What makes a website work
Almost nobody cares what your website looks like. They care that it loads, that they can tell within seconds what you do, that you look like a real business rather than a risk, and that contacting you is obvious. These are the eight things we check before we build anything, and the order matters.
What the visitor needs
If nobody arrives, nothing else on this list matters.
- Ranking for what people actually type, which is rarely what a business calls itself
- Showing up in the map results when somebody searches for a trade and a town
- Being quoted by AI answers, where a growing share of questions now end
A stranger decides in about three seconds whether they are in the right place.
- What you do, who you do it for and where, above everything else
- The exact thing they searched for, answered, rather than a general version of it
- Written in their words, not the trade's words
Most people have been let down by a tradesperson or a supplier before. They arrive braced.
- Real work shown, not stock photographs of somebody else's
- Reviews and ratings where people will actually see them
- A named human with a face, rather than a page about the team
They have your competitor open in another tab. That comparison is happening whether you like it or not.
- Looking at least as good as whoever they are comparing you with
- Signalling the price you want to charge, because a cheap looking site caps what you can ask
- Matching the quality of the actual work, since a scrappy site contradicts a beautiful job
The moment somebody decides to act is the moment you can most easily lose them.
- Phone, WhatsApp, email and a form, because different people choose differently
- Reachable from every screen without hunting for it
- Working at eleven at night, when they finally have five minutes
What you need
The best websites quietly remove work you are currently doing by hand.
- Answering the questions you answer by phone forty times a week
- Letting existing customers rebook, cancel or find an invoice without ringing you
- Qualifying the wrong enquiries out as well as the right ones in
Most business owners cannot say which page brought them their last job.
- Showing which pages actually bring the work, not just which get visits
- Tracking calls, form fills and WhatsApp taps as the things that matter
- Enough information to make the next decision with, in plain English
A website you do not own is a rent payment with a countdown on it.
- Domain, hosting and accounts set up and looked after properly
- Built to keep improving, so there is never a reason to start again
- Updated, backed up and secure, with somebody who answers when it breaks
The website rules people ask about
What is the 3 second rule in website design?
It is the idea that a visitor should be able to tell what you do within about three seconds, or they leave. There is no official rule behind the number, but two pieces of research point the same way. A 2006 study from Carleton University found people judge how a web page looks within 50 milliseconds. Google's 2017 benchmarks found 53% of mobile visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. So the rule is really two jobs: say what you do at a glance, and load fast. Both are on the list above.
What are the five golden rules of website design?
There is no official five, and every guide lists a different set. Most share the same core: be clear about what you do, load fast, work on a phone, make the next step obvious and earn trust. All of those are in the eight above. The eight go further, because they also cover what you need as the owner: knowing which visits turn into enquiries, and owning the site outright.
What are the 7 C's of a website?
They come from Jeffrey Rayport and Bernard Jaworski's work on e-commerce: context, content, community, customisation, communication, connection and commerce. They were written as the parts of an online shop's customer interface. For a small business site that needs to bring in enquiries, the eight on this page are the more practical checklist.
Sources
- Lindgaard, Fernandes, Dudek and Brown (2006), "Attention web designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!", Behaviour and Information Technology 25(2).
- Google, "Find Out How You Stack Up to New Industry Benchmarks for Mobile Page Speed", February 2017, read 23 October 2026.
- Lee and Benbasat (2004), "A Framework for the Study of Customer Interface Design for Mobile Commerce", International Journal of Electronic Commerce 8(3), citing Rayport and Jaworski's 7C's, read 23 October 2026.
What this means if you want a website
Every website Fixr Systems builds is checked against all eight before it goes live, and the free audit checks any site you already have against the same list. If you want one built this way, the web design page has the price and the process.
Written and kept up to date by Ben Criddle, owner of Fixr Systems.Published . Updated .