At a recent Rising Tide Society meeting, someone asked me what part of my job I enjoy most. My answer came quickly: I love design, but more than that, I love solving problems though to me, they’re often one and the same.
A good website isn’t just an online brochure. It’s not about tossing your logo, a few photos, and a paragraph of text onto a digital page and calling it a day. A great website solves problems for both the business and the people visiting it.
A Website Should Work for You
When we build websites, our goal isn’t simply to “get you online.” It’s to create something that makes your life easier. Your website should handle some of the heavy lifting so you’re not constantly answering the same questions, chasing unqualified leads, or losing business because visitors couldn’t find what they were looking for.
Sometimes that means using design strategically with things like focus boxes, short paragraphs, and selective bolding to guide skimmers to the important information (and let’s be honest, most people are skimmers). Other times it’s about building workflows or systems that quietly do their job in the background, freeing you up to do yours.
Qualifying the Right Clients
One of the biggest problems a website can solve is making sure you’re talking to the right people. A good contact form, for example, isn’t just about collecting names and emails, it’s about setting expectations and filtering out the folks who aren’t a good fit.
Take two of our dental clients as an example.
One clinic is focused on bringing in new patients quickly for specific services. Their contact form is short and sweet: name, email, phone. The goal is simple: get people through the door, then handle the details in person.
The other clinic has a more specialized practice with limited staff and appointment availability. Their form is longer and more detailed. It asks specific questions that help determine whether the patient’s needs match what the clinic offers. That longer form serves two purposes: it helps the clinic focus on qualified patients, and it makes visitors think about whether this is truly the right fit for them before submitting.
Both approaches are right for the right business. That’s the key.
Every Business Has a Different Problem to Solve
For a retail store, the problem might be keeping inventory synced between in-person and online sales. For an event rental company, it might be giving customers a way to build and price out a wishlist before booking. For a service-based business, it might be automating the intake process so they spend less time on admin work and more time actually doing the job.
That’s why no two sites we build are ever the same. Every business has its quirks, its pain points, and its priorities. Our job is to figure out what’s slowing you down, what’s confusing your clients, and what can be streamlined and then build a website that quietly fixes those things behind the scenes.
Why It Matters
Your website should be more than a digital handshake. It should be a tool, a really smart, hardworking one that solves problems before they land in your inbox.
And that’s why we take the time to get to know our clients and their needs before we start designing. We want to understand what’s working, what isn’t, and what could make things better. Sometimes that means introducing functionality you didn’t even know was possible. Sometimes it just means simplifying what you already have.
Either way, your website shouldn’t just exist. It should help.
