This is how modern business websites work (with examples)

This is how modern business websites actually work. Most companies are still building websites like it's 2015. And even though that sounds like it was last week, that's actually 11 bloody years ago. And in those 11 years, everything has changed across websites. Right, we've just finished transforming a website for one of our clients called Rookledge Law.

Their old site was fine, it was professional, it was clean, it was the kind of site that you'd probably scroll past without thinking twice. But fine isn't enough anymore for websites because websites in 2026 aren't digital brochures, they're your best salesman. They're working 24/7, 365 days a year if you do it right. And if your site isn't built with that in mind, you're losing customers 24/7, 365 days a year. So today in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how we redesigned the Rookledge Law website to fix these main five mistakes I see most business websites making.

And I guarantee that your website right now is at least making three of these same mistakes. Let's do this or something grandiose or something like that. Mistake one is images that just fill up space. So let's start by talking about images because this is where most businesses get their website completely ass backwards. If you look at this old Rookledge Law website, it was full of generic stock photos, pictures that could be for literally any business that you chose.

There's nothing in any of these photos that says what Rookledge Law actually does or why you should give a This here is 2015 thinking. This is what people used to do on websites. We have a space to fill, therefore we'd fill it with a stock photo. And that's just straight up boring. Modern websites, every single image on your website has to do a job.

Look at this page here, we're showing the actual team of Rookledge Law, we're showing genuine results. These images are not decoration, they're actual proof. And I said actual actually a lot of times then, actually. Can you see the difference here between the old site and the new site? Most business websites are making this crucial mistake of having images on their website that just fill space.

The old images on the old Rookledge Law website did exactly that. They just said, "We exist." Maybe. Because every time you use a stock photo on your website with people in it, it leaves potential customers wondering what you're actually hiding. And do these people actually work for this business? They obviously don't, because everybody can detect a stock photo.

And they know that that person in that stock photo that you've used doesn't work for your business. The new images on the new Rookledge Law website, we are the people that deliver the results. And the reason this is important is because most people are judging your business when they land on your website, and they're making a decision within 3 to 5 seconds. That bears repeating. 3 to 5 seconds.

That isn't a long time. The images on your website in that time are either going to build trust in those 3 seconds, or they're not going to. The old images on the old Rookledge website, they were generic, they were forgettable, they weren't building that 3-second trust. The new images on the new website, they are showing exactly what you get when you work with Rookledge Law. The next mistake I see all the time is words that confuse.

Now, let's talk a little bit about this, about words on your website, because this is probably costing you the most money on your existing website. It was on the Rookledge Law website, the old Rookledge Law website was full of what I would euphemistically call business speak. Normally, I'd say something harsher, like business speak. Blue sky thinking, vague descriptions, industry jargon, long paragraphs that say absolutely all. But if we look at the new Rookledge Law website here, every headline answers one question, what's in it for me?

Instead of talking about themselves, they're talking about what the customer gets. Instead of being clever, they're being clear. And this is the rule for modern business websites. If an 8-year-old can't understand what you do in 10 seconds, the words on your website are too complicated. Most business websites are making this second mistake, writing words on their website that confuse people.

When I'm talking about content like this, though, I'm not just talking about dumbing down the content. We weren't trying to treat our visitors like idiots. It's actually about respecting your visitors' time. People don't visit websites to be impressed by your vocabulary. They visit to solve a problem.

So, if they're visiting to solve a problem, make it easy for them and make content simple, make the words simple, and don't make them confusing. Mistake number three is, well, what is a call to action? This one drives me absolutely insane on every website because it's so bloody obvious when you see it. And after I've showed you this, you will see this on almost every business website that you've visited this week. On the old Rookley's Law website here, you can see it isn't clear what happens next.

What do we need to do next? Where's the button? What's the next step? It's like they were trying to play hide-and-seek with their own potential customers. Nearly every business website I see makes this mistake.

They don't even know what a call to action is. The website has zero call to actions. This is classic 2015 thinking. If people want to contact us, they'll figure it out. We don't need no call to action.

We're not trying to sell off the website. It's wrong. It's so wrong that it's wronger. It's superlative wrong. It's just really wrong.

Very wrong. Wrong. Now, the reason this is wrong is because there's just too much choice now. There's too many businesses out there doing exactly the same thing as you. If a potential customer doesn't find what they need on your business website, they're just going to hit the back button, return to the results, and then click on the next website that offers the exact same service as you.

A good business website can't afford to lose that potential customer. So, we need some good call to actions. Modern business websites make the next step obvious plain as day. Look at this on the new Rookledge Law website here. On the service page, it's showing a bit of info about the service, then it shows the clear process on what happens next.

After that, it's showing potential fees, which is by the way highly unusual for a solicitor website, but something I felt was important for this particular one. Then finally, it shows some testimonials to provide proof, and then a clear contact form to get in touch. But, here's what most people are getting wrong on business websites about call to actions. It's not just about having a button. It's about having the right button with the right words at the right time.

The main call to action throughout the Rookledge Law website is book your free 30-minute consultation now. And that phrase, "Book your free 30-minute consultation now." is not accidental. We're making the words there, the call to action, work very hard with specific text. The free bit, it won't cost you anything. The 30-minute bit, it only takes 30 minutes.

