How to Write Fewer Emails About Broken Website Stuff

If you have ever found yourself writing the same email more than once, you probably know the feeling. You explain where the form is. You explain how to fix the layout. You explain that no, the website is not down, it is just being redirected somewhere weird. Again.

This is not just a communication issue. It is a design issue. Freelancers often end up spending hours dealing with broken, unclear, or unnecessarily complex websites. You become the unofficial support line. You send instructions. You explain updates. You write long clarifications just to fix a small problem. None of this is billable. All of it is draining.

Most of these problems were baked into the project long before you were involved. The site might have been built years ago, using a mix of themes and tools that were never meant to work together. It might have been updated in pieces by different people with different ideas. Or worse, it might have been handed off to the client with no guidance, no documentation, and no real ownership.

So you do what many freelancers do. You pick up the slack. You patch things. You send screen recordings. You explain which tab to open and which setting to avoid. You rewrite the same instructions in slightly different ways, hoping this version will stick.

Eventually, it gets to you. Not because the work is hard, but because it is invisible. You are doing the job of a support technician, a project manager, and a translator, without being paid for any of it. And you are doing it because the original site was not built to support the people using it.

This is where good design makes a difference. Not just in how things look, but in how things behave. A well-designed website does not generate support emails. It does not confuse clients. It does not crash when you update a line of text. It works, and it keeps working, so that your role as a freelancer stays focused on what you were actually hired to do.

Paul James Digital builds websites that reduce this noise. His work is built around clarity. Not just clean code, but usable structure. Not just nice layouts, but systems that can be understood and maintained by normal people. That means fewer questions. Fewer emergencies. Fewer apologetic emails trying to explain why something went wrong that you never touched.

The difference is immediate. Instead of digging through five plugins to find the one that controls a form, you have one form that works. Instead of guessing how content areas are built, you can edit with confidence. Instead of sending another screenshot of a control panel, you know that the client can follow the path on their own.

There is a direct connection between how a site is built and how often you end up explaining it. Sites built for appearances tend to fall apart under pressure. Sites built with clear intent tend to get out of the way and let people do what they need to do.

This is not about avoiding clients or refusing to help. It is about setting boundaries and expectations with the right tools in place. If you have a client who regularly contacts you about a site that never really worked, they are not being difficult. They are reacting to poor design. And if you are the one answering every question, you are absorbing the cost of that mistake.

As a freelancer, your time matters. Your focus matters. If you spend a large part of your week writing fix-it emails or walking clients through poor interfaces, your own work suffers. It becomes harder to scale. Harder to stay creative. Harder to enjoy the projects that do go well.

Working with developers who take design seriously can shift that entirely. When you partner with someone like Paul James, you know the site you are delivering will hold up. It will not become a liability. It will not turn into your job to maintain unless that is part of the arrangement. It frees you to focus on copy, marketing, SEO, photography, or whatever it is you were brought in for.

It also reflects better on you. When the site you contributed to runs smoothly, clients notice. They remember. And they are more likely to recommend you because the whole experience felt professional. The inverse is also true. If the site breaks after handover and they associate you with the build, the good work you did gets lost in the frustration.

This is the hidden layer of freelance work that no one talks about. The admin. The support. The follow-up. You are not being paid for this. You are doing it because the tools were not good enough in the first place. Fixing that at the design stage can save dozens of hours over the life of a project.

If you have had enough of those emails, it might be time to change how you approach client sites. Stop working around bad builds. Start building partnerships with people who do it right the first time.

Here is what that looks like. One designer, one clear process, one reliable result. It is worth it.