Before You Try to Get More Website Traffic, Fix These Things First
Getting more people to your website sounds like a pretty universally good business goal…
More people finding you on Google? Yes, please. 🙋♀️ More potential clients discovering an old blog post or portfolio project through Pinterest while you're busy doing something else? Also wonderful.
Someone Googling the exact service you provide, landing on your website, realizing you're exactly who they've been looking for, and sending you an inquiry without you having to make a single Reel pointing dramatically at text floating above your head?
The dream. 😂
And because I spend a lot of my time designing and improving Squarespace websites for small businesses, including all of the SEO work happening behind them, I'm generally very enthusiastic about helping more of the right people find a business online.
But there's one question I think we need to ask before we pour a whole lot of time, money, or energy into getting more website traffic:
What happens when those people actually get there?
Because getting someone onto your website is really only the beginning. Once they arrive, they still need to figure out what you do, whether your services are meant for someone like them, whether they trust you, what it might cost, what working with you looks like, and what they're supposed to do if they're interested.
And if those pieces aren't working particularly well yet, sending another 500 people to the website probably isn't going to fix the underlying problem. It might just mean 500 more people arrive, look around for a minute, and quietly disappear back into the internet. 😬
This is something I think gets lost surprisingly often when we talk about marketing a small business, because so much of the advice we're surrounded by is focused on more.
More followers. More website traffic. More blog posts. More pins. More keywords. More content. More visibility. More leads. Meanwhile, the website we're sending all of those people toward might still be describing a service we stopped offering in 2023. 🤦♀️
So before you decide you need more traffic, I think it's worth taking a good look at the place you're sending everyone.
Not because your website needs to be absolutely perfect before you're allowed to market your business (it does not!), but because there are a handful of things I'd want working reasonably well before putting significant effort into getting more people there.
Table of Contents
Why More Website Traffic Isn't Always the Answer
Website traffic is useful. Obviously. But traffic itself isn't really the end goal for most of us. Unless you run a business that earns money purely based on page views, having 10,000 people visit your website isn't particularly exciting if all 10,000 of them leave without doing anything.
What we're really trying to accomplish is something closer to: More of the right people finding your business, understanding what you offer, and taking a meaningful next step. And that's a very different goal.
Imagine you've opened a lovely little shop and decide you need more customers, so you put signs all over the neighborhood directing people toward it. It works beautifully, and hundreds of people start coming through the door.
Except once they're inside, nothing is labelled, they can't quite figure out what you sell, there's no pricing anywhere, the products are tucked into random corners, and the checkout counter is hidden behind a curtain at the back. Most people would probably wander around for a minute, feel increasingly confused, and eventually think: Hmm. Maybe I'll come back later. But… They probably won't.
The problem isn't that you need another sign. You need to fix the shop. Your website works in much the same way. SEO, Pinterest, Instagram, blogging, referrals, advertising, networking, Google Business Profile, and all of the other ways people discover your business are essentially bringing people to the front door.
Your website then needs to do something useful with that attention. Which is why, when someone tells me “My website isn't working,” one of the first things I want to understand is what working actually means to you?
Are people not finding the website at all?
Are they finding it through Google but leaving?
Are lots of people viewing your Services page without inquiring?
Are you receiving inquiries, but they're consistently from people who aren't a good fit?
Are people contacting you and then asking questions that are already technically answered somewhere on your website?
Are you getting traffic, but it's going to pages that don't really lead anywhere?
Those are all different problems. And throwing more traffic at all of them isn't necessarily the answer.
Start With Website Clarity
If I could fix one thing on a lot of small business websites before sending them more traffic, it would be this: Make the business easier to understand.
This sounds almost comically simple, but it's one of the most common things I notice when I'm looking through websites. And I completely understand how it happens! When you've been running your business for a few years, you have SO much context about it that your clients don't.
You know what you sell.
You know who it's for.
You know what makes your approach different.
You know what your industry terminology means.
You know what someone gets when they hire you.
So sometimes we write website copy from the perspective of someone who already knows all of those things. But someone arriving through Google might have absolutely no context whatsoever. A woman who has followed your Instagram account for two years probably knows what you do, has watched you talk about your process, recognizes your client work, knows your personality, and possibly knows your dog's name. 😂
Someone who Googled “Calgary brand designer” six minutes ago knows none of that. She's meeting you cold. So when she lands on your website, she needs to be able to orient herself fairly quickly.
