We Regret to Inform You That Your Website Is Your Salesperson

Somewhere out there, a business owner is making something extraordinary, by hand, with care, possibly at the expense of their marriage. They’ve spent twenty years getting good at it, learning things you can only learn by doing them wrong and then lying awake thinking about them. Their website says “Welcome to our website.” Jesus Christ, Doug, tell them about the thing. You’ve devoted a substantial portion of your life to this, and your homepage introduces you with the enthusiasm of a printer running out of cyan.

There may be a terrific business behind that page, beautiful work, thoughtful decisions, someone who notices a tiny problem and fixes it even though the customer would probably never have noticed. That kind of care matters, but the next customer hasn’t seen it yet. They’ve got your website, which is meeting them on your behalf while you’re busy doing the thing you’re actually good at. Even if a friend has recommended you, they may want a look before calling. The friend has done a lovely job of making you sound competent. Ideally, the website would participate.

Start with what you actually do, which sounds too obvious to need saying until you open a few business websites and spend several minutes reading about passion, possibilities and excellence without establishing whether anyone makes cabinets. A cabinetmaker could try something like, “Custom kitchen cabinets, made to measure and installed by the people who built them.” Add the area you serve, show a kitchen you actually made, give us somewhere to see more. You can make that language warmer, stranger, funnier, more distinctly yours, please do, just leave the nouns in. Someone has arrived with a job they need doing, and the first useful thing you can offer them is the ability to work out whether you do it.

Writing about your own business can make this surprisingly difficult. You know the history, you remember the first workshop, you have strong feelings about the logo your brother-in-law designed, and all of it can feel equally important when you’re trying to decide what belongs on the homepage. Meanwhile, the visitor is wondering whether you cover their area. Give them enough to recognize that they’re in the right place, then let them get to know you. The story of how you started might be genuinely interesting, it just shouldn’t stand between someone and the answer to a fairly simple question.

Once they know what you do, show them why you’re good at it. Business owners are forever being told to talk about quality, which would be more helpful if the people making absolute crap hadn’t also received that advice. “Quality” needs a witness. If the cabinet doors line up beautifully, get a photograph close enough to show it. If you matched the grain across a bank of drawers, explain what we’re looking at, because most people won’t know enough about woodworking to appreciate how difficult that was. They can, however, understand that somebody cared enough to get it right. Those details give a customer something to base a decision on beyond who sounds most enthusiastic about exceeding expectations.

Choose photographs that help us understand the work, a view of the whole piece, a closer look at something worth noticing, the finished thing in the room where it lives. If you solved an awkward corner that would otherwise have become a small, expensive cemetery for saucepan lids, show the corner and explain what you did. A caption that says “Residential Project 04” leaves out almost everything interesting. What did the customer need? What made the job difficult? Why did you choose that solution? A few specific sentences can make someone look at the work differently, without requiring them to download a six-page case study called Reimagining the Domestic Storage Experience.

The same applies when your work isn’t especially photogenic. Walk us through a real problem you solved, using details you have permission to share, and be clear about your part in solving it. There’s no need to inflate a sensible improvement into a historic event. Sometimes the useful story is that something was confusing, unreliable or taking far too long, and you understood it well enough to make it work properly. If a customer has said something that helps explain the difference, ask permission to use their actual words. Specific, believable praise gives a prospective customer much more to work with than another paragraph of you declaring yourself exceptional.

With a bit of luck, somebody looking through all this is going to think you might be the right person for their project, at which point it would be unfortunate to become elusive. Put a clear next step beside the work and say what it means. “Ask about your project” is perfectly respectable. So are “Book a visit” and “Check availability,” if those are things people can actually do. “Explore the possibilities” can have a little lie-down, it’s been busy for years. Tell someone whether they’re requesting a quote, arranging a conversation or sending a few photographs so you can decide whether you can help. A clear invitation makes it easier to act on the interest you’ve just earned.

It’s also worth looking at what you’re asking them to do in return. If rough measurements and photographs will help you answer, say so. If there’s a minimum project size, tell them before they spend twenty minutes composing an inquiry you can’t take. Ask for the information you genuinely need at this stage, remembering that they are inquiring about a kitchen, not applying to become your next of kin. You’ll have opportunities to ask more questions once you’re talking, and a short explanation of what happens next can make the whole thing feel considerably less like dropping a message down a well.

Then try it yourself, on your phone, all the way through. Send the form and check that the message arrives. Tap the email link, see whether a cookie notice is sitting on the button, read the confirmation message and decide whether it tells a human being anything useful. This is a deeply unglamorous way to spend ten minutes, but considerably less upsetting than discovering your inquiries have been going nowhere while you’ve been wondering why business is quiet.

You can make a useful start without rebuilding the entire site. Rewrite the opening, give one good project the photographs and explanation it deserves, make the next step obvious and check that it works. While you’re doing it, keep some of yourself in there. Explain why you like that material, tell us about the decision you argued for, let us hear how you actually talk. You’ve put years into the work, you’re allowed to have something to say about it. Somewhere in all those careful choices is a much better introduction than “Welcome to our website.”

Doug, show them the cabinets.