The "I'll Please Everyone" Trap

One of the first things that slowed me down was trying to make my website work for everyone. Every type of business owner, every possible problem, every service I could potentially offer. If I just positioned it this way, I could attract that person too. If I added this page, I wouldn't miss out on that client.

Sound familiar?

Here's what I tell my clients, and what I clearly needed to hear myself: when you try to speak to everyone, you end up connecting with no one. Your ideal client lands on your website and thinks "is this actually for me?" — and clicks away before you've had a chance to show them what you can do.

My website needed to speak directly to the business women I genuinely love working with. Not everyone. Them.

Perfectionism

I've been waiting for my rebrand to be complete before I touch the website. I didn't want to build something and then have to change it all again.

And so... I did nothing.

I need the website to be perfect, not just good, because WordPress websites and the strategy around that is my business. 

And so I overthink to the point of distraction, and I did nothing.

The irony is not lost on me. I tell my clients constantly that a website is never finished. It evolves as your business evolves. It grows as you grow. Waiting for everything to be perfect before you launch — or relaunch — is an impossible goal. You’re setting yourself to fail, and yet here I was doing it to myself.  

I’m setting a date that my new website will be launched before June 24th. It will be imperfect, and that is completely fine. An imperfect website that's aligned with where I am right now is a thousand times more useful than a perfect website that exists only in my head.

The E-commerce Spiral

Then there was the e-commerce question. WooCommerce? SureCart? Something else entirely? I went back and forth on this for longer than I should have. I mean days, with a million tabs open in my browser, trying to work it all out.   

Until late one night my website was hit by fraudulent card testing — where bots systematically try stolen card details through your payment system. It was late. I was tired. I took down the shop from my website and thought I would sort it out in the morning. 

It was enough to make me stop and ask the real question: do I actually need e-commerce at all?

The answer, when I was honest with myself, was no. Hear me out, because I know that may sound weird. 

At heart, I'm a service business. I work with people, not products. I've been told more than once to package my services up as products — and I've tried, and it has never felt right. What I do doesn't work that way. Every client is different. Every website is different. That's the point. 

Removing e-commerce simplified everything. And simplicity, as it turns out, is very much on brand for me. KISS -  Keep It Simple Sweetheart. Yes I know, I probably should have remembered that sooner!

What This Means for You

If you're reading this nodding along — if your website has been sitting there representing a version of your business you've already moved on from, if you're waiting for everything to be perfect before you make a change, if you've been going around and around on a decision that really just needs to be made — you're not alone.

Not even the WordPress Fairy Godmother gets this right every time.

The difference between a website that works for your business and one that just sits there is usually not a technical problem. It's a clarity problem. It's a decisiveness problem. It's a "I'm too close to this to see it clearly" problem.

I’ll be treating myself like a client, which is a lot nicer than I’ve been treating myself recently, and going through the process. 

Follow along as I’m taking you with me on the journey of rebuilding my own website over the next few months. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that doing this stuff out loud is far more useful than pretending you have it all figured out.