A few months ago, I had a call with a potential client about a website project. It went well. Good questions, good energy, the usual back and forth about timelines and budget. Towards the end, I sent over my portfolio.
Then nothing.
No reply to my follow-up either. I’d been ghosted.
There are plenty of reasons that happens. Maybe the budget didn’t work. Maybe they found someone else, or decided the project could wait. That’s business, and I’ve been around long enough not to take every quiet inbox personally.
But this one bothered me enough that I went back and looked at what I’d actually sent them.
I didn’t like it.
I’ve been designing websites for about 24 years, and I say that with some pride. Going through the portfolio, though, I could see that a lot of the work wasn’t doing those years justice. Some projects looked dated. Others were fine, competent even, but there was nothing in there that would make a prospective client sit up and think, this guy really knows his onions.
Twenty-four years of experience, and my portfolio wasn’t making the case for it. That stung a bit. It was also the kick I needed.
The experience was there. The presentation wasn’t.
So I went back through every project. I looked again at what each one was meant to achieve, the features, the design systems, the user experience. Quite a few of them I rebuilt from scratch.
The old work wasn’t necessarily bad. It just didn’t reflect the standard I want my name attached to anymore. I was asking businesses to trust me with their digital presence while my own was underselling what I could do. What I said I could deliver and what people could actually see had drifted apart.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised how many businesses are in exactly the same position. So yes, this started with my portfolio. But it’s really about whether what you show the world lines up with where you’re trying to go.
Your ambition and your online presence should agree with each other
Say you want your brand to be seen as premium. You’ve invested in good packaging, a quality product, a nice space and staff who treat customers well. Then someone looks you up and finds a website that was clearly put together in a hurry ten years ago.
Or you’ve built your business around convenience. You want buying from you to feel effortless. In reality, every order is a long WhatsApp thread: product questions, price confirmations, account details, a screenshot of a bank transfer, and someone on your end checking whether the money has actually landed.
I’m not knocking WhatsApp or Instagram. In Nigeria especially, that’s where a lot of customers are, and they work. The question is whether they should be the whole operation.
What happens when orders double? When messages get buried? When the one person who manages the account is sick, travelling or has moved on? And what happens if Instagram restricts your account tomorrow, with or without a good reason?
For a lot of businesses, that would take out the shop window, the customer service desk and most of the sales pipeline in one go. That’s a lot of control to hand to a platform you don’t own.
Are you talking to the right people?
Most business owners I speak to can describe their ideal customer quite clearly: what they like, what they can afford, what they expect.
Now look at your content. Is it talking to that person? Does the language sound like the market you’re after? Do the visuals say the right thing about quality? Are you answering the questions those customers actually ask, or posting because someone told you consistency is the secret?
Consistency matters. But posting the wrong message every day is still the wrong message.
Advertising has the same problem. You can spend serious money on ads and still pull in people who have no interest in what you sell, or no means to buy it. The platform usually gets the blame. More often, the message, the creative, the offer and the audience just don’t match. You’re aiming at one group and your content is attracting another.
What does your data say?
This is the bit most businesses skip.
Ask a business owner who their customers are and you’ll usually get a confident answer. Ask how they know, and it gets a bit quieter.
Who’s visiting your website? Where are they coming from? Which pages do they actually read, and where do they give up? Which campaigns bring in real enquiries, and which ones just collect likes? And of those enquiries, which become paying customers?
The people buying from you aren’t always the people you pictured. Your best customers might be older than you assumed. They might be finding you on Google rather than Instagram. The product you barely promote might be getting more interest than the one swallowing most of your ad budget.
Without measurement, you’re guessing. And guessing gets expensive.
You don’t need an enterprise analytics setup to fix this. Decide what you actually need to know, put some basic tracking in place, and then (this is the part people miss) look at it regularly and act on what it tells you.
Being online isn’t the same as being found
Having a website and a couple of social accounts doesn’t mean people can find you when they need you.
Try it from the customer’s side. Someone in your city searches for what you offer. Do you come up? Someone has heard your name and wants to check you’re legitimate before sending money. What do they find? Someone is comparing you with three competitors. Is there anything in your online presence that tips it your way?
Each channel should have a job, and they should work together. Social media introduces people to you. Your website is where they look properly and decide whether to trust you. Search brings in people who are already looking. And your ordering or enquiry process should make the next step easy, not a chore.
Don’t stop at the sale
We put a lot of energy into winning new customers and surprisingly little into the ones we already have.
What happens after someone buys from you? Do you know if they were happy? Is there a way to follow up? Can you point them towards something else they’d genuinely find useful? Is the second purchase easier than the first?
Depending on your business, that might mean a smoother ordering process, a customer account, a loyalty scheme, useful content, or simply a well-timed message. Not everyone needs all of it. But everyone should have thought about what happens after the first transaction, because that’s where a lot of the long-term value sits.
And I don’t mean bombarding people with promotions. Good service and a real reason to come back will do far more than any broadcast list.
Own the foundation
Social media platforms are powerful, but you’re renting space on them. Algorithms change, reach drops, accounts get restricted, rules shift, usually without much warning.
A well-maintained website, a domain in your name, a proper customer database, an email list people actually signed up for, and dependable systems behind all of it give you something solid to stand on. They won’t remove every risk, and they don’t make social media any less useful. They just mean that if one channel goes quiet, your business doesn’t go quiet with it.
I’d call that business continuity more than marketing.
Time for an audit
Back to my portfolio. The real lesson wasn’t that I needed prettier websites in it. It was that I’d let the way I presented my work fall behind the work itself, and I’d got comfortable with that.
I doubt I’m the only one. Running a business takes everything you’ve got: customers, staff, cash flow, whatever caught fire this morning. Meanwhile the website, the socials and the ordering process slip quietly into maintenance mode. We keep systems we’ve outgrown. We keep posting without asking whether it works. We keep running ads without measuring them. And we assume customers can see our value because we can.
They can’t. They can only judge what’s in front of them.
So take a proper look at the whole thing, not just the website. Start with what you want the business to become and who you want to serve. Then check how people find you, how they experience you, how they buy and what happens afterwards. Ask whether those pieces are pulling in the same direction, and be willing to change the ones that aren’t.
I still don’t know why that client went quiet. Maybe my portfolio had nothing to do with it. I’m glad I looked anyway.
Your online presence shouldn’t just prove you exist. It should be helping you get where you’re going. If yours isn’t, it’s time to tighten things up.
