Actually, no… you don’t need a big, fancy website to get better leads
You’re scrolling through a competitor’s website. Fifteen pages. Animated sections. Video backgrounds. And you think: That’s what I need! You start believing, Once I finally have a bigger, more impressive website, clients will take me seriously. That belief is so common I’ve given it a name: The Big Fancy Website Myth.
It’s the idea that bigger automatically means better. That more pages equal more authority. That fancy visuals signal professionalism, and without them, premium clients won’t take you seriously.
Here’s the thing: The Big Fancy Website Myth isn’t true. You don’t need more pages, animations, or a website that looks like it belongs to a big corporate brand. What you do need is a strategic website, one that’s designed around your users, your business model, and how people actually make decisions.
In this post, I’ll show you why The Big Fancy Website Myth is so easy to believe, how it might be holding you back, and what to do instead.
Key takeaways
Why this myth is so hard to shake
If you buy into The Big Fancy Website Myth, it’s not because you’re naïve or making bad decisions. It’s because this belief is constantly reinforced in the web design world.
Sure, some businesses genuinely need complex sites: big companies with multiple departments. E-commerce brands with large product catalogs. So when you scroll through designer portfolios, agency websites, or award galleries and you’ll notice a pattern. Large, multi-page websites. Bold visuals. Trendy layouts. Animations, video backgrounds, and interactive effects that immediately grab attention.
It’s easy to look at those examples and assume: This must be what success looks like online.
But there’s more to it: Designers and agencies often benefit from the Big Fancy Website Myth in three key ways.
Reason #1: Portfolios showcase big-company projects, not solopreneur realities
Most agency clients are bigger companies who genuinely need bigger websites. Even if they take solopreneur projects, these often don’t make it into the portfolio.
Why? Because they’re using their portfolio to attract bigger clients and bigger projects.
A good reason to work with a designer who specializes in solopreneurs, not someone who takes on solo projects as a last resort. (Just in case that’s news: here at reThink the Web, I focus on solopreneur website exclusively—with my website redesign The reLaunch—but also with the other work I do.)
Reason #2: Bigger scope means bigger revenue
Many projects are scoped based on the number of pages or features. A 10-page website with a rebrand is simply more revenue than a 5-page website without one. This can lead to suggestions like:
- “You’ll need a blog for SEO,” even if blogging and SEO aren’t part of your marketing strategy.
- “You need one sales page for every single offer variant”, even if your visitors would feel overwhelmed.
- “You need a full rebrand,” when small, thoughtful tweaks would do the job.
None of these suggestions are inherently bad. They only become a problem when they’re added without a clear strategic reason.
Reason #3: Portfolio pieces prioritize wow factor
Most portfolios are optimized for the “wow effect.” Designers want their work to stop the scroll. Agencies want to showcase projects that look impressive at first glance.
The problem is that what looks impressive in a portfolio isn’t always what works best for users.
If a designer is focused on creating their next standout portfolio piece, usability can suffer. Features like background videos, heavy animations, or content flying in from different directions can make a website harder, not easier, to use.
Most of us have experienced this as visitors. You wait for 15 seconds before the website even loads. It finally does and you cannot quite read the headline over the background video. Then disorientation kicks in because content keeps flying in as you scroll.
For some people, this goes beyond annoyance. Some animations can trigger nausea or discomfort in people with certain conditions, and those visitors will leave before reading a single word.
The cycle feeds itself
When clients choose designers based on visuals, designers respond by prioritizing visuals in their work. When portfolios end up emphasizing visual impact above all else, clients are left assuming that visuals are what matter most. So they continue choosing designers based on looks alone, and the cycle feeds itself.
So if you’ve been led to believe the Big Fancy Website Myth, that bigger and fancier automatically equals better results, that belief didn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a common misconception, and one that’s very easy to fall into.
What you’re actually paying for (and what you’re missing)
So what happens when you act on this belief?
The real problem with the Big Fancy Website Myth isn’t just inaccuracy. It’s how the myth influences your website investment decisions.
When you believe you need a big, fancy website, you’re more likely to:
- Agree to larger scopes than you actually need.
