When I first started Star Mountain Design, I never imagined that years later, I’d have a treasure trove of stories about the dumpster fires our clients experienced with previous designers before finding us.

One thing that’s rather unfortunate about the web design industry is that it’s not regulated by a governing body. This means anyone can declare themselves a web designer and set up shop. Everyone at Star Mountain has had formal training in web design, but it’s one of those things that’s sadly not a requirement in the industry. We just have to hope that the people we work with appreciate that we’ve put a lot of blood, sweat and tears (soooo many tears) into something we’re genuinely passionate about.

Much to our dismay, however, the onslaught of AI means everyone thinks they can do the job we do.

While it’s easy enough to put something “pretty” online, the reality is more complicated: there are websites that aren’t built with good UX, websites with code from many different moving parts that can conflict, and of course, websites that lack SEO consideration – and this can hurt your business more than it helps it.

We see this all the time – websites that look good, but quietly fail where it actually matters: bringing in inquiries, showing up on Google and converting visitors into customers.

A real life example: They hired an AI junkie for their website

A few months ago, we were approached by a company in the United States that had a real dilemma on their hands.  After deciding to upgrade their original, perfectly functional (albeit slightly dated) website for something more sleek, the owner turned to a friend who was, in his own words, “obsessed with AI.”

Now hey, there is nothing wrong with using AI here and there if you know what you’re doing and your own code is still doing the heavy lifting. However, in the wrong hands, things can go south fast.

And for this American business, it almost ended in bankruptcy.

Our (now) client told us we had been recommended to him by a business contact.  He asked us to take a look at the site that his friend had created a few months prior.  I looked at it and thought, “Well, this is a pretty site. It looks fine.” I wasn’t sure why it required a client login or a chatbot – and neither was the owner. Given the fairly narrow size of the business’s service area (as this was a business that did physical work) and the owner telling me he wasn’t a “tech guy,” it felt like overkill.

He told us it had been ages since he’d had a contact form entry or a phone call, and on our end, we could see they weren’t even appearing in Google search results for their services.

It was a pretty website, at least on desktop. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like the look of it.

But it didn’t work.

And worse yet, we couldn’t even figure out how it was built from an outside code inspection.  The owner couldn’t even log into the backend of his website and at some point, his friend, after suggesting more AI fixes, stopped responding altogether.  The friend wasn’t thinking about going back to basics. He just wanted to add more things to “make it work.”

That wasn’t where our heads were at – we were thinking this needed to be stripped back. One thing we don’t do at Star Mountain is try to unpack someone else’s code.  It’s too complicated and given this was not a WordPress site, we genuinely had no idea where to start. The hourly rate to get our hands dirty in this without guaranteed success would have cost more than rebuilding the site – and at least if we redid it, we knew it would stand the test of time.

We offered him one option: rebuild the site with a new, crisp and user-friendly design  – and very few bells and whistles. He had already told us he was “not a tech person.”  That’s one statement we always hear loud and clear with our clients.

If they don’t like the “techy” end of things, then they don’t want to be dealing with client profiles, chatbots and other aspects requiring constant dashboard logins.  We’ve seen it enough with clients who want eCommerce websites but realise that educating oneself on how to manage this kind of website is a very steep learning curve – not for the faint of heart.

Because his company had already lost so much business, we changed our tactic with this particular project. We proposed that we would get his homepage online first with a contact form built in, then we would restore the SEO backlinks from his original website before the AI mess happened. After, we would build out the rest of the site properly.

Within days of his new homepage being live, he was inundated with calls and contact form entries. That one page, on its own, is performing well on search engines – all from a well-built homepage that actually works and converts.

That’s all it took.

The rest of the site is almost done now. We expect that as more pages go live, those inquiries will only increase.

So why isn’t your website doing the job?

1) It’s not actually built to convert

If you’ve ever visited a website that left you scratching your head (and we all have) then you already know that some websites just aren’t built with their users in mind. We live in a weird in-between time where a large portion of the population (Elder Millennials, Gen X, Boomers and the Silent Generation) didn’t grow up with the internet – while others (Young Millennials and Gen Z and beyond) have never known anything different.

That’s why every website should cater not only to its target audience, but also to its least proficient user. If your website hides important information or doesn’t make clear calls to action, you’ve already shot yourself in the foot.

2. Things are broken (and you don’t even know)

Our client didn’t realise his contact form wasn’t working. His friend didn’t test it properly – otherwise he would have known from the start.  But there are so many things that can cause shit to hit the fan – and if you’re not on top of your site, it happens. It’s even happened to us.

A simple password change can make an Instagram feed stop displaying. A broken link can bring your users to a 404 page. A booking system doesn’t notify the owner that someone has booked an appointment.

Funny story – this literally happened to me last week when I showed up to an appointment that apparently, only existed in my email box.  I had gotten an email confirmation from the business owner’s swish-looking booking system that my appointment was confirmed (this was 2 weeks before) but as I found out when I was standing in the rain, outside of an office building that required being buzzed in, the business owner didn’t know about my appointment and had actually moved offices (on the other side of town!).

Not yesterday.  Not a week ago. The owner had moved 3 months before, in addition to making a change to only take phone bookings – which also wasn’t reflected on the website.

She felt bad that I showed up to the appointment and said she would refund me what I paid and even offered me a free appointment down the line, but I was annoyed.

And soaked.

