The Web Industry Is Failing Small Businesses Heres How To Protect Yourself

A story of power, exploitation, and sowing distrust.

Many of my website clients come to me reeling and burned from past failures. Sometimes their issue is a buggy site made by a negligent developer. Often, it's a designer who promised elite design but only delivered a template site. Other times, it's an SEO company with an expensive retainer and no ROI. Exploitation comes from all angles, and for most people, it is hard to spot.

Not long ago, I built a website for a woman starting a home styling business. She didn’t have a huge budget and only needed a simple website to get started. Despite running a successful construction business, she had never had a website. That meant she needed help understanding what she needed and where to get it. Many of my clients have had positive experiences with GoDaddy. So, I advised her to use them for her hosting and domain. I sent over video guidance on how to set things up. Unfortunately, the setup went wrong. She spoke with GoDaddy support to resolve the issue. When we next spoke, she had spent hundreds of dollars on extra products without fixing her original issue. Instead of fixing her problem, GoDaddy upsold a load of unnecessary 3-year licenses. They confused her with technical language, leading her to buy things she didn't need. I stepped in to deal with GoDaddy to refund as much as possible and fix the original issue.

Most business owners are not tech-literate. That’s why web experts (like me) exist to help and guide them. Our industry fails when jargon gets weaponised to squeeze money out of clients. Whilst not always true, enough business owners go through the wringer for this to be a real problem. Transparency is one of my core values. I want my clients to understand what I do and trust me to make the right call for their business. Unfortunately, the same is not true for a lot of my counterparts.

I should acknowledge that I am a web service provider. I’m not an impartial observer. I have a commercial interest in your reading this and choosing to work with me. The difference, I'd like to think, is that everything in this article is something I'd tell you whether you hired me or not.

Never give up on a “bad” website.

If you’re unhappy with your website and exhausted by incompetent operators. I know how tempting it is to give up. I urge you not to. Your website is too important to leave in a shambles. What’s more, you are closer to the website you want than you might think.

A while back, I worked with an ad agency that had never seen a significant return in any website investment. That is not uncommon. There’s a whole lot of snake oil sold in this industry. If they were to make any more investment in their site, they wanted a guarantee of a return. After an initial call, we discovered they were spending over £150 per month on hosting. Their web host was a friend of the company’s former director. That's over £18,000 on hosting in the 10 years with this host! This shocked me. I immediately showed them how much they could be spending. I found 5 alternative providers with far cheaper and better offerings. We moved them to a new provider, which saved them £1,700 per year. These savings enabled them to invest in their website and other parts of their business.

Is it risky to move to a new website service provider?

Yes. Moving providers always presents a risk. You will always feel the risk more if you have burned before. In the long run, a bad provider will cost you more than switching. Nothing changes if nothing changes. You open yourself up to new possibilities and benefits that you would never find by staying put.

When switching providers, it is difficult to know what separates the good from the bad. So what green flags should you look out for and what red flags should you avoid?

Website service provider green flags

They make an effort to speak your language.

Websites are complex. They have technical aspects that are difficult to understand. Making the effort to make such complex concepts understandable is a green flag. I would always trust a provider who does that rather than one who hides behind jargon.

They are transparent about what your investment gets.

Website services can be a black box. It is hard to know how they create value for your business. Quality providers explain what their services do and why they are worth investing in.

You want a website like theirs.

What bigger green flag can there be than the person whose website you want to emulate will be working on yours? My client, Headshot Photographer, hired me for this reason. He liked my minimal, no-frills website and wanted a similar approach for his.

Someone you trust recommends them.

If someone you trust tells you about a good experience they had, there is no better green flag. It can be hard to trust Google reviews, so a first-hand account from someone you know is invaluable.

Website service provider red flags

They hide behind jargon and confusing language.

Websites, like most industries, come with a vast amount of jargon. Those who overuse jargon hide behind it to make themselves seem more clever than they are.

You overcommit before engaging with them.

