There’s a scene that plays out with unsettling frequency in any agency. The client walks into a meeting, opens their laptop, points to a competitor’s website, and says: “We want one like that, but better.” Or, in equally popular variations for sites already live: “We want to change the colour, it’s starting to look dated”, “Let’s add a button here”, “Let’s take this page down”.
These are legitimate requests, of course. But from a project manager’s perspective, they are symptoms, not diagnoses. And starting to design a website, or making structural changes to one that has already had a long digital life, based on a symptom is the fastest way to spend budget building something that, in the end, serves no one: not the brand, not the user, not the business.
I firmly believe that a website shouldn’t be just a visual deliverable or a set of features, but rather the operational translation of brand strategy into the digital realm. When these two worlds don’t speak to each other, when the site is treated as an isolated project rather than an extension of the business, the result is always the same: a product that looks right, even beautiful, but doesn’t work. And when we press ahead blindly, like mere order-takers, the natural course is to receive, weeks later, the usual worried phone calls: “it’s not working”, “it’s not converting”, “why is it working for my competitor and not for me?”.
As users, we’ve all felt this: the sense that, somehow, the brand isn’t coherent with what we know of it outside the digital realm. From the premium brand with a visually confusing site and generic copy, to the company that claims to be innovative but has a dated digital presence.
I don’t believe this is always the result of a lack of creative talent or technical resources. From my (admittedly limited) experience, it stems from a layer that’s missing, and one that tends to be undervalued within companies: the strategic layer that should have existed before the first wireframe. It’s that layer that makes the difference between building and building with purpose.
Before allocating teams and rushing into Figma, we have to start with the more uncomfortable questions. Given the pace of the market, this is probably the most underrated part of any digital project. There’s a haste that plagues projects: we have a thirst to materialise, to see in order to decide, to cut the longer processes short. But before discussing typography, palettes or mockups, there’s a set of questions that need answers — and that, frequently, no one wants to ask, because they demand introspection and, often, decisions that have been postponed for months or years inside complex organisations:
Resistance to these questions rarely bodes well. Even so, I understand what they can stir up and unsettle within a company. Organisations are dynamic and evolve organically; we don’t stop every day to think and debate direction, we do it unconsciously, fluidly. When we’re challenged to do it deliberately, especially by outsiders to the business, it can seem too obvious or, at the opposite extreme, a task of such magnitude that it triggers a small existential crisis. Because direction implies choice, and choice implies giving up alternatives. That’s precisely why these questions need to be asked. If we are this, then we aren’t that. We can’t try to be everything, and that’s perfectly fine.
Moving from strategy to concrete decision is the first step. This is where the part of the work that distinguishes a beautiful site from a strategic one lies: translating brand abstractions into operational decisions. It’s not magic, it’s method. Brand positioning translates into site architecture and information hierarchy; the target audience, into journeys, well-defined CTAs and depth of narrative; tone of voice, into copy, imagery and graphic elements; values, into UX decisions, transparency and pace of information; differentiating factors, into portfolio structure, market proof and big claims.
With years of working in an agency, in close contact with different stakeholders across different sectors, one uncomfortable truth becomes evident: when strategic questions are avoided, it’s almost always a sign that marketing, sales, product and leadership are about to discover, mid-project, that they weren’t aligned. The initial brief says one thing, the commercial team needs another, and the CEO has a third opinion that only surfaces at the design presentation, and they’re caught off guard by the fact that their vision isn’t obvious to the rest of the team, because it’s crystal clear in their head.
Managing this dynamic early on is half the work of making sure the final product works and is coherent with the brand. Collecting strategic briefs with explicit decisions is essential, they act as a compass when, three weeks before go-live, someone asks to “change everything”. Having explicit decision criteria allows us to separate “I don’t like that blue” from “this blue isn’t coherent with our positioning”: the first is personal taste, the second is strategic argument, and naturally, the two need to be discussed in different ways. Identifying the aligned decision-maker on the client side is key to approvals and to keeping the project on course. And understanding who, within the client, has the clearest sense of who the brand is and who its audience is, goes a long way toward not getting lost in the process. That opinion is worth valuing: “I don’t like that image because our customers aren’t like that” is the feedback of someone who knows perfectly well, even if they can’t articulate it, who the target is.
Let’s go back to the beginning. To that scene of the client opening the laptop and pointing at the competitor. The right answer, deep down, isn’t technical, it’s strategic: before we talk about how the site will be, we need to talk about what it will do for the brand, for the business, for the target.
If we look at building a website with the same care with which we look at a physical construction project, we realise that every decision counts: the choice of the builder, the materials, the structure. What will last? Where did we save on materials and are now paying the consequences? Where did we cut corners in the short term and are now paying the bill in the long? Just as with a house, in digital too, shortcuts charge interest. And purpose is the best foundation we can have.
Building with purpose is synonymous with building with intention, with direction, with focus and with judgment, qualities that are becoming increasingly scarce in the age of AI. It doesn’t necessarily mean building more slowly; it’s not by running a briefing and answering the right questions that a site gets delayed. In fact, I would argue the opposite: starting from scratch with the right direction saves time further down the road, because it prevents unnecessary side quests.
In the end, all of this comes down to building with intention. When that happens, the website stops being just another to-do on the marketing task list and becomes what it should have been from the start: the brand’s most relevant digital asset.