What do you do?
Who do you do it for?
Where do you work?
Is this relevant to what I searched for?
Where should I go next?
And this is one of those places where good website design and good SEO overlap beautifully, because Google needs clarity too. If your entire homepage is filled with language like:
Create the business you've been dreaming about.
Step into your next chapter.
Build something that finally feels aligned.
...but never actually explains whether you're a web designer, photographer, business coach, accountant, copywriter, or interior designer, your potential client and Google are both being asked to do quite a lot of detective work. 🕵️♀️
And I don't particularly want either of them playing detective. This doesn't mean your website needs to sound robotic, quite the opposite! Clear and human messaging can absolutely exist together. You can tell me you're a Calgary Squarespace web designer who works with service-based businesses (me, for instance!) and sound like an actual human woman while you're doing it.
You can use personality, tell stories, make jokes, and have beautiful branding. You can use language that feels warm and distinctly yours. The practical information just needs to be there too.
Make Sure Your Services Are Easy to Understand
Once someone understands what your business does generally, the next question is usually:
Okay... what can I actually hire you for?
And this is where things can get a little messy, especially if you've been in business for a few years. Maybe you started with six services and now you really only want to sell three. Maybe one service evolved so much that the description on your website doesn't really resemble what you deliver anymore. Maybe you slowly added something new six months ago and have talked about it approximately 47 times on Instagram but never actually added it to your website. 🙈
Maybe your pricing changed, process changed, or ideal client changed. Maybe your business has grown up quite a bit and your website is still wearing the digital equivalent of the outfit you wore to the bar in 2011. She served us well. We can thank her and move on. 😂
Before putting a lot of energy into bringing more people to your website, I'd make sure the website reflects the business you're actually trying to grow now.
For each of your primary services, someone should be able to get a reasonably clear understanding of:
what the service is
who it's best suited to
what problem it helps solve
what's generally included
what the process looks like
what kind of outcome they're working toward
what they should expect to invest
what happens if they want to move forward
They don't need to know every tiny detail. Your website isn't your onboarding questionnaire, proposal, contract, and welcome guide rolled into one enormous page. But they need enough information to decide:
This sounds like what I need. I want to keep going.
Because if someone lands on your website through Google after searching for exactly what you offer and still can't figure out which service they need, getting them there wasn't really the hard part.
If this is sounding a little familiar...
My Squarespace Website Reset is designed for established businesses whose website no longer quite reflects the business they've grown into. Over five focused days, I redesign and optimize your existing site so it's clearer, easier to navigate, and better positioned to get found.
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Build Trust Before You Build Traffic
Okay, now I understand what you do. I've found the service that seems right for me. The next question is a little less obvious, but it's probably something along the lines of:
Can I trust you with this?
This matters enormously for service-based businesses because, unlike buying a sweater online, your client usually can't fully evaluate what she's purchasing beforehand.
If she hires a wedding photographer, she hasn't seen her wedding photos yet.
If she hires a home organizer, she doesn't know exactly what her home will feel like afterward.
If she hires a brand or website designer, she hasn't seen the finished brand or website.
She's buying into the possibility of an outcome based partly on whether she trusts the person promising to help her get there. And trust isn't created by putting: QUALITY. PASSION. EXCELLENCE. across the homepage in giant letters. 😬
It's built through all of the little pieces someone encounters while exploring your business, including:
Your client testimonials.
Your Google reviews.
Your portfolio.
Your case studies.
Your results.
Your experience.
Your process.
Your photography.
Your credentials, if they're relevant.
The specificity of your copy.
The way you explain your work.
Whether the website feels current and cared for.
Whether everything you're saying actually feels believable.
And this is also where content becomes incredibly useful. I don't think of blogging as something we do purely because Google apparently wants us to spend the rest of our natural lives producing content. 🙃
A good blog can also be a trust-building tool. Someone might discover you through a Google search, land on an article, read it, click into another one, explore your Services page, look through your work, and eventually start thinking: Oh. I really like the way she thinks about this. That's valuable. SEO helped her find you, your content demonstrated your expertise, your website helped her understand the business, your brand and messaging helped her connect with it, your portfolio gave her evidence. All of those pieces are working together.
