In this issue:
⇒ Why "we need a website" is the wrong first move
⇒ How design-first never solves your positioning problem
⇒ A 30-second self-check to run before you brief a designer
Most companies build a website in this order: hire a designer, approve a look, then work out what it should say.
It’s expensive.
A website designed before the message is created is a container for nothing. You'll spend the next few months trying to pour meaning into a structure that was never built to hold it.
A company redesigning a website
We've watched a lot of companies do this. Here's one.
A true story
A B2B cybersecurity company came to us mid-launch. They had an industry event on the calendar, so they rushed to design the site first, and gave almost no thought to what it needed to say.
What they got was a website designed for design's sake. The designer was proud of it. He'd built exactly what he wanted: a site that impresses other designers. It didn't communicate the company's value, and it didn't help a buyer make a decision.
Then we came in to write the copy. But we don't fill in templates. We started with the ICP and worked backward.
Once the positioning was clear, the problem was obvious. The existing structure couldn't carry it. So we redesigned the structure of every page. Each "service" became an offer, built to sell, not just to sit there looking nice.
What followed was weeks of hard conversations with the design partner and a rebuild from the ground up. The visual design evolved too. This time, it was shaped by the message, not the other way around.
Message doesn't slow you down
It speeds you up, in terms of the results you're looking to get.
When FleetChaser came to us, they had a website that did a poor job explaining what the product was. We started with positioning and the ICP. Only then did the website revamp translate that into a buyer journey.
FleetChaser started generating qualified leads in the second month after launch. Soon after, they had to pause their marketing efforts because the business wasn't ready to handle the volume of inbound leads.
Research the market, sharpen the positioning, rewrite the homepage. In that order.
Designers can't invent the things that decide whether a website works
Companies that choose design-first approach to their website are like this startup, “very new to the business side of things.”
There is no one way to design a website. No matter how many design templates and homepage playbooks you've seen. Designers can't invent:
Your ICP
The problem they're losing sleep over
Why you, and not someone else
How your service delivers the outcome
When the content is right, you know what the design needs to be. You stop guessing, because your argument has a distinct shape.
Design-first vs content-first
Design-first | Content-first |
Design defines the structure | The site is built as an argument that leads to a decision |
Content gets poured into pre-made blocks | Every block answers a specific buyer question |
The message comes out generic and vague | It’s clear who it’s for, what the problem is, and what the outcome is |
No understanding of ICP and their specific situation | The right buyer recognizes themselves in the first paragraph |
Months retrofitting words into wireframes | The page lays itself out once the content is right |
Start with design, and you build something that says nothing. Then you spend months trying to fix the message inside a structure that was never built to carry it.
A 30-second self-check
Before you approve your next website, ask:
Can the right buyer recognize themselves on the first screen? Not "understand their industry,” recognize the specific situation they're in.
Does it describe outcomes the buyer gets? "AI-powered," "end-to-end," and "custom" describe the vendor. What changes for the customer?
Would a feature or service motivate someone to buy it? The buyer needs to know when they need it, what it solves, and what they get.
Does each section answer a buyer question? If a section exists only because the template included it, it probably doesn't need to exist.
Can you send the link without a five-minute explanation? Your site should continue the sales conversation, not create work for the person who shared it.
Is there one idea connecting every page? Positioning isn't a clever homepage tagline. It's one coherent idea, repeated across every page and every buyer touchpoint.
If you can't answer these yet, your website isn't ready to be designed.
Content decides what the website is.
Hit reply and tell us what you're launching. We'll tell you where we'd start.
See you in the next one.
💛
Z&C Newsroom
📌 New article: “Software Is Now Plumbing”
Tech folks will call it the gap between demos and production. We'd put it differently. The challenge of the new category of Services as Software startups, driven by agentic AI, is a contradiction: You want to be as scalable as SaaS, while covering the 15% like a services firm.
The thing is, nobody ever wanted the tool. So how do you position Services as Software?
