Humanness is the key to creating a website which genuinely presents your business as an extension of how it feels to work with you or your staff in person.

Design trends come and go - trying to keep up with them is a waste of time.

When broadband first became popular, the trend was to fill your website full of flashy but pointless slideshows of images.

Now, many designers and agencies seem to be using a design tool like Figma - resulting in websites which look so alike, its almost impossible to standout visually.

The trend which so many businesses are missing out on is humanness.

Bring in some seemingly simple, but powerful concepts, and watch your positioning and enquiries change.

Examples include:

💡A clear but outcome-driven tagline as the opening text on your website - so visitors know exactly if you offer what they want (or also that you don't offer what they want - why attract those who will never be an ideal client?).

💡Using professional photography of your premises and staff instead of authority-killing stock images. People buy from people - show yourselves, create a spark of an emotional connection and you're part way there.

💡Writing your content focused on the reader and your individualism, instead of ego-stroking paragraphs about how long you've been in business - this goes against the grain, to the point where you probably expect to do things the way everyone else is, how it has always been. But that gets you nowhere but further into the as-is and me-too competition with others in your field.

If your website isn't somewhere you're proud to send enquiries, if it isn't somewhere that you know won't put people off or leave them wondering about things you missed telling them about, then it's overdue a change.

By focusing on a blue ocean strategy approach with the way we work, your website ends up aligning three core propositions – value, profit, and people – to create a a result which works for you, your business, and your ideal client.

Value is not price, it's a whole lot more. Profit is the ideal outcome for your business from a website - and people are what it is always about - you, your employees, your clients.

When it's time to align your website with your ethos, strategy, and the value you bring to your clients, think about people, not what you've always done, not what everyone is still doing.