I finished five websites in 2026. A painting company in Olching, a tax firm in Germering, a physiotherapy studio in Puchheim, an electrician in Maisach, and a small online shop for beekeeping supplies near Groebenzell. On paper, most of it went smoothly. In practice, every one of these projects taught me something you won't find in a course or a proposal. This isn't a highlight reel. It's the honest version, including the parts where I'd do it differently next time.
Why does the content always arrive later than promised?
The painter in Olching assured me in our first call: texts and photos are ready to go, no problem. That was in February. The images arrived in May. And I use "images" loosely. Three blurry phone shots of a freshly painted facade, plus a logo as a tiny JPG.
This isn't a dig at the client. A tradesperson with a full order book doesn't write their website copy at ten in the evening, and that's completely fair. My mistake was building the timeline on the assumption that content would arrive on time. It never arrives on time. On none of the five projects did the content hit the date we'd agreed on. Not a single one.
Here's what I changed: I now work with placeholders that look real, and I draft rough copy myself that the client only has to correct. Correcting is easier than writing. That sounds obvious, but with the tax firm in Germering it saved roughly three weeks. I drafted the standard text for services like payroll and annual accounts, the firm marked it up in red, done.
Mobile: why decision-makers always look at the big screen
The owner of the physio studio in Puchheim signed off on the site on his 27-inch monitor. Looks good, he said, works for me. Two weeks after launch he called, a little annoyed: on a phone, you can't even see the phone number right away.
Actually, you could. Just after a short scroll, because the hero image eats up more height on a smartphone than on a desktop. For him, the desktop was the website. For his patients, who look for an appointment from the waiting room or off the street, the phone is the website. According to StatCounter, mobile made up well over half of web traffic in Germany in 2025. The exact figure swings a lot depending on how you measure it, but the direction is clear.
Since then, I show drafts on the phone first. I no longer send a desktop screenshot for approval, I send a link the client opens on their own phone. The conversation about font sizes and button spacing looks completely different afterwards. Someone using their own site with their thumb understands in thirty seconds what ten emails couldn't explain.
The live chat nobody touched after two weeks
The electrician in Maisach really wanted a live chat. He'd seen it at a larger company and was convinced: a modern site needs something like that. I quietly raised some doubts, but it was his money and his call, so we built it in.
The first week he was thrilled. He'd sit at the laptop in the evening and answer messages. In the second week the enquiries came during the day, while he was elbow-deep in a distribution box on site. Nobody replied. A chat with no one behind it looks worse than no chat at all, because it makes a promise nobody keeps. After two weeks we switched it off.
The interesting part was what ran alongside it. A plain callback form, three fields, name, number, short message. That brought in enquiries steadily. Not a flood, but two or three serious ones a week that he could work through on a break, whenever it suited him. The simplest feature won. Not the one that looked most modern. That's a lesson I've carried into every first meeting since.
Why a big feature set slows projects down
With the beekeeping-supplies shop, we wanted too much at the start. Filters by type of wax, customer accounts, wishlists, a blog with pollination tips, newsletter integration. All at once. The shop launched with about forty products.
Forty products don't need filter logic built for a thousand items. We spent weeks building things the small customer base simply didn't need. In the end it was the clarity that sold, not the feature list. Every extra function is also one more thing that can break, confuse, and needs maintaining. For a one-person business that tends the site on the side, that's not a detail, it's decisive.
I approach it differently now. I ask first: what is the one action a visitor should take? Call, book an appointment, send a form, add to cart. Anything that doesn't directly support that one action gets pushed to later. Later often never comes, and most of the time nobody misses it. More on how I keep projects lean is in my approach to web design.
Communication: whoever decides needs to be at the table from the start
The tax firm had two partners. I worked out the whole concept with one of them. The second only turned up at sign-off and had, to put it kindly, different ideas. Colour, tone, the entire homepage. We had to go back to the drawing board, even though the content was all fine.
That was expensive in nerves and time, and it was avoidable. Since then I clarify before the first draft who gives the final approval, and I insist that person is present at the concept meeting. Not by forwarded email, but in the same conversation. A website is a compromise between people, not just a technical product.
What I'll concretely do differently on the next project
To sum up, no sugar-coating:
- Plan a content buffer. I firmly assume texts and images will arrive weeks late, and I supply rough drafts to correct.
- Approval on the phone. Every draft gets opened on the client's smartphone first, not on my monitor.
- Add features later, don't build them up front. Start with what supports the one important action. The rest waits until it's genuinely missed.
- Decision-makers at the table early. Whoever gives approval is there for the concept.
These aren't grand insights. They're five concrete projects in the west of Munich, between Fuerstenfeldbruck and Germering, that taught me the hard way. And the live chat from Maisach still nags at me. Sometimes the boring solution is simply the better one.
If you're planning a new website right now, or an existing site isn't doing what it should: I'm happy to take a look. Free website check, honest feedback, no sales pressure. In about 30 minutes I'll tell you what I'd leave alone and what I'd change. Drop me a line through the contact form and we'll find a time.