That's the kind of marketing system I'm much more interested in building for my clients.
Give Website Visitors a Clear Path to Inquiry
Sometimes a website contains plenty of good information and still doesn't work particularly well because the person reading it has no idea what she's supposed to do next.
She reaches the bottom of the homepage. Nothing.
She reads the Services page. Nothing.
She looks through the portfolio. Still nothing.
Or perhaps the opposite happens and she's presented with approximately 19 possible actions:
Book a call! Join my newsletter! Download my guide! Follow me on Instagram! Read my blog! View my services! Contact me! Learn more! Start here!
There are so many options that making any decision becomes harder. For most service-based business websites, I like having a fairly clear primary path.
Maybe that's: Explore Services → Start Your Project
Maybe it's: View Packages → Inquire
Maybe your business genuinely benefits from: Book a Consultation
The exact wording matters less than the clarity.
Someone who is interested shouldn't have to search for the next step. And your calls to action don't need to feel aggressive or sales-y to accomplish that. A clear button isn't pressuring someone. It's helping them navigate. That's user experience in a nutshell: making it easier for people to do the thing they already came there hoping to do.
Check Your Squarespace Website on Mobile
Now for something considerably less glamorous…
Take out your phone.
Open your actual website.
Not the Squarespace editor.
Not the desktop preview switched into mobile mode.
Your actual live website on your actual phone.
And then pretend you aren't you.
Click around.
Open the navigation.
Read the homepage.
Visit your Services page.
Click your buttons.
Look through your portfolio.
Fill out your inquiry form.
See how quickly the images load.
Try to find your pricing.
Try to contact yourself.
One of the things I always pay close attention to when designing a Squarespace website is how the experience translates from desktop to mobile, because the website that looks absolutely gorgeous stretched across a giant monitor isn't necessarily the experience your potential client is having while scrolling from her couch with one hand while holding a coffee in the other. ☕😂
You might discover that a heading is enormous. A paragraph feels approximately six kilometres long. A button is awkwardly positioned. A photo crops somewhere deeply unfortunate. 🤦♀️ A section that felt spacious and editorial on desktop suddenly involves a truly heroic amount of scrolling. Or your inquiry form is so long that you don't even want to finish filling it out.
These things matter. Because if you're investing in Squarespace SEO, blogging, Pinterest, social media, or any other strategy designed to bring more people to your website, you want the actual experience waiting for them to be reasonably pleasant. Not perfect. Just useful, clear, and easy.
Found a growing list of little things you'd like fixed?
You may not need an entirely new website. My Squarespace & Wix Design Day gives us one focused day to work through the design, mobile, content, SEO, and user-experience improvements that have been sitting on your list.
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Then Focus on SEO + Website Traffic
Once those foundations are in place, this is where I get much more excited about increasing traffic.
Now we can start asking:
What is your ideal client actually searching for?
Does your website have dedicated pages for your most important services?
Does Google clearly understand what you do and where you work?
Are your Squarespace SEO titles and meta descriptions actually optimized?
Are your images properly sized and described?
Are you creating useful content around topics connected to your services?
Could your portfolio projects become searchable case studies rather than simply image galleries?
Could Pinterest continue sending people to those blogs and case studies months after you publish them?
Is Google Search Console telling you that people are already finding you for searches you could build upon?
This is where SEO becomes really interesting to me, because we're no longer chasing website traffic simply for the satisfaction of watching a number go up. We're intentionally creating more ways for the right people to discover the business.
And because we've already thought about what happens after they arrive, that traffic now has somewhere useful to go. Maybe they find a blog article. That leads them to a service. The service leads them to a portfolio project. The project leads them to a testimonial. The testimonial gives them enough confidence to inquire.
Now the blog, SEO, website design, branding, copy, portfolio, and client journey aren't six unrelated things on your marketing to-do list. They're one connected system. And that is much more powerful than simply thinking: I guess I should probably post more. 😅
Ready to work on the traffic side?
