The Forest and the Trail: What Every Website Owner Gets Wrong
I built my first website in 1994 and back then, a website was little more than a handful of HTML pages stitched together with hyperlinks. There were no page builders and certainly no AI. If you wanted a website, you learned HTML and built it by hand.
A lot has changed over the past three decades, but what hasn’t changed is the biggest challenge in web design. It isn’t technology, SEO, or even choosing the right colors and finding the perfect font. It’s helping experts communicate with people who aren’t experts.
Most websites don’t struggle because of bad design. They struggle because the people behind them simply know way too much about what they do. When you’ve spent years building a business or mastering a craft, every piece of information feels important. Every accomplishment has a story, and every service or product deserves equal attention.
In other words, you see the entire forest.
Your visitors don’t.
They’re standing at the edge of the woods looking for the trail that leads them to what they came for—not to identify and appreciate every tree in the forest.
That’s where good web design begins.
A website’s job isn’t to show visitors every destination in the forest. Its job is to help them choose the right trail.
The first question in website design isn’t, “What do you want your website to say?” Instead, the question that needs to be answered is much simpler.
What do you want your visitors to do?
Do you want them to:
- Make a reservation?
- Hire you?
- Schedule an appointment?
- Attend an event?
- Buy a product?
- Donate?
Those answers determine the trail. Everything else is merely part of the journey.
Yes, the information can be presented. Stories can be told. Your expertise can be highlighted. The goal is simply to help visitors discover those things naturally as they follow the trail instead of confronting them with the entire forest all at once.
If they do, many won’t stop to admire it. They’ll simply click the back button.
I think of that as the Back Button Cliff.
Every unnecessary distraction, every competing call-to-action, every “while you’re here…” moment pushes visitors one step closer to the edge. Before long, they stop looking for the trail altogether and simply leave.
You’ve spent years growing your forest. But visitors rarely come to admire your forest. They come looking for your trail.
The question you need to ask isn’t,
“Do I need a new website?”
It’s,
“Do I need a new forest… or just a better trail?”
Let's Find Your Trail.
