Where's the Friction in Your Website and Marketing Ecosystem?

I've been doing this long enough to have seen just about every new technology that's supposed to change the way businesses build and manage their websites. Some of it really has changed things. Some of it came and went. And now, of course, everybody's talking about AI.

But here's what I find interesting.

For all the changes in technology, what businesses actually want from their websites hasn't changed very much.

They want people to find them. They want those people to understand what they do and why they should care. They want visitors to become qualified leads, and ultimately customers. And they want their websites to keep up with whatever is happening in the business.

That was true years ago, and it's still true today.

So why is it that so many companies struggle to get their websites to do those things consistently?

I've worked with companies that have invested a lot of money in their websites. Beautiful designs, sophisticated technology, talented people managing everything. On the surface, things look pretty good.

But spend a little time with the people responsible for making it all work, and you start hearing a different story.

Marketing can't get a campaign launched as quickly as they'd like. Sales wishes the website did a better job of explaining the company's offerings. Somebody wants to make what seems like a simple change, and suddenly three different people and two different systems are involved.

Meanwhile, the CEO is wondering why the company keeps spending money on the website without seeing more of the results they expected.

I've been on all sides of those conversations.

And one thing I've learned is that the website itself is often only part of the problem.

Websites are ecosystems

Over the years, I've come to think of business websites as ecosystems. There's the site that visitors see, but behind it there's an entire collection of content, technology, processes, integrations, and people that all have to work together.

I've walked into companies where some of those pieces were working beautifully and others hadn't been touched in years. I've seen systems that nobody wanted to change because nobody was quite sure what would happen if they did. And I've found perfectly good work that somebody had paid for years earlier, sitting in a forgotten account while the company was paying someone else to recreate it.

You'd be surprised how often that happens.

The interesting thing is that none of this necessarily means the company has a bad website. It may be a very good website. But the business has changed, and the ecosystem supporting it hasn't kept up.

Maybe the company has introduced new products, entered new markets, or brought in a new marketing team. Maybe it has grown through an acquisition. Or maybe years of quick fixes and workarounds have created a system that's far more complicated than anybody intended.

I call all of that friction

Friction is what gets between what the business wants its website to accomplish and what actually happens.

And I've learned that you can spend a lot of money trying to solve the wrong problem if you don't understand where that friction is coming from.

I've seen companies assume they needed an entirely new website when what they really needed was to get the pieces they already had working together. I've also seen situations where rebuilding was absolutely the right decision.

The trick is knowing the difference.

One of the things I find most satisfying about this work is what happens when we start clearing some of that friction away.

What changes when the friction goes away

Suddenly, the marketing team can make changes without waiting weeks. The sales team has better information to share with prospective customers. The website becomes easier to manage, and the company can spend more time using it to grow the business instead of constantly trying to keep it running.

That's when things start getting interesting.

And it doesn't always require a massive project or a complete redesign. Sometimes the biggest improvement comes from fixing something that's been quietly getting in the way for years.

These days, when I start working with a company, I'm less interested in immediately talking about platforms, design trends, or the latest technology.

I want to understand the business first.

Where are you today? Where are you trying to go? What do you need your website to do to help you get there?

And then we can start talking about what's standing in the way.

Because at the end of the day, nobody really wants a website just for the sake of having a website.

They want what the website is supposed to do for their business.

And after all these years, I still think that's the most important place to start.