Why Redoing Your Website Won't Save Your B2B Startup (Unless You Do This First)

When I first started working on websites for founder-led startups, I had the same expectations as my clients: Once we redo your website, people will flock to your URL.

I’d spend hours writing the website copy. Myself and the team invested hours in design and development discussions. It’s painful to think about this now, because in the case of founder-led or early-stage company websites, the blind belief that a website on its own will boost sales is wrong.

Here’s why: Founder-led and early-stage company websites typically have a couple of things in common—low site traffic (fewer than 1,000 visitors per month) and low domain authority (DA).

When a category leader updates the messaging on their website, they can afford to expect results. They’ve likely got healthy, relevant traffic flowing in at a pace that allows them to know whether their new messaging or conversion tactics are working. But if your startup has low-quality traffic or just less of it in general, you’re not going to see meaningful shifts in sales, and you’ll struggle to learn from the changes you’ve made. (I once worked with a client who had hired a CRO agency for their website that had ~600 visitors / month. Our teams met every week for months, making all the recommended changes. In hindsight, I wish the CRO agency would have helped us understand the quality of traffic before using anecdotal evidence on how users engaged with the site to make sweeping changes.)

So before you throw $10,000+ into a new website—a realistic cost for decent copywriting, design, and development—ask yourself this: Why now?

• Do you feel like your website is "blah," and it doesn’t capture your prospect’s attention?
• Do you have an idea for new messaging, and you want to base your website on it?
• Do you hate the current design?

If you’re nodding along with any of these, proceed with caution. These motivations are risky because they’re subjective—especially if you don’t have enough traffic to measure your site’s performance in the first place.

For early-stage companies, the number one priority should be getting found. Otherwise, you’re just revamping a site no one’s seeing anyway.

In this article:

• Why redoing your website won’t necessarily lead to more sales, especially for founder-led and early-stage companies
• Common pitfalls of investing in a website redesign without sufficient site traffic or domain authority
• How to understand your website’s role in your sales and marketing funnel, and why this matters for a redesign
• The importance of a solid SEO strategy to increase your site’s visibility before investing in a new design.
• What to prioritize instead, like audience-building and boosting your site traffic, to make your website investment truly worthwhile.

1. Understand the health of your site traffic

Before you commit to a website redesign, take a close look at your current site traffic. Healthy site traffic for most A/B tests in B2B means 1,000 visitors per month at the minimum. Even that number is still fairly low. If your website falls below this threshold, chances are a new website alone isn’t going to have the big business impact you’re hoping for. You’ll need to build up your audience first.

Here’s what to look for:

1. Where is your traffic coming from?
Use tools like Google Analytics or Ahrefs to track your sources of traffic—are they organic, referral, direct, or from social media? Understanding where visitors are coming from helps you focus on what’s working and where you might need to improve.

2. Who's visiting your site?
Traffic is only valuable if it’s the right traffic. You need to know if your visitors are actually within your ideal customer profile (ICP). Tools like Clearbit and Google Analytics’ demographic reports can give you insights into who’s landing on your pages.

If your numbers are low or if the wrong people are visiting your site, a new design isn’t going to fix that. You’ll need to work on your visibility first.

Slack’s value prop and supporting benefits become content pillars. Below the content pillar name are individual subtopics for content related to the theme.

Creating content pillars based on your messaging ensures you consistently emphasize the unique benefits and features of your product or service. These key messages should be echoed across all your content, whether it's a LinkedIn update or a white paper. This repetition helps reinforce your value in your audience's minds, carving out that oh-so-valuable mindshare.

2. Know the role of your website in your sales and marketing funnel

Not all websites serve the same purpose. For some companies, a website is all about brand awareness, while for others, it’s a conversion machine.