There's nothing wrong with a lead magnet. Too many websites go beyond lead magnets and make you share all your information before getting close to a quote. If you're going to trust someone with your website, choose someone who gives as much as they get. Providers who primarily want to use your details rather than solve your problem are not worth trusting.

They focus on capabilities rather than results.

Avoid providers who focus more on themselves and their skills than on you and your problems. There is nothing wrong with explaining what they can do. It should always be through the lens of helping you solve your problems. If a provider only talks about themselves, you can be certain that's who they prioritise.

The first step to getting the website you want.

Many clients come to me thinking they want one thing when, in fact, they need something else. Usually, they want to “rebuild their site”. It's rare for a business to actually need to rebuild its website. Truth is, you’re never as far as you think from the website you want. The sad truth is that many website companies don't diagnose what the client actually needs. They take them at their word and do expensive rebuilds.

A client came to me last year seeking a full rebuild of their WordPress site. It was running on out-of-date plugins and a decade-old theme. After discussing the client’s pain points, it became clear that a rebuild was overkill. They only needed a new, fresher theme and a tune-up of the WordPress back-end. Doing that costs them about half as much as a full rebuild. The time I invest in finding the best solutions for my clients is why they trust and continue to work with me.

So, how can you do your own diagnosis without talking to me? When you hop on a call with a new website service provider, assume they want a sale. Some are like me and want to find the best solution for you, while others want the best solution for themselves. If you go into these conversations without knowing what you want, they will take advantage of that. You need to understand exactly what your goal is.  If you don’t, someone will set the goals for you, and you won't get the results you want.

To know what your goal is, understand the problem you have. Ask yourself, “What does my website not do that I need it to?”, and you are halfway there. If you have plenty of traffic but no conversions, you likely have a content or design issue. At that point, your goal would be to optimise your site for conversions. If you don't have any traffic at all, your focus should be on getting more people to your website.

Most business owners think all websites are the same. Smart business owners are specific about the website they want. Specific goals are much easier to optimise for. Optimising for everything is optimising for nothing. Specificity and clarity are the keys to success.

Once you are clear about what you want, the next step is communicating it to website companies. So, what is the best way to do that?

Clarity breeds success.

Two of my recent clients illustrate how a clear brief makes all the difference to a project's success.

One client came to me seeking a website for their new business. The business was unique, so the founder sent over what he thought was a thorough brief to guide me. The brief was not as thorough as they thought. It was a long list of vague bullet points from ChatGPT that provided no context of what he wanted me to create. It took a lot of back-and-forth between us for me to begin to understand what their brief meant. Eventually, the project did get moving. But so much got left to my interpretation that the project made slow progress.

Compare that scenario to another client, Ashwater Films. They were clear from our first meeting what success looked like. They came to me seeking a website content refresh and to start ranking in Google searches. They sought more focus on them as leaders of indigenous representation in the film industry. This gave us clear targets to aim for, which helped create a focused and efficient path to success.

It seems obvious, but many miss the fact that to get where you want to go, you need to know where it is in the first place. It is not up to your designer, developer, copywriter, or anyone else to figure it out for you. They are there to provide the best route to your goal, not the goal itself. The more specific you can be about your goals, the more likely your web service provider will take you there.

The web industry will continue to fail as long as businesses let it.

The patterns I’ve described in this article are not new and won’t disappear anytime soon. As long as there are business owners who don't know what they need, web companies will exploit them. That’s the uncomfortable truth.

As a business owner, remember you have the power. The businesses that have success with their websites share common traits. They understand the problems they have before seeking a solution. They know what trustworthy help looks like before seeking it. And they communicate their goals clearly, so success has a definition. None of that requires technical knowledge. It only requires intention.

Your website is one of the most valuable assets your business has. Treat it that way. Be selective about who you trust with it. Be specific about what you need from it. And don’t accept less than that from anyone you pay to work on it.

The right website partner is out there. When you find them, you’ll know. They’ll be asking better questions than they’re answering.