Why it's never "just a website"
- Veronica Ferraro
- May 5
- 4 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
I have a rule.
When I receive an email that makes my blood boil (the kind that deserves a reply written entirely in capital letters) I sit on it. At least 24 hours. Sometimes 48. I draft the response, I let it breathe, and then I come back to it with something resembling perspective.
I apply the same rule to writing. If I sit down and the words are coming out dripping in sarcasm (which is 80% of the time), I close the laptop. I come back when I can say what I actually mean.
I was in the middle of doing exactly that today. Letting the dust settle. Choosing my words.
And then the woman at the table behind me said "website design is highway robbery", and just like that, my 24-hour rule shattered into pieces.
Here's the thing. She wasn't entirely wrong.
She'd clearly dealt with a bad quote from someone who could make something look pretty but didn't actually understand the web. And that happens, more than it should. There are a lot of people out there calling themselves web designers whose expertise really lies elsewhere. And most areas of design are valid skill sets that contribute to a website, but they are not the whole picture. The web is a different discipline. It moves, it loads, it converts, it breaks, it gets found. A site that looks beautiful in a static mockup can still quietly fail every person who actually tries to use it.
So I get it. If that's your reference point, "highway robbery" makes sense. But then she said the other thing."You know who has a really nice website? [competitor]. I think we just do it ourselves and copy that."
And that's where I have to push back. Respectfully. Calmly. (24-hour rule and all that.) Because "just a website" might be the most expensive misconception a business can have.
A website is not a thing. It's a system.
When a client comes to me and says "I just need a website", what they mean (or what they think they mean) is: I need some pages on the internet. A home page, an about page, maybe a contact form. How hard can it be?
What they actually need is a system that does the following, simultaneously:
Communicates who they are and why it matters, immediately, to a stranger who showed up from a Google search
Guides that stranger toward a decision — to call, to buy, to book, to trust
Works flawlessly on a phone screen, a laptop, a tablet, that giant screen their friend just bought, in a browser they didn't know existed
Loads fast enough that the stranger doesn't leave before it does
Plays nicely with the algorithm so the right strangers find it in the first place
Scales when the business does, without breaking everything in the process
None of that is "just a website." That's strategy, user experience, copywriting, brand, technical architecture, and SEO working together. The website is the output. The thinking is the product.
The platform question is the wrong question
I build on Wix Studio. I say that openly. And yes, I'm aware that for some people, that sentence ends the conversation. Oh, it's a platform. So it's basically a template, right?
No. And here's why that logic doesn't hold.
The platform is the tool. A carpenter doesn't become less skilled because they used a good saw. What changes with a platform is the access, it lowers the floor, so more people can build something. What doesn't change is the ceiling. The strategy required for a 135-page website with a complex content management system doesn't disappear because of the platform it lives on. The thinking doesn't get easier. The architecture doesn't simplify. The questions I ask before I build a single page are the same regardless of what I'm building in.
The woman (who is also a designer, might I add) copying her competitor's website will find this out. You can replicate the aesthetic. You can't replicate the strategy behind it.
The clients who get it, and the ones who don't
I've worked with plenty of clients who came in sceptical. Not about the process, not about me, just about whether any of it would actually matter. One told me upfront that he thought investing in branding and a website was a bit of a wank. Fair enough, I'd rather know than not. Six months after launch, he called to say the site was performing better than he'd expected. That's the version of the story I love. The one where the business gets it.
Not every story goes that way. Sometimes a business owner decides that cheaper is smarter. That faster means better. That if someone else can do it for less, the work must be equivalent. And then six months later, their bargain website is sitting there, looking fine, converting nobody, and they can't figure out why.
A website isn't a line item. It's a business decision. And like most business decisions, what you put in is roughly what you get back out.
So who is this actually for?
Not the business owner who thinks websites are highway robbery. I can't help that person, and honestly, I'm not trying to.
This is for the business owner who has a feeling, a nagging sense that their current website doesn't actually represent what they do, or who they are, or where they're going.
Who has looked at their site and thought: this is fine, but fine isn't good enough and it isn't working.
The work I love is the complex stuff. The websites with real architecture behind them. The projects that require me to ask twenty questions before I touch a single thing. The clients who understand that strategy and execution aren't separate, that you can't have a good website without both.
If that sounds like the kind of thing your business needs, I'd love to talk.
And if you're the woman I overheard, I hope the DIY version works out.
Genuinely.