I made the effort to budget the time and money to come, to be on time, and what did I get from it?  A simple “Oh the booking system must not be working and I should have updated my site.”  Well, yeah. And you should have made sure your booking system was disabled.

Not only that, she said it was the second time this had happened recently.  Really? The second time and you didn’t fix it after the first? I said no thanks, and left it at that. I’ll give my business to someone who actually values their customers.

There is just no excuse for that when people are putting their credit card details in your site (and also are juggling busy schedules!).

If your website isn’t working functionally, it’s definitely not working for you.

3) Your SEO has a permanent “Out of Office” on

With the exception of one client, every client who’s ever told us they weren’t worried about SEO has come back later to say, ‘Just kidding!’

SEO is crucial to businesses – especially those with storefronts and local service areas. It means their service area has limits and local competition. Some businesses survive on word of mouth (we’re one of them) especially in crowded markets.  But for others, showing up robustly in a Google search is everything.

I’ve even dismissed SEO as not being that important for us at times. As I mentioned, most of our business comes from recommendations.  It wasn’t until the autumn of 2024 when we landed a client in a part of the US I had zero connection to – Michigan – that I reconsidered my original position.  We are UK-based but do have a lot of clients in the US –  they are mostly in New York (where I am originally from), Texas and Florida.

I didn’t know anyone in Michigan and hadn’t even been in the state since I was about 10 years old.  I had to ask him how he found us – I needed to know and probably sounded borderline insane in my desire to find out. He said he found us on Google.  He was looking for a very simple, affordable site, and sure enough, we had clearly built that into our own SEO.

After that, I was fully convinced of how crucial SEO is, even if I didn’t think we were reaping the benefits on a day-to-day basis.

If your website isn’t well-built (lots of broken links, not mobile optimised, poor quality of content) then Google is basically treating you like a situationship instead of a relationship.  When you bring something quality to the table, Google stops being commitment-phobic and shows you off in the search results.

4. Your website is a “Trophy Wife” that’s built for looks, not strategy

Revisiting my reaction to our earlier example, my initial thought that the website “looked fine” perfectly illustrates this point.

At first glance, that was an appropriate reaction.  And because I didn’t require his services, I had no other way of knowing that this smart-looking website, with all its bells and whistles, was batting a big, fat zero when it came to conversion.  I wasn’t making a contact entry and I wasn’t looking in his local area for his company’s services (hell, I was an ocean away from his local area).  As a web designer, however, I could clearly see how the problems his AI-heavy website had would have nearly sunk his business.

Because it comes down to this: there are customers who think, “Well screw this company, I sent in a contact entry and they couldn’t even be bothered to reply?”

The customer isn’t going to know that your contact form doesn’t work. They don’t know that you forgot to update the phone number on your website,  so calls to the old number go straight to a dead voicemail box.  They don’t know that the information your chatbot is giving out doesn’t necessarily reflect your business values – or even accurate information. It is, afterall, an AI chatbot so all it can do is give its best guess based on what you told it.

And because your website looks sleek and current (and not from the Space Jam 1996 era – sorry, I will never miss an opportunity to refer to this historical gem!) your visitors think that this is a site that’s updated on the regular and sees more action than Leonardo DiCaprio and his latest 25-year-old girlfriend.  You and your website being unable to provide a response to these potential clients will be seen negatively and the reality is, this is business you will likely lose. Can you afford that?

5. It’s not set up to grow with you

This is a problem we hear a lot about from clients who come to us with websites built on commercial website builders.

The trouble with most commercial website builders is that the more features and pages you need, the more you pay. It’s not a one-and-done deal, it’s every month (with the only savings being if you commit to it annually).

This adds up for small businesses.

Not only that, should you decide the cost is too much, you often can’t transfer the design (we do, however, offer a service to help this – shameless plug – in our migration package).

The main issue here is this: if your business is looking to be unique and stand out, being that basic girl on Squarespace just isn’t it.

Not even just that, but if it’s hard to update (I refer back to our client who couldn’t even log in to the dashboard of his site), then you risk having outdated information on your site.  Maybe phone numbers don’t change often, but you know what does change a lot? Pricing.

Having a website that’s easy to update in the backend is key for any business that wants to grow.  One thing we do to make things easier for our clients is to use Advanced Custom Fields in our WordPress builds. A majority of our clients find them easy to use when updating text and images post-build, which is exactly why we use them.  It is 100% crucial that the information on your website stays up to date.

The bottom line: Your website needs to be flexible, because your business needs to be flexible. If your website is a huge part of your marketing, it needs to be able to take one for the team.

 

“Looks good” is not a business strategy (at least with web design!)

In the real world, we judge books by their covers all the time.  I know I love buying beauty products that come in aesthetically pleasing packaging (if it has a gradient/ombre, I’m already sold), all while knowing that some of the least sexy packaging usually belongs to the GOATs of the skincare world.  Have I ever ended up with a red, blistered, peeling face from a product in a pretty package? Absolutely. Do I learn my lesson after mishaps like these?  Sadly – not as much as I should.

But do I apply these lessons about look vs. function to my work? Always.

Because the truth is, you can have both – you can have a stylish, attractive website that does everything you need it to. You can have a website that functions as beautifully under the hood as it does on the outside.

Can you have one without the other? Of course not. Just like you can’t have a site that is “pretty” but broken, you also won’t do well from a site that works but looks so dated that it convinces your potential customers that you’re not modern or even still in business.

A pretty website is nice.

A working website pays the bills.