If you already have a website, you’ve probably asked yourself this question more than once. Maybe you’re staring at your homepage wondering if it’s saying the right things. Maybe you built it years ago, and it just feels… off. Maybe someone told you it needs a blog, or a chatbot, or better photos, and you’re not sure what’s actually true.
After 15+ years working in communications for corporations, nonprofits, and private schools—and now running my own consulting business helping small businesses, nonprofits, and schools with exactly this—I can tell you the answer isn’t really about adding more pages or more features. It’s about being deliberate with what you already have.
Here’s what I’ve learned actually matters, and what doesn’t.
The Problem: Missing Storytelling
When I audit an existing website, the most common issue I find isn’t a missing contact page or a broken link. It’s that the content never tells the visitor why they should care.
The copy is often outdated or vague. There’s no clear sense of who the page is for, and there’s no customer journey, nothing guiding the visitor from “I found this site” to “I understand what this organization does and why it matters to me” to “I know what to do next.”
This applies whether you’re a small business, a nonprofit, or a school. The organization type changes some details, but the core issue remains the same: visitors land on a page and don’t immediately understand what’s in it for them.
A Real Example: Rewriting for Clarity
When I worked at a large nonprofit private school in Central Florida, I helped rework the website for their swim and dive program. The program itself already had strong website traffic, and it was well-known and popular, even with a website that wasn’t doing it any favors. So they didn’t have a website traffic problem. They had a content clarity problem.
Here’s what I changed:
- Shortened the homepage content significantly, cutting out anything that wasn’t essential
- Added a clear explanation of who the program was for
- Added an infographic highlighting impressive program stats
- Linked out to other popular programs within the swim and dive program, so visitors could keep exploring
The win wasn’t a spike in visitors. It was how the page read and felt once we were done. It was direct, easy to scan, and told visitors exactly what they needed to know without making them work for it.
That’s the kind of win that matters most on most websites, and it’s usually invisible until you actually make the change.
What Every Website Actually Needs
Beyond storytelling, there’s a shorter list than people expect of things I consider genuinely non-negotiable:
- An About page that tells visitors who you are and why you do this work
- Clear calls to action throughout the site
- A Contact page that’s easy to find
- Testimonials woven throughout the site rather than isolated to one page
- FAQs on specific pages, especially your most popular services or programs
- Other ways to connect, including your active social media
That’s it. That’s the real list. Everything else is either a nice-to-have or, more often, something people think they need but don’t.
What’s Overrated (and What to Skip)
This is where I tend to differ from much of the “website checklist” advice you’ll find online. In my experience, these things get more credit than they deserve:
- Flashy animations that slow down the page without adding meaning
- Oversized photos that dominate a page but don’t say anything
- AI-generated photos, which tend to feel impersonal and can undercut trust
- Heavy industry jargon that visitors have to translate in their heads
None of these makes a website more effective. Most of the time, they make it harder to use.
Organize Your Navigation Around Intent
One of the most common mistakes I see, especially with nonprofits, is navigation built around how the organization sees itself rather than how a visitor actually thinks.
A good example: Many nonprofits prioritize their Donate page in the main navigation, right up front, but visitors don’t arrive ready to donate. They need to understand why the cause matters first. If “Donate” is the first thing someone sees, without the story that makes them care, you’ve skipped a step that visitors actually need.
The fix is to think about what a visitor is trying to do when they land on your site, not how your internal departments or programs are organized. Build your navigation around their intent and let it guide them naturally toward the actions you want them to take, including donating—once they understand why.
Don’t Forget Mobile, Especially Your Photos
Mobile-first design gets talked about a lot, but one detail I see missed constantly is photos.
Photos that aren’t properly resized before being uploaded often look fine on desktop, even if they’re taking up more space than they should, but on mobile, they can appear oversized, slow to load, or awkward.
Even more common: photos that do technically resize for mobile, but end up cropped in a way that cuts off faces or the actual focus of the image. A photo that works perfectly on a desktop can lose its entire purpose on a phone screen if it wasn’t set up to scale properly in the first place.
If you only check one thing on your mobile site today, check your photos.
How Much Content is Too Much?
A question I get often is how much detail is appropriate on a single page. My rule of thumb: if you’re explaining everything you do, in full detail, on one page, without categorizing what actually belongs there, it’s too much. I’ve written before about how to organize website content for a better customer experience if you want a deeper walkthrough of how to think through that process.
For example, if you offer a service and you list out every single step of your process, with a detailed explanation of what each step includes, that’s too much for an overview page. That level of detail belongs on a dedicated page or in an FAQ, where someone can look for it if they want it. Your main pages should give visitors just enough to understand the value and move forward, not everything you know about how you do the work. If you’re not sure how to make those calls, organizing your website content so it’s clear, categorized, and easy for visitors to navigate is exactly the kind of work I help clients with.
What to Do Next
If you’ve read this far, here’s my honest suggestion: take a few minutes and do a quick audit of your own website.
Ask yourself:
- Does my homepage explain why a visitor should care, or just what I do?
- Is my navigation built around what visitors want to accomplish, or how my organization is structured internally?
- Are my photos actually optimized for mobile, or just technically present?
- Am I cramming too much into single pages instead of spreading content out where it makes sense?
Being deliberate about what you share and how you share it makes a bigger impact over time than adding more pages, more features, or more content ever will. If auditing your own site has you wondering whether it makes more sense to hire someone to manage it, I’ve written about how to think through that decision, too.
If you’d like a second set of eyes on your website, I offer website audits that focus on clarity, storytelling, navigation, and mobile experience. Reach out and let’s talk about what your site could be doing better for you.
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