Most owners I talk to know their website needs work. The reason it hasn't happened is almost always time, and it comes with real conviction.
The way I'd sum up what I hear from owners is this: *"I have to set aside a bunch of time because I'm basically leading the project. I don't want to do it now because I don't want to be a bottleneck, and I have all these other important things going on."*
It's a reasonable position. It's also worth looking at what it's based on, because it usually isn't a forecast about the next project. It's a memory of the last one.
What the last one asked for
When I hear about previous website projects, the ask often went something like this: *"We're going to kind of make this design, and we want you to give us all the copy. We want you to tell us what structure you want. We want you to tell us what's important."*
If that's the project you remember, the reluctance makes sense. Writing every page of your own website, and deciding how it's organized, is a real job, and it lands on the person with the least spare time in the building.
It usually isn't bad faith. A team can build websites well and still know very little about industrial distribution or contract machining. The substance has to come from somewhere, and when the team doesn't have it, the owner is who's left.
The part only you can supply
Whoever builds your next site, there's a short list of facts that can only come from inside the company. It's worth writing down now, because it's the part that can't be handed off:
- What you actually make or do, in the words a buyer would use, not the words on
- your letterhead.
- Which products or services earn the margin, as opposed to the ones you list first
- out of habit.
- The sectors you're moving into, and the ones you're quietly moving away from.
- What you've stopped doing that the current site still describes.
- The certifications, standards and tolerances you hold.
- The customers or projects you're allowed to name.
That list is knowledge only your company has, rather than copywriting, and it's what decides whether a site describes the business accurately. Gathering some of it, like certifications and project photos, takes time whoever does the writing. But writing down the list above is a far smaller job than writing the site, and it's the part that helps the rest go well.
Before you sign anything, ask who writes the copy and what they need from you. Either answer can work, as long as you know which one you're agreeing to.
Why writing the site yourself tends to leave out the important parts
There's a second reason the old way goes wrong, and it has nothing to do with time.
An owner who has run a company for twenty years usually has too much context to read their own website the way a first-time buyer does. When something is vague, they often don't see it as vague, because they fill in the gaps without noticing. So the things that feel too obvious to write down are often the things that never get written down.
Machine shops are a clear example. For a CNC machine shop, the things a buyer most wants to check are certifications, tolerances and who they've worked for. Those are also, fairly often, what the site doesn't say, because to the owner they go without saying.
That's the real cost of writing it yourself. Beyond the evenings, the person who knows the business best is often the least able to see what a newcomer can't find.
What the delay costs in the meantime
Waiting feels like it costs nothing, because nothing breaks while you wait.
What does happen is quieter. The site keeps describing the company as it was when it was last written, while the business keeps moving, until it's describing a business that no longer exists. And it's still the page a referred prospect reads before deciding whether to ask you for a quote, which is the moment a lukewarm referral is won or lost. Someone who was told you're good, and who then can't tell from your site that you do the specific thing they need, often moves on to the next name without calling.
So the comparison worth making is between the hours a project takes and the quotes that go unrequested while the site stays as it is. How long a project runs on the calendar is a separate question, covered in what a redesign timeline actually looks like.
