maintain as the business changes too.<h2 id="5d6f96ee-707f-4cbc-be17-cd86d4f3f149" data-toc-id="5d6f96ee-707f-4cbc-be17-cd86d4f3f149" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">AI can build the page. It can't have the conversation.</h2>This is where I think we need to be careful with AI.AI is pretty good at some parts of this job.It's terribly bad at others.For some of the landing pages I've worked on, the starting point wasn't somebody sitting down and asking AI to "write me a high-converting website".It was a conversation.Person to person. A couple of clip-on microphones, a few cups of tea and a chat about the business, the customers and the stories behind it.That's the stuff you need.AI is a bit like a sausage machine. Put shit in, you'll get shit out.You still need decent human input.You also need to understand how to structure the page, which words matter, what information somebody needs and how you speak to the people you actually want to work with.AI can help enormously with the heavy lifting and the coding.It still needs human intelligence.<h2 id="e310b622-966f-4362-99e8-f3ce016888a2" data-toc-id="e310b622-966f-4362-99e8-f3ce016888a2" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Give your landing page one job</h2>This is probably the most important bit.A good landing page has one job.It takes somebody towards the next sensible step.That next step will depend on what you're selling.It might be filling in an enquiry form. It might be booking a call. It could be sending you a WhatsApp message or heading to a checkout and buying a course.The exact action isn't the point.What's important is that the page isn't constantly offering visitors different directions to wander off in.If you want somebody to book a call, build the page around booking the call.If you want them to message you, make that obvious.If you want them to buy, make getting to the checkout simple.Every unnecessary decision creates a little bit more friction.<h2 id="ae8574f6-85a1-499a-80a4-3c0b6aa2b13c" data-toc-id="ae8574f6-85a1-499a-80a4-3c0b6aa2b13c" style="text-align: left; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2;">Your website isn't there to impress other web designers</h2>Marketing and social media might bring somebody to your website.What happens next matters.If they arrive and immediately have to work out where to go, what to read and which of 15 links they're supposed to click, you're making their job harder.Remove the friction.Answer their questions.Build trust.Then make the next step ridiculously obvious.In my experience, getting this piece right results in more of the things businesses actually care about. More messages, enquiries, bookings, proposals and sales.Not because the website has more clever stuff on it.Because it has less stuff getting in the way.If you're working on a landing page, microsite, new offer, course, community or anything else that needs to turn interest into an enquiry or sale, that's exactly the sort of thing I help with at Help With Digital.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.helpwithdigital.com">www.helpwithdigital.com</a>

Most service businesses don't need a complicated website. Here's why simpler landing pages, clearer calls to action and a bit of AI are changing things.

Do You Really Need a Complicated Website Anymore?

Stop Designing Websites. Start Building Pages That Sell.

AI can build the page. It can't have the conversation.

Your website isn't there to impress other web designers

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Do You Really Need a Complicated Website Anymore?

Do You Really Need a Complicated Website Anymore?

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