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I’ve introduced clients to other agencies more times than most people would expect. Sometimes we weren’t the right fit for the budget. Sometimes the client needed a capability we didn’t have. Sometimes I just knew a competitor would serve them better than we would, and I said so.

I have been running a web agency since 2009. Before that, I was building sites for clients from 2003, doing the same work without the letterhead. Sixteen years of scoping, building, launching, and then watching what happens after launch has given me a specific kind of education — one that does not come from courses or conferences. It comes from patterns.

There’s a pattern I keep seeing, and it’s consistent enough now that I’ve stopped being surprised by it. A company will happily approve a $20,000 website redesign. New look, new feel, a launch announcement on LinkedIn, maybe even a small celebration in the office. Everyone’s proud. The project gets a slide in the quarterly board…

The average website I look at in 2026 has been built, consciously or not, for a desktop user sitting at a desk with time to spare. Clean navigation, generous whitespace, hover states that work beautifully with a mouse. And somewhere in the analytics, a mobile traffic share sitting between 55% and 70%, with a bounce rate that would make a direct mail copywriter weep.

Earlier this year I had a discovery call with a business owner who wanted a website refresh. Typical brief. The site felt dated, the design hadn’t been touched in a few years, they wanted something more modern. We were maybe ten minutes into the conversation when I asked about their analytics.

Every Chinese New Year, the same thing happens. Businesses close for a few days. Teams rest. Families eat. And then, usually somewhere between the second and fifth day of the new year, the phones and the inboxes and the websites wake back up — all at once.