I don't like my website.

Reading time 7 min.

I don't like my website.

And I invested a ton of money and time building it, and I don't even want to see it. 

I hate it. It was a bad investment. I don't ever want to hear about digital agencies again. They are so good at selling but terrible at delivering on their promise. I would have made it better myself.

Do you tell yourself that?

If yes, read on. If not, then you are one of the few happy ones, and I suggest sticking with your agency no matter what.

Let's get to the bottom of this frustration right now.

First, let's make one thing clear. It is not your fault. It is not your fault that you have decided to grow your business by improving your digital presence. It is necessary to emphasize that your decision was by far the best decision you made. Choosing to invest in your online reputation is the best decision you can make nowadays to grow your business and attract customers. Congratulations to you for having the courage to take that step.

It is also not your fault that you have chosen that agency/web-designer to work with. For you, at that time, it was the best option you thought would bring your vision into reality. You were convinced, and you acted upon your belief. And this is something you have to congratulate yourself for.

Having said this, you could assume I will start blaming the other part. Your agency.

No, I won't. 

What? Wait, if I'm not to blame, then others must be. They call themselves professionals. They should know what they are doing. It's their fault.

I believe you can't blame them, and you'll see why. Just bear with me for 3 minutes.

Web design is a very young profession. Schools that teach these subjects are just appearing. The internet, as we know it, is not older than 30 years. Compare that to architecture that dates back to 1st century AD.

Why do I compare it to architecture? Because building a house is well correlated with creating an online presence. Sometimes a website is more expensive than a house. But about that some other time.

Back to our comparison. When you buy a new home or when you decide to build one for yourself and your family, what are the expectations? You want to love it. You feel comfortable in it, and it alights excellently with your lifestyle. In other words, it represents you and your loved ones. You feel proud to call it your home.

When you buy a house that is already built, you remove an essential step that has already been performed. The conversation with the architect who designed the place. This is key. 

The house you like and feel it represents you has been designed by an architect who's vision has matched yours. Maybe not 100%, but he got right the characteristics that are very important to you. In other words, he understood the basic needs you would have and designed the place to satisfy them. The details that can be easily changed in this case, like the colors of the walls and other interior decorations, do not raise a significant barrier for you because you know they can be adjusted to your desire. 

But what happens when you want to build your home from scratch? Here is where the story gets interesting. 

As you know, the first person you need to talk to start your project is… yes, your partner. Just kidding, but not really. 

Joke aside, the first person you talk to when you want to build a house is, of course, an architect. 

A good architect will ask YOU what you want and how you envision your perfect home. He will ask you about your lifestyle, your family, how do you love spending your time at home. If you say you like to come home and have some quiet time reading, he will know you would want a place with a library and a reading chair. If you love cooking, he will understand that the kitchen will be an essential part of your home, etc. You get my point. He will want to know who YOU are so that when he comes up with a design, all your wishes are fulfilled.

The architect's creativity and professionalism then depend on taking everything that you wish for and come up with solutions to integrate them into your perfect home. Above all that, he will apply his knowledge in designing a home that is also solid, functional, safe, and economical. 

To come up with such a complex project, the architect taps into hundreds of years of experience. They study a broad range of subjects like writing, design, graphics, art history, mathematics, physics, structural systems, building, and materials construction, psychology. While still in school, they need to be part of a design studio to learn more about the craft. Only after they have sufficient knowledge, they can design a project of their own, like a house.

And then guess what? 

They don't get their sleeves up and start putting the brick on brick. They never do the heavy lifting. Usually, another company is contracted to build the house. And those companies don't have the same education as architects. They follow the architect's plan. They know how a home should look like because they've built one, but such professionals will never put their signature on a design plan because they don't understand why and how each decision was made to reach the respective blueprint.

I know you have been misguided in believing that a website is so easy to build, you can be a nontechnical person and still be able to create one.

Not only you have been led to believe that, but you know who thought that too?

The person who has never built a website before and thinks it's an excellent opportunity for business. They identified themselves to be a little tech-oriented, so they said to themselves, why not learn how to build a website and open a company to do just that. If anyone can do it. I can do it too. So they go on and learn how to build a website. Easy. It can be done in 15 min ( according to so many ads for DIY platforms ). And these new businesses attract clients, promising everything that they have been promised. A website will make your business grow, will attract customers, will make you money. 

I compare these agencies to the contractors we talked about earlier. They have learned how to paint the walls to a house that is already built. But that single skill is not going to get the website that represents you. It doesn't matter how many walls they paint, without the guidance of an architect that understands YOU, what you want and what you don't even know you need, that home will never feel like "home" to you. To better understand what I mean, let me ask you a question.

Have you ever walked into an IKEA store? If you did, you know you can not go directly to the storage area to buy a product, you need to pass through all they're designed showrooms. And those are really a delight to watch. How perfectly well everything seems to work together in the spaces they show. The rug with the curtain and bed sheet. The different styles. You simply want to live in a room like that. 

But you didn't come to IKEA to buy a whole room. You just need some items. So you go downstairs and look for them, buy them, take them home, assemble them and ... it's not like you've imagined. Like you saw in IKEA. 

Now you think you should have taken the rug too.

But the rug is not the problem. IKEA has spent a lot of time to come up with every interior design arrangement that inspired you, and they know exactly why each piece was used, where and the right shape and color that would then create the overall look. They meticulously used the vast knowledge they have about color harmony, design, trend, human psychology, and much more, to come up with that feeling of home that you sensed there. Nothing there was by accident. Even the bed cover was on purpose a little to the side to give you the imperfect sense of home where nothing is ever perfectly aligned. 

You, on the other hand, wanted that feeling, but getting only an item and mixing it with what you already have home did not bring that feeling.

And this is what beginner web designers, DIY websites, and even agencies offer you. 

They do research in your respective industry and come up with the conclusion that this is what you should look like, how your copy should sound, how your contact page should look like. Some even impose specific colors you have to use to appeal to your potential target audience. 

For some business owners, this is not a problem. But for YOU, apparently, it is. Otherwise, you would not have read so far.

You don't like your website. That's because it does not represent you. It describes someone else's vision of what your business should look like. And that vision is always subjective. It's on the level of belief according to what others are doing. It shows a superficial approach from the web agency towards the project that comes from simply not knowing what they don't know. 

What you ended up with was the best those professionals could do. If they knew better, they would have created it better because, at the end of the day, we all want our customers to be happy with the work we have done. 

What can you do to change your situation?

1. You can get back to your agency/freelancer, restart the discussions, and see if things can be improved. 
2. You can get your site audited by a different agency. Ask them to analyze your website and come up with suggestions. Be open with what you don't like about it from the beginning. People can not read your mind and will not know what you like or dislike. Pay attention to the questions they ask you. The more they ask, the better they can understand you and what your goals are.
3. When you work with an agency, make sure you have only one designated person that takes care of your project. This one person doesn't need to do everything for you, but this person must understand you best. They must become your architect and build the website you have always dreamed of having. 

We, at #bemarcable, have a specific process to get to know our clients so that they are more than happy with the work we created for them. "Better than I imagined" is what we expect our customers to say at the end of the project. And we don't stop until that becomes a reality.