Start with: My beginner-friendly guide to Squarespace SEO →
A Simple Website Traffic Readiness Audit
If getting more website traffic is one of your goals, here's what I'd do before adding another marketing task to your list. Give yourself 15 minutes, open your website, and look at these six areas.
1. Clarity
Can someone who knows absolutely nothing about your business quickly understand what you do, who you do it for, and where you work?
2. Services
Can someone easily understand what they can hire you for, which option might be right for them, and approximately what they should expect to invest?
3. Trust
Are you showing enough evidence that you're genuinely good at what you do through testimonials, results, examples, case studies, credentials, or your portfolio?
4. Path
From your most important pages, is there an obvious next step? If someone decides I want this, can she figure out what to do without hunting around?
5. Mobile Experience
Does your Squarespace website actually feel good to use on your phone? Not merely technically functional. Would you personally enjoy using it?
6. Measurement
And finally: Do you know what your existing website traffic is doing? This one gets overlooked. Before deciding you need more traffic, take a look at what you already have.
Where are people coming from?
Which pages are they finding?
What searches are bringing them there?
Which services get the most attention?
Are people reaching your Contact page?
Are inquiries actually coming through?
Because sometimes the answer really is:
Yep. The website is doing its job. We need more people finding it. And sometimes it's: Ohhhhh. People are already coming. We're just losing them somewhere along the way. 😬 Knowing which one you're dealing with can save you a lot of time.
More Traffic Isn't the Goal. A Better System Is.
I genuinely lovvveeee SEO.
There are few things more satisfying to my particular little analytical brain than opening Google Search Console after we've redesigned and optimized a client's Squarespace website and watching the clicks start climbing. 🤓
I love seeing a business begin appearing for searches their ideal clients are actually making. I love taking a portfolio project that previously existed mostly to look pretty and turning it into something Google can understand and surface.
And I especially love creating something once and knowing it can keep introducing people to the business months—or sometimes years—later.
But website traffic is still only one piece of a much bigger picture.
Your brand shapes someone's first impression.
Your messaging helps her understand what you do.
Your SEO helps her discover you.
Your website design helps her navigate the business.
Your content and portfolio demonstrate what you know and what you can do.
Your testimonials help her trust you.
Your inquiry process makes taking the next step feel easy.
And your business systems carry the relationship forward from there.
Your potential client doesn't experience those things as separate marketing strategies. She simply experiences your business. And that's why I've become much more interested in thinking about website design holistically.
When I'm designing a Squarespace website, I don't want to create something that looks beautiful on launch day and then quietly sits there waiting for someone to visit it. I want to understand the job that website needs to do inside the business.
Maybe it needs to generate more inquiries through Google.
Maybe it needs to attract a different calibre of client.
Maybe it needs to make an established business finally feel as established as it actually is.
Maybe it needs to answer the questions you're currently explaining manually.
Maybe it needs to better qualify people before they reach your inbox.
Maybe it needs to connect all the scattered pieces of your marketing into something that finally makes sense.
Usually, it's some combination of all of those things.
That's when website design becomes much more than website design. It becomes part of how the business works. And ultimately, that's the goal I keep coming back to with Endeavor: building thoughtful websites, brands, SEO, and systems that help the business do more of the heavy lifting, so the woman behind it doesn't have to personally hold every single piece together. 🫶
Because yes, I want more of the right people to find your website. I just want to make sure we've given them something worth finding when they get there.
Think your website could be doing more of the heavy lifting?
If your business has grown but your website hasn't quite grown with it, I can help you figure out what needs to change — from the design and messaging to the SEO and overall user experience.
Keep Reading
New to Squarespace SEO?
The Squarespace SEO Basics I Wish More Small Businesses Knew
Working on your website?
7 Signs Your Business Has Outgrown Its Website
Getting the same questions on repeat?
10 Questions Your Squarespace Website Should Answer Before Someone Ever Contacts You
Hi, I’m Kaylee! 👋
I’m the designer behind Endeavor Design Studio, where I help small businesses build thoughtful brands and Squarespace websites that do more than look good.
My work brings together strategy, design, SEO, and user experience to help the right people find your business, understand what you do, trust what they see, and take the next step.
Because your website shouldn’t just be another thing you have to maintain. It should be doing some of the heavy lifting for you.