- Look for designers who focus primarily on aesthetics.
- Spend a significant part of your budget on visuals instead of strategy.
- End up with a website that looks impressive but doesn’t clearly support your business goals.
I regularly see solopreneurs invest €6–10K in website redesigns that look polished and modern but don’t produce outcomes. You’re still over-explaining on sales calls. Discovery calls fill up with wrong-fit leads.
The site looks better, but it’s not doing its job because the wrong things were prioritized.
As a fellow solopreneur, I understand the reality behind these decisions. We don’t have unlimited corporate budgets. I’m not saying we’re constantly broke. We just need to invest intentionally. Every big investment needs to work for the business.
When design decisions are driven by how impressive a website looks, the website often fails to do its actual job: helping the right people understand your offer and take the next step. That’s why my website redesign offer The reLaunch focuses on getting the foundations right to get you a website that works for both your visitors and yourself.
If you’ve invested in a big, fancy website in the past and didn’t get results, that’s not your fault. You were making the best decision you could with the information you had. And the industry was reinforcing the Big Fancy Website Myth. I don’t want you to feel bad about past choices. I want you to approach your next redesign with a better approach.
So here’s what’s true instead:
Smaller sites work harder
The amount of content on your website does not determine whether people book you.
Ten pages don’t convert better than five simply because there are more of them. What matters is whether the content you do have is intentional and aligned with your visitors’ needs.
For most solopreneurs, fewer pages actually create more clarity. A smaller website is easier to navigate, easier to maintain, and easier to adapt as your business evolves.
Don’t build a cathedral when all you need is a front door.
Click here for advice for early-stage solopreneurs
Start as small as you can
If you’re just starting out, you don’t have the budget to hire people to do the work for you. Plus, working on your own website gives you immense clarity about your offering.
The first job you want your website to do is help you validate your offer and ideal client. If you pivot, so you change things. At this point, you often don’t need a full multi-page site yet.
That’s why I recommend solopreneurs just starting out begin with a one-page website. It’s faster to write, cheaper to build, and easier to adjust as your offer evolves. You can get a free one-pager template here.
Sure, over time you can expand. And at some point, you might want to get professional help. You need more pages when you have multiple offers or you serve different audiences, not just to look more established. Ideally, your website is built so that you can grow it over time without much hassle. That’s the approach I use in my website redesigns.
Your visitors aren’t here to admire your design
This is exactly where the Big Fancy Website Myth starts to fall apart. Your authority online isn’t built by bold claims or impressive visuals. Your ideal clients are not coming to your website to admire design trends. They’re coming because they’re looking for information. They want to understand:
- whether you can help them,
- whether your offer fits their situation, and
- whether working with you feels safe and trustworthy.
Design that gets in the way of reading, understanding, or navigating your website actively hurts conversions.
On the other hand, speed, accessibility, simplicity, and clarity signal that the website is calm, intentional, and under control. Visitors don’t consciously think, “Ah yes, this site loads fast and respects my attention.” But they feel it immediately. And those feelings shape trust.
A strategic website answers the questions that matter
Once you let go of the Big Fancy Website Myth, your approach to a website redesign changes completely. Instead of asking, “What else should I add?” the better question becomes: “What do clients actually need to know to start working with me?“
A strategic website answers key questions quickly and clearly:
- What do you offer?
- Who is it for?
- What problem does it solve?
- Why should someone trust you?
- What’s the next step?
If your website does that well, it doesn’t need to be large or fancy.
Strategic redesign: Start with questions, not pages
A professional website project should always include a strategy phase. This is where you stop thinking in terms of pages and features and start thinking in terms of foundations. Because when the foundations are solid, your website sends strong signals of authority without needing to shout.
Before talking about colors, layouts, or how many pages you’ll have, you and your designer should be asking:
- Do you really need a full rebrand, or would a light refresh be enough?
- Where is your audience in their awareness, and what information do they need right now?
- How does your website support your other marketing channels?
- What pages are actually necessary, and which ones can be combined or removed?
A good designer will offer this kind of strategic guidance even if you come in with a clear idea of what you think you want.
