Your Website Looks Fine But It’s Telling the Wrong Story
It started with enthusiasm. A blank domain, a plan to keep costs low, and the excitement of finally launching something with my name on it. As a freelancer working from home, I knew I needed a website that would show what I could do, help clients find me, and give me a space to write or share updates. I figured I could do it myself. After all, how hard could it be?
Very hard, it turns out. Or rather, not hard in the way I expected. Not technically impossible. Just exhausting. Draining in the small, relentless ways that DIY projects can be when you’re juggling everything else at the same time.
I started with a popular site builder that promised ease. Drag and drop, no coding, fast launch. But even in the first week, I was already patching together tutorials from three different forums just to figure out how to get the contact form to stop adding extra spaces. Then came the colour scheme issues. Then the image scaling. Then the layout that would not behave on mobile.
What should have been a tidy afternoon job became a three-week anxiety spiral. I could not focus on client work because I was too busy tweaking margins. I did not want to send anyone the site link because something was always off. And the worst part was the quiet, growing suspicion that all of this was making me look less professional, not more.
It did not matter that I knew what I was doing in my field. My online presence was telling a different story. One that made me look hesitant, unfinished, and under-resourced. And when you are trying to convince people to trust you with paid work, that gap matters.
I kept telling myself it was fine. That it was temporary. That I would fix the bits that annoyed me once things quietened down. But they never did. And the more I tried to patch things together, the more complicated it got.
Eventually, I gave up. Not on having a website. But on the idea that I could build one myself that would do the job properly. I needed help. Not a fancy agency with a ten-step onboarding flow. Just someone who understood what it was like to be a solo operator. Someone who could build something fast, clean, and durable without making me feel like I had to learn a new language just to manage it.
I found that in Paul James Digital. The difference was obvious from the first conversation. No jargon, no sell, no pressure. Just a calm, clear chat about what the site needed to do and what it did not. We talked through the audience, the structure, and the goals. Not as a branding exercise, but as practical planning.
He asked questions that made me realise how much fluff I had added to my DIY version. Things that were there just because they were part of the template, not because they served any purpose. He stripped all that away. The result was a layout that put my work first. Simple, quick to load, and easy to maintain.
We kept it honest. A few pages. A clear contact path. No distractions. I got to write the content in my own voice, and Paul built the frame that held it together. No plugins I would need to monitor. No visual builder tools that hid half the settings. Just clean code and a dashboard that made sense.
Since launch, I have had more conversations with prospects who said they found me through the site. They mentioned that it felt easy to navigate. That it helped them understand what I do. That they could tell I took it seriously. I am not saying the website closed deals on its own. But it stopped costing me opportunities. And that matters just as much.
If I had stuck with my DIY version, I might still be fiddling with the font size on a tablet view right now. I would still be embarrassed to share the link. I would still be worrying that my online shop front looked half-finished to someone seeing me for the first time.
What I have now is quiet confidence. I know the site works. I know it shows me in the right light. And I know that if I need to update it, I can. No stress. No guesswork. Just a proper tool that helps me do my work.
If you are trying to freelance full time or grow a small independent business, and you are stuck in that same loop of site tweaking and second-guessing, I cannot recommend Paul highly enough. He gets it. He does not try to oversell. He just builds things that work.
Take a look at his web design service here and save yourself the three weeks of misery I went through. Your work deserves better than a site that undermines it.
