3 Things I’d Fix First on Your Website (If I Had 30 Minutes)
If I had half an hour to improve a website, I wouldn’t start redesigning anything.
I wouldn’t change fonts, rebuild pages, or obsess over colours.
I’d focus on clarity.
Because in most cases, websites don’t fail because they’re badly designed. They fail because they’re unclear, cluttered, or not guiding the visitor in the right direction.
Here are the first three things I’d fix.
1. Make the navigation obvious
Most websites don’t need more pages. They need better direction.
If someone lands on your site and has to think about where to go next, you’ve already lost momentum.
I would check:
Is your main menu simple and predictable?
Can someone instantly find your core services?
Are there too many options competing for attention?
If everything feels important, nothing stands out.
A good navigation system should quietly guide people, not make them think.
2. Strengthen your main call to action
Most websites either hide the next step or offer too many of them.
If you have multiple competing buttons like “Learn more”, “View services”, “Contact”, “Download”, your visitor is forced to pause and decide. That pause often becomes exit.
Instead, I’d:
Choose one primary action per page
Make it visually consistent
Repeat it in logical places (not constantly, just predictably)
Your website should feel like it knows where it’s going.
Not like it’s waiting for the visitor to decide everything.
3. Remove anything that doesn’t earn its place
This is the quickest win and usually the hardest for people to do.
Most websites accumulate content over time:
extra sections, repeated messaging, decorative blocks, filler text.
If something doesn’t do at least one of these, it needs to be questioned:
Does it help someone understand what you do?
Does it build trust?
Does it guide them to take action?
If the answer is no, it’s probably just noise.
A simpler page almost always performs better than a busy one.
The simplest shift
If your website feels slightly “off”, it’s rarely a design problem.
It’s usually a clarity problem.
And clarity is one of the fastest things you can fix.
You don’t need a rebuild. You need decisions.
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Hi I'm Angela
As a Squarespace web designer and digital systems expert I am passionate about keeping life (and work) as simple as possible.
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