The consultation bit makes it sound like it's not just going to be a sales call, and it isn't. You are going to speak to a solicitor. So, every bit of that makes sense. The new Rookledge Law website has strategic call to action that match exactly what somebody's thinking at the right stage. Now, mistake number four is the one I see lots of websites do.

It's design that doesn't convert. I hesitate to talk about design because it's an uncomfortable truth for lots of websites. Here, I'm not talking about making things pretty. I mean making things work. Actually converting potential customers to actual sales.

The old Rookledge Law website here looked professional just about. It wasn't great. It wasn't going to win any awards. But, when you look at the page here, where's your eye supposed to go? What's the most important thing on this page?

It's impossible to tell at this point. The old Rucklidge Law website here is the perfect example of what I call $50 WordPress template design. The theme is so generic that it's got no priority towards any specific thing, and the website could be the design for any business whatsoever, which means that nothing on the website gets any attention, which means that a potential customer doesn't know where to click or what to do. Modern business websites use visual hierarchy. Your eye is going to follow a specific path when you're scanning a website, and that path leads exactly where we want it to go, and that's because of the design.

Now, if you look at the home page of the new Rucklidge Law website here, you can see a clear header right at the top that says, "We look after the law, so you can look after the ones you love." And then directly underneath that, there's more specific strategic text that says, "If you need help with legal issues related to children, we are here to help." Then after that, we finish with a book your free consultation. And all of that there in the design is just in the header of the home page. It's the first thing you see straight away. And when it comes to the design here, that's not accidental. It's to maximize the visual hierarchy with clear design decisions so that it will lead people to booking a call, or at least scrolling further down the page, because they're going to know they're in the right place straight away, and they're going to want to find out more.

Nearly every business I see makes this mistake we're talking about here. Their website design just doesn't convert. It's designed to exist or to look pretty. For an example, look at the navigation here on the old Rucklidge Law website. The old site had eight different menu items competing for attention.

The new Rucklidge Law website has two main paths. You're either going to look at the services, or you're going to read the fees, are you going to do both? Because we know exactly what a potential customer is going to want to see from a solicitor website, they're going to want to understand if they offer the service that they need, and then they're going to want to find out exactly how much it costs. We've got both of those things slap-bang in the navigation, no matter where you navigate to. And this is the thing about modern business websites.

It's not about what looks good in a design portfolio. It's not about how pretty it is. And my job as a designer on a project like this isn't to make it look pretty. We'll do that by default. My job as a designer is to convert visitors into customers.

The old design was just there, it just existed, as you can see. But the new Rookledge Law website is trying to convert every single time with every design decision. There's a big difference there. The final mistake I see is speed kills sales. Let's talk about something that none of your website visitors will ever compliment you on, but they'll absolutely punish you for it if you don't do it.

And you'll never know if it's an issue because they'll stay silent about it, because they'll just click back on your website and they'll never return. This is all about the speed of your website, how fast it loads. The old Rookledge Law website took over 6 seconds to load. 6 seconds might not sound like much, but here's what happens in those 6 seconds. After 3 seconds, 40% of the potential people have left.

After 6 seconds on your website, you've lost over half of your our visitors before they even see what you do. Every business website makes this final mistake. Their website speed is killing their sales. There's a portion of people who never see anything that you offer, they don't even see your website load, they don't even see your logo, your brand, or anything about you because your website is too slow to load and they just click off and go to the next one because they're impatient. Nobody is going to wait 6 seconds for a website to load.

The new Rookledge Law website loads in 2 seconds every single time. And that's not just the initial load of the website, that's every click. And this thing here is why I hate those fancy page transitions on websites. They slow the experience down for a potential customer. And every time you slow that experience down at the expense of showing a loading bar is another potential customer you've lost because your website didn't load quickly enough.

This matters more now than ever before because people's expectations have been set by websites like Amazon, by Google, by Netflix. Everything instantly loads. And if your site doesn't feel as fast as the websites that they use every single day, your website by comparison will feel broken. And if it's slow on mobile, well, you can forget about it because no one's ever going to click on it. The old Rockledge Law website was basically unusable on a mobile phone.

And the new Rockledge Law website is actually faster on a mobile than most websites are on desktop. So, I loved working on this Rockledge Law website. I think the final result is the perfect example of a modern business website and what they should look like in 2026. And that's why I've used it as an example for this video. There was many things we learned while we designed and developed this website, but I think one of the most important things to remember is that your business website isn't competing against other businesses in your industry, it's actually competing against every website that your customer has ever used.

So, when somebody has used a website like Amazon, they expect your website to load as fast as Amazon. Images are important, too. You need images that prove things instead of just decorate things. You need words that clarify things instead of confuse things. And you need calls to action that are going to guide potential visitors around your website to find the important info instead of hiding that info from them.

And then finally, and the one that's most important, and the one that most people forget about, is your website speed. Your website needs to load quickly so every potential customer stays around long enough to become an actual customer at the other end of it. This here is how modern business websites actually work in 2026. And there's a link to the Rockledge Law website in the description if you want to go check it out. And if you're ready to go fix your website right now, I suggest you go watch this video next that's going to tell you exactly how to do it.

Come on.