A website is a journey

This is the bit that's easy to overlook.

A website isn't simply a collection of pages.

It's a journey.

Someone arrives with a certain amount of knowledge, curiosity, scepticism and patience.

They may not know what you do. They may not know what they need. They may not even know what problem they're trying to solve.

So the website has to help them move.

From "What's this?"

to "I think this might be relevant to me."

to "Ah. I understand."

to "I know what to do next."

And different people may need different routes through the same website.

That's why a button that looks perfectly sensible in isolation can be completely wrong in context.

The homepage might need to introduce the idea. Another page might build trust. A smaller offer might provide an easier first step.

None of this is particularly difficult to code.

Working out what should happen and when is the harder part.

Next: This doesn't mean we shouldn't use AI. Quite the opposite.