It’s Time to Level Up Your Website: Where Should You Start?

“Build it, and they will come.” Many business owners assume that launching a website will automatically bring clients. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

How do you take your business to the next level and make your website a functional piece of marketing? Here’s where to start and what to consider.

This article is based on a current client. They are a small product-based business that decided to invest in a brand new website. They hired a big-name firm—but in the world of tech, we know this company does not always deliver for the small business owner.

As an e-commerce company, they wanted to increase online sales and scale back in-person pop-up events. They were told a new site focused on design would drive sales. The day the site went live, all sales and website traffic stopped. Had the client prioritized traffic over looks, the outcome might have been different.

The main issues:

1. The homepage had eight different H1 headers. An H1 should be used for the page title only. Excessive H1 use signals to search engines that a site is spammy or low quality.
2. There was no paragraph text on the page—only headers.
3. Product pages had no descriptions.
4. Basic SEO was not set up: no Google Descriptions, no focus keywords, no page titles for pages or products.
5. The site was built entirely by AI with no human review.

What could have saved my client from this poorly executed website? It comes down to questions that were not asked.

How to avoid the same mistakes

First: think about the purpose of your website.

• Do most of your customers come from referrals? If so, design matters more. Many designers prioritize aesthetics and aren’t focused on organic traffic, search visibility or AI discoverability.
• Do you need your website to attract organic traffic? If so, functionality and SEO are critical. Conversations about SEO, GEO and AEO, backed by data from tools like Google Analytics 4, are essential.
• Do you want both strong design and strong traffic? You need to hire a group or an individual capable of balancing design and the technical backend. (Not easy to find, but they are out there.)

Once you know the purpose, ask vendors these questions:

• Do you build the website manually or use AI to build it?
• Who will write the on-page copy?
• How many pages will you create?
• Do you have experience with e-commerce and generating organic traffic?
• On average, how many clients generated qualified leads after working with you?
• Can you show me analytics from past clients?
• What key actions made those websites successful?

Are you comfortable with the responses you received? If so, proceed. If not, keep looking until you find the right fit.

For my client, I fixed the immediate H1 and backend SEO issues the same day I discovered them. Within 24 hours, traffic rose from 0 to 23 visitors. After reworking on-page SEO across all 31 pages, monthly visitors increased to 145. Once I apply the same process to each product page (80 products), we would at a minimum double monthly visitors. At that point, I’ll analyze engagement rate, time on site, traffic sources and user flow to guide further optimization.

About the author

Amy Graves is the owner of Hidden Consumers Consulting. She is a certified Business Analyst through UC-Davis. She works primarily in the food, skincare and cosmetics industries, helping businesses find their Hidden Consumer, and has also launched Food Education for The Hidden Consumer.

Hear more from Amy on how to turn your website traffic into engagement.