What should a business website actually do?

There is no universal job for any website. Some businesses want to get more clients, some want an online presence, some simply want to show off. It’s important to ask what a business wants its website to do.

A business wanting more clients should understand its customers, and tailor their website to that group. The website should follow a good design philosophy. It should guide users to the key information. It should make contacting the business effortless.

A business that primarily wants a website to build trust, credibility, or display some information has more room to be creative. It can show more personality. It should give sufficient information, creativity should not come in the way of conveying information.

There’s really not much to say for the businesses that want something fancy. It can be however you want it to be. If your business is something creative you can go wild, artistic. If your business is some no nonsense industry and you want your website to reflect that you can even try a site with no styles.

There are tradeoffs for most websites. If you want to optimise for getting more clients you need to embrace design principles even if you personally don’t like it, if you optimise for something fancy instead of conversion you need to accept that the website may not generate direct revenue.