The 5 questions to answer before you touch your website

You’ve decided it’s time for a new website. The instinct is to start with what you can see: a template you like, a competitor’s site you admire, a colour, a list of pages. That’s how most website projects begin, and it’s why so many end with a site that looks fine and does very little.

A website is the answer to a few questions about your business. If the questions haven’t been answered, the site can only guess. Here are the five worth settling before anyone opens a design tool.

1. Who, exactly, is this for?

"Everyone who needs our services" is not an answer. It’s the absence of one.

Picture the client you’d happily take ten more of. What do they do for a living? What triggered their search: a new injury, a tax notice, a renovation that went wrong? What do they already know, and what are they worried about?

A site written for that person sounds like it was written for them. A site written for everyone sounds like it was written for no one, and readers can tell within a few seconds.

2. What are they asking before they call you?

Your phone and inbox already hold your best website content. Write down the questions you answer every week. "How much does it cost, roughly?" "How long does it take?" "Do you work with businesses my size?" "What happens at the first appointment?"

These questions are what people type into Google and, increasingly, ask AI assistants. Answer them clearly on your site and you meet clients at the exact moment they’re deciding. Leave them unanswered and they go find a site that answers them.

3. What is the one thing you want visitors to do?

Book a call? Request a quote? Reserve a spot? Pick one. A homepage with six buttons of equal weight asks visitors to make a decision you haven’t made yourself.

The other actions can exist. They just shouldn’t compete. Every page should make the main step obvious, and make it easy.

4. Why you, in your clients’ words?

Every business believes it offers quality, service and expertise. So does every competitor, which is why those words do nothing on a website.

The real answer usually sits in your reviews, in the thank-you emails, in what clients tell their friends. "She actually explained what was wrong." "They called back the same day." "He told me I didn’t need the expensive option." That is your positioning, already written by the people who matter. Use their language, not the language of a brochure.

5. How will you know it’s working?

Decide before launch what success means, and make sure you can measure it. More calls from new clients? More quote requests? More visits from people searching for your services in your area?

Pick one or two measures, note where you’re starting from, and look again in three and six months. Without a starting point, you’ll never know whether the new site made a difference or just made you feel better.

What the answers look like

Short, specific, written in plain sentences. For a physiotherapy clinic, it might be:

1. For: active adults in the South Shore recovering from knee or hip surgery, often referred by their surgeon, worried about how long recovery will take.
2. They ask: "How many sessions will I need?" "Can I start before my follow-up with the surgeon?" "Is it covered by my insurance?"
3. The one action: book a first assessment online.
4. Why us, in clients’ words: "She explained every exercise and why it mattered." "I was back on the stairs sooner than I expected."
5. Working means: more first assessments booked online each month, compared with the same months last year.

Five answers that fit on a page. Hand that page to a designer and a writer, and they’ll build something far more useful than a site that started with a template.

When you can skip this

If all you need is a placeholder, a single page with your name, phone number and hours while the real site gets built, you don’t need any of this yet. The same goes if you already have clear answers written down from a previous project; check they still hold, and move on.

What this changes

Answer these five questions and the website almost plans itself. The pages follow from the questions clients ask. The words follow from how clients describe you. The design follows from the one action you want people to take. And six months later, you’ll know whether it’s paying for itself.

Skip them, and you’ll spend the project debating colours and fonts, which are the easy decisions, while the hard ones get made by accident.

At Anthēs, this is what the two-hour Business Clarity Session is for. But you don’t need us to start. A notebook, an honest hour and your last twenty client emails will get you most of the way there.