There was a time when somebody searching for web design in Felixstowe, SEO in Suffolk or help with Google Ads could quite reasonably have ended up talking to me.
That was my work.
I built websites for businesses. I worked on ecommerce sites. I thought about search rankings, conversion rates, Google Ads campaigns, hosting, databases, content management systems and all the other things that accumulate around running websites for clients.
I did it for years.
And then, gradually, I stopped.
Not because I stopped liking websites.
Quite the opposite.
I eventually realised that I liked building them so much that I wanted to spend more of my time building things of my own.
I Thought I Was a Web Designer
For a long time, the easiest way to describe what I did was web design.
Someone needed a website. I built it.
Then the website needed visitors, so SEO became part of the job.
Then the business wanted faster results, so Google Ads and PPC became part of it.
Then they wanted to sell online, so ecommerce development became part of it.
Then came hosting, maintenance, email, analytics, integrations, databases and all the little systems that businesses gradually discover they need once a website becomes important to them.
The job expanded because the internet expanded.
If you worked in web design through those years, you didn't really get to remain just a web designer.
You became a problem solver.
The Part I Loved Was Usually the Beginning
There is a particular moment in a new project that I have always loved.
Nothing exists yet.
There might be a rough idea, an empty database and a blank screen.
Then you start making decisions.
What should this thing do?
How should somebody move through it?
What information needs storing?
What can be automated?
What happens when somebody clicks this?
What happens if they don't?
Gradually, something that existed only as an idea starts working.
That has never really stopped being exciting to me.
The problem was that client work didn't end there.
Building and Servicing Are Two Different Jobs
Once a client website is finished, the relationship with it changes.
The interesting problem may have been solved, but the website still needs maintaining.
There are updates.
There are small changes.
There are new pages.
There are campaigns.
There are reports.
There are rankings to discuss.
There are Google Ads budgets to adjust.
There are perfectly reasonable requests that need doing because somebody is paying you to look after their business.
That is the service part of a service business.
It took me a surprisingly long time to understand that although I was good at servicing websites, building was the bit that gave me energy.
SEO Made the Difference Particularly Obvious
SEO can become an endless job.
There is always another search query.
Another page could rank higher.
Another competitor has appeared.
Another title could be tested.
Another location could be targeted.
If you're working with local businesses, that can mean thinking about searches such as Suffolk SEO, SEO near me, Felixstowe web design or Google Ads in Ipswich.
Those searches matter enormously when acquiring clients is the objective.
But eventually I realised I was spending a lot of my time helping other businesses become easier to find while constantly postponing ideas of my own.
That bothered me.
I Started Wanting the Asset at the End
When you build a website for a client, you can do a brilliant job and still walk away owning none of it.
That's the deal, of course.
They paid you to build their asset.
But after doing that repeatedly, I became increasingly fascinated by a different question:
What happens if I put all this effort into something I own?
If I improve an ecommerce website of my own, I keep the benefit.
If I create content that ranks for years, it continues contributing to something I own.
If I write software that removes a repetitive task, I can use that software again tomorrow.
If I build a database containing useful information, that information becomes more valuable as the database grows.
If I create a system that works, I can improve the system rather than starting from zero for the next client.
That way of thinking changed the direction of my work.
It Wasn't Really a Move Away From Web Design
This is the strange bit.
From the outside, it might look as though I moved away from web design.
In reality, I probably build more now.
I still work with PHP, MySQL, JavaScript and WordPress.
I still design interfaces.
I still build admin systems.
I still obsess over whether a button is in the right place.
I still find myself changing something because a workflow takes three clicks when it should take one.
I still look at search data.
I still think about ecommerce.
I still automate repetitive jobs.
The difference is that these skills now tend to become parts of larger systems I am building for myself.
Web development stopped being the thing I sold and became the tool I use to make other things possible.
Twenty Years of Client Work Gave Me a Useful Habit
There is something I took from client work that I would never want to lose.
You learn to notice friction.
A business owner might describe a problem in one way, but once you watch how they actually work, you discover that the real problem is somewhere else.
Maybe they are copying information between two systems every morning.
Maybe enquiries arrive somewhere nobody remembers to check.
Maybe an ecommerce website contains the data they need but doesn't present it in a useful way.
Maybe somebody is spending an hour doing something that could be a cron job.
Those little annoyances are often where the interesting software ideas live.
I still notice them constantly.
Only now, instead of automatically thinking, "I could build that for a client", I often think, "I could build a system for that."
My Websites Started Becoming Tools
This has probably been the biggest change in how I think about websites.
A website used to feel like the finished product.
You designed the pages, added the content, optimised them for Google and launched the site.
Now I increasingly think of the visible website as one small part of a much larger machine.
Behind it might be:
- product databases;
- analytics and search data;
- content workflows;
- scheduled jobs;
- automation;
- payment systems;
- creative tools;
- customer information;
- reporting dashboards;
- and systems that decide what needs attention next.
That is much closer to the kind of building I enjoy.
The website is still there, but it is the front door rather than the entire house.
Ecommerce Changed How I Thought About Results Too
Building ecommerce websites gives you a particularly unforgiving education.
A beautiful website isn't necessarily a successful website.
A high Google ranking isn't necessarily a profitable one.
Traffic isn't necessarily valuable.
Ultimately somebody has to do something.
Buy the product.
Send the enquiry.
Join.
Subscribe.
Come back.
That sounds obvious, but it changes how you build once you really internalise it.
You stop being impressed by numbers that don't lead anywhere.
That lesson has carried directly into the work I do now.
I Still Find Old Search Queries Fascinating
Every so often I look through search data and find Google still associating my websites with the work I used to do.
SEO.
Web design.
Ecommerce websites.
Google Ads.
Local searches around Suffolk and Felixstowe.
There is something quite satisfying about that.
Those searches are almost like archaeological layers of my working life.
They represent years spent doing a particular kind of work.
I don't want to erase that history simply because my priorities changed.
Nor do I want to turn around and start pretending I am desperately looking for SEO clients again because Google happens to rank something.
I'd rather talk about what those years taught me.
If I Started Again, I'd Build Assets Earlier
If I could give the younger version of myself one piece of business advice, it would probably be this:
Keep doing the client work, but build something you own alongside it.
It doesn't need to replace your income immediately.
It probably won't.
Build a small website.
Build a useful tool.
Create a niche ecommerce project.
Write something genuinely useful.
Automate a problem you repeatedly encounter.
Own the domain. Own the code. Own the data. Own the lessons.
Then improve it.
The compounding effect of that ownership is something I wish I had appreciated much earlier.
I Never Really Stopped Being a Web Developer
I don't particularly want to spend my days quoting for websites anymore.
I don't want to rebuild an agency around SEO services or PPC management.
But I have no desire whatsoever to stop developing things.
That was the distinction I needed to understand.
I hadn't fallen out of love with my work.
I had simply become more interested in choosing what I built, why I built it and what happened to it afterwards.
After more than 20 years online, I still get an unreasonable amount of satisfaction from making an empty page do something it couldn't do yesterday.
So I didn't stop building websites.
I just started keeping more of them.