Here’s what this can look like:
Project Insight: Planning page structure for an NGO
Quite a while ago, I a proposal for an NGO (not a solopreneur, but the principle holds true anyway). They had prepared a very detailed brief with all pages planned out. Under the menu item “About Us,” they planned four separate pages:
- Team
- Mission and vision
- Cooperation partners
- Transparency about fundraising
Their goal was to keep costs down by using a single page template for all of the sub-pages. But this wouldn’t have worked well:
Mission and vision needed text sections. Team information works best in a visual grid with photos and short bios. Partners are communicated better through logos rather than long explanations. Trying to force all of that into one reusable template would have meant compromising clarity and usability across the board.
So, before even sending the proposal, I suggested we talk through that approach.
Strategically, one well-structured About page made much more sense, with clear sections for mission and vision, a team grid, and a partner logo section, plus a separate transparency page.
That way, they could both offer a clearer experience for users and keep the project scope lean.
Inside the reLaunch: How I approach solopreneur websites
My website redesign offer The reLaunch follows three phases: strategy, brand, and website.
We always start with strategy. I take time to understand your business model, your audience, and your marketing channels. From there, we define a website structure that’s as big as it needs to be and as small as possible.
When it comes to branding, most of my solopreneur clients don’t need a full rebrand. A light refresh keeps the scope lean, saves money, and ensures your existing audience still recognizes you.
The result is a website that supports your business instead of draining your budget.
This way of working is deeply connected to my Solopreneur Website Foundations framework. Instead of piling on features, it focuses on getting the fundamentals right: strategic clarity, professional branding, intuitive UX design, tech ownership, and ethical marketing.
When these foundations are in place, your website doesn’t need to be big or fancy to work. It just needs to be intentional.
If you’re interested in the exact process for The reLaunch, here’s an article for you: What’s included in The reLaunch?
The reLaunch for Ethics Coach Dror
One of my clients, Dror, is a leadership coach who planned a website relaunch after seeing clients get lost on his old site.
In the strategy phase, we reorganized his 6+ offers into three clear categories: individual coaching, group coaching, and team coaching. That immediately reduced the website scope and made it easier for visitors to find what fit their needs.
For his brand, we chose a light refresh instead of a full rebrand. That saved money and reduced the effort required to update social media profiles, documents, and other materials.
His new website became clearer instead of bigger. And people who know him now compliment him on how well the website communicates his personality, not on how fancy the design looks.
“It’s fresh and clear what immense value you bring to your clients.”
— A fellow coach
You can read the full story including visuals and feedback from Dror and his clients in the Ethics.Coach case study.
“But how do I get a quote if I don’t know my website scope?”
At this point, you might be thinking:
This all makes sense, but how do I actually get a quote if I don’t know whether I need 3 pages or 10?
This is one of the most common questions I hear, and it makes complete sense.
Here are a few ways I handle this in my process:
- A free Clarity Call: In many cases, this already gives us a solid idea of the website scope and whether you need a full rebrand or a light refresh. If that’s enough, I can create a fixed-price proposal.
- A paid strategy session before the project: If things are still unclear, we go deeper. We explore different structure options, discuss pros and cons, and you leave with an expert recommendation you can use to get quotes, based on strategy, not guessing.
- Splitting the project into phases: Sometimes the scope only becomes clear after digging into your audience and marketing strategy. In that case, we start with a fixed-price strategy phase to determine the right scope. Based on that, I create fixed-price quote for design and implementation.
Also know, that we can always start small and expand later.
Ready to approach your website redesign differently?
By now you know that you don’t need a big, fancy website to get better leads.
What you need is a website that’s designed with intention, one that puts your visitors first, communicates clearly, and supports your business goals without unnecessary complexity.
When you let go of the Big Fancy Website Myth, you’re free to invest more wisely, choose designers more strategically, and build something that actually works for you.
If you’re planning a website redesign, feel free to jump on a Clarity Call with me. You get my expert opinion on what your reLaunch really needs. If it’s not the right time, you’ll walk away with clarity about what to focus on. If it is, we can talk next steps.
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