The very first step when you have a business idea isn’t to create a website, trust me, I have over 50 domains worth of ideas that are just sitting there.
TL;DR:
- The first thing you should do when you have a business idea is not to create a website, but try to get some sales.
- Once you have validated the idea and know there’s enough demand to create a real business, then it’s a good idea to set up more structure around your business.
- Don’t confuse admin work with real momentum work. Admin work needs to be done, but it doesn’t move the business forward. Momentum work actually moves the needle for your business.
- Getting sales is real momentum work, setting up a website is admin work.
One of the very first side hustles, I had was making websites for small businesses. Because of that, many of my acquaintances still think of me when it comes to building a website. When they have a business idea, I’ll get a call, saying, “hey, I have an amazing idea and I need a website made. Can you help me out?”
My response almost always is, “no, you don’t need a website... Not yet at least.”
Momentum Work vs Admin Work
Let me be clear, I’m not arguing that a website isn’t important. My argument here is that based on doing web design projects for clients that have both seen success and gotten nowhere, along with my own projects, a website shouldn’t be a priority too early.
So what should be a priority?
Talking to potential customers and getting sales.
But how am I supposed to do that without a website?
Simple, actually go and talk to people and have them venmo or zelle you the money for the product or service you’re pitching.
Here’s the thing, buying a domain and setting up a website will give you the illusion that you’re doing important work for your business, and while it is important at some point, in the beginning its more important to gain momentum. While you’re trying to validate your idea, a website can often just be admin work that gets in the way of the real work required to turn your idea into a business.
When people come to me to design a website without any sales, for me that’s a red flag. If they can’t pick up the phone, call some of their contacts and get a couple people to buy what they’re selling, then I’m not very confident that the person has what it takes to grow a business.
A friend came to me wanted to start a clothing line and he had the same concern.
“I need a website made.” he said to me.
I told him look man, you don’t even have a single sale yet. Business is about being resourceful with the constraints you have. Come back to me when you can afford to pay me to build a website with the cashflow from your sales.
He agreed and then went about making phone calls.
A week later he called me and said he made some sales, but people were asking if he had a website.
I said, “do you have consistent demand? If we set up your website today will you be able to send a consistent number of people and drive enough sales every month to cover all the costs for the website along with the cost for me to build the site? Do you have enough cashflow to cover running ads to get people to your site?”
He said, “no its just a few people I’ve been talking to.”
I told him he wasn’t ready yet. Keep calling people and trying to get sales in person before making this leap.
He understood and started setting up a booth at events where his target audience would be so they could see and try on the product. He started getting sales and he hasn’t come back to me for a website yet.
The Challenges of A Website
Once you have a website it comes with its own challenges. How do you drive traffic to the website? Prospects won’t just magically find your website just because you made a website. You have to think through a distribution strategy.
Driving traffic to a website is actually even harder than driving traffic to a social media profile. Social media profiles are built for sharing on the platform, whereas the only way to really share websites is to send the link to a friend.
If you take a website first approach, meaning you don’t have a business without the website, then there are really only 2 ways to drive traffic to your website.
- Paid traffic - run paid ads on social media platform or other places where your target audience hangs out.
- Organic traffic - create content on social media, your website, or where your target audience hangs out and add calls to action to visit your website.
Conclusion
There’s no one way to do things, but based on my experience I’ve found that people that are focused on setting up a website too early in the process generally aren’t as successful as the ones that focus on getting sales.
To get sales you don’t need much, you need to talk to people that would be interested in your product, and you need a way to take payment. You can build more structure around your business like a website and proper payment processing once you’ve validated that there’s enough demand for your idea and its worth pursuing.