So, which one is yours?
Here’s how to figure it out:

• Brand awareness websites: These are designed to introduce your company, explain your value proposition, and get potential customers curious enough to learn more. If this is your focus, your website redesign might prioritize content that speaks to your target audience, thought leadership, and easy navigation.
• Conversion websites: These are all about moving potential customers down the sales funnel. If your site is conversion-focused, your redesign should optimize for clear calls-to-action, user journeys, and lead capture.
  Knowing the role your website plays in your funnel is crucial for deciding when—and if—it’s time for a redesign. If your site isn’t converting or building brand awareness like it should, it might be time to revamp it after you've addressed your audience-building strategy.

3. Do you have a content game plan?

The visibility of your website doesn’t depend on design alone—it hinges on your content strategy. Without a solid content game plan, even the most stunning website won’t help people find you.

Here are some key things to consider:

1. Know Your Domain Authority (DA):
Your DA is a score (on a scale from 1 to 100) that predicts how well your website will rank on search engines. A low DA means your site won’t show up in search results as often, no matter how polished your design is. Tools like Moz or Ahrefs can help you find your current DA.

2. Publish High-Quality Content:
The more valuable content you publish, the more likely you are to earn backlinks and improve your domain authority. Regularly publishing blog posts, case studies, or industry insights can boost your SEO game over time. Just publishing doesn’t work anymore. The content needs to be valuable to your audience with a clear point of view.

Caveat: You don’t have to invest in SEO, especially in the early stages, and especially if your industry is referral-based / word-of-mouth. (I’ve experienced this, too. Expensive SEO efforts for businesses selling relationship-based services leading to nada results.) Leveraging SEO is, however, one way to drive traffic to your site.

Putting the pieces together

The real goal: Get out of obscurity

My currently-held belief after four years of website projects:

For early-stage companies, a website revamp can be a waste of money if not done at the right time. Of equal or more importance is getting out of what I like to call the realm of obscurity—in other words, building your audience.

If you have $10,000 to spend on marketing, reconsider that website overhaul. Building an audience is the less straightforward route, and that’s probably why it feels more financially risky than redoing your website. But it’s the key to making that website investment worthwhile.

Here’s how you can do it:

• Launch a content marketing engine that drives traffic to your website. You can get started with the same budget you’d use for a website redesign.
• Go all in on podcasts—either as a guest or by hosting your own.
• Embrace founder-led marketing by consistently sharing valuable content on LinkedIn or other platforms.
• Invest in paid ads that educate your audience at scale, instead of just trying to sell them right away.
• Pursue strategic partnerships that can bring in new traffic and boost your visibility.

After working with several startups, I’d make this bet: Put up a minimum viable ‘good enough’ website, and allocate precious resources towards building an audience. Once website traffic increases, you’ll be able to use data to make objective decisions.

Whatever you decide, remember: Any website overhaul for a site with low traffic needs to be paired with serious audience-building activities. Otherwise, it’s like dressing up a mannequin and hoping it’ll start a conversation.

The real goal: Get out of obscurity

My currently-held belief after four years of website projects:

For early-stage companies, a website revamp can be a waste of money if not done at the right time. Of equal or more importance is getting out of what I like to call the realm of obscurity—in other words, building your audience.

If you have $10,000 to spend on marketing, reconsider that website overhaul. Building an audience is the less straightforward route, and that’s probably why it feels more financially risky than redoing your website. But it’s the key to making that website investment worthwhile.

Here’s how you can do it:

• Launch a content marketing engine that drives traffic to your website. You can get started with the same budget you’d use for a website redesign.
• Go all in on podcasts—either as a guest or by hosting your own.
• Embrace founder-led marketing by consistently sharing valuable content on LinkedIn or other platforms.
• Invest in paid ads that educate your audience at scale, instead of just trying to sell them right away.
• Pursue strategic partnerships that can bring in new traffic and boost your visibility.

After working with several startups, I’d make this bet: Put up a minimum viable ‘good enough’ website, and allocate precious resources towards building an audience. Once website traffic increases, you’ll be able to use data to make objective decisions.

Whatever you decide, remember: Any website overhaul for a site with low traffic needs to be paired with serious audience-building activities. Otherwise, it’s like dressing up a mannequin and hoping it’ll start a conversation.