I'm going to start by saying you must be a great carpenter!
There's lots of criticism here in this thread, but you should have known that it could go either way when you asked for feedback.
The fact that you learned how to code, built a website for your carpentry business, and it's generated leads over the past 10 years is very impressive!
You want to sell websites that focus on outcomes and prioritise function over form. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's the way to go in fact. The problem is that you don't exist in a vacuum. All over the world, small businesses are already getting websites that deliver outcomes and look good.
Let's look at outcomes first. Most small businesses are local, providing physical/in-person services within a geographical vicinity. This makes marketing a website much easier as your competition is limited to that geographic boundary. For example, a plumber will service customers within a 50km radius from his business. A doctor will service people that are willing to come to his location, usually not more than 50km away, for example. Similarly, a kitchen carpenter might service customers within a 100km radius from their location.
Because competition is restricted to a very small geographical area, it's not very hard to get a website to rank in local searches. Ranking for "kitchen cabinets" is hard, ranking for "kitchen cabinets Johannesburg" is easier, ranking for "kitchen cabinets Bela-Bela" is much, much easier.
It's not surprising that your dustfactory website was ranking well given that you said you're in a smaller town. Even if you weren't focusing on local SEO, Google knows where you're located and it knows where the searchers are located so it delivers locally relevant results. I'm not trying to be a dick, but the results you had are more likely to do with how good Google is at their job rather than how good you are at SEO.
If you target customers with small, local, service based businesses you could deliver similar outcomes for them. But before you can sell someone on outcomes, you need to make a good first impression (design) or they won't enquire.
Now let's talk about 'looking good'. There's no accounting for taste. Art is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are plenty of clichés that explain why people have very different tastes. This already makes being objective about design difficult.
On top of that, it's human nature to be proud of things we've done. All children think their drawings are on the fridge because they're clearly works of art. The only way to get real feedback on creative work is when you're doing it for someone else. People are rarely objective and honest enough with themselves to evaluate their own creativity.
You've been designing for yourself all this time, so you're clearly happy with what you've done. Again, not to be a dick, but you've been patting yourself on the back for the last 10 years so much you've decided to make a business out of it.
The feedback you've been getting here is reflective of the market, and that will include potential customers that want a website built. You don't exist in a vacuum, those potential customers can go online and see millions of websites that look better and find web developers from all over the world for cheaper. Web design/dev is not a local service, it can be done from anywhere.
This doesn't mean you should give up, but you need to be realistic. Your Web design skills, at this point, do not come close to your competitors. You need to update yourself on where the industry is at and learn the current best practices and conventions.
While you believe it's more noble/skilled/commendable/tech savvy to build websites using your custom CMS, that's because you aren't aware of where the industry is right now. Customers don't care about your CMS, they'll only care that their beautiful logo is on an equally beautiful website.
Design is hard, it's not for everyone. You can learn web development by reading, web design has a little more to do with innate creativity and judgement.
What if instead of designing websites you focused on local SEO services? Something more technical rather than creative might suit you better.
I'm going to start by saying you must be a great carpenter!
There's lots of criticism here in this thread, but you should have known that it could go either way when you asked for feedback.
The fact that you learned how to code, built a website for your carpentry business, and it's generated leads over the past 10 years is very impressive!
You want to sell websites that focus on outcomes and prioritise function over form. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's the way to go in fact. The problem is that you don't exist in a vacuum. All over the world, small businesses are already getting websites that deliver outcomes and look good.
Let's look at outcomes first. Most small businesses are local, providing physical/in-person services within a geographical vicinity. This makes marketing a website much easier as your competition is limited to that geographic boundary. For example, a plumber will service customers within a 50km radius from his business. A doctor will service people that are willing to come to his location, usually not more than 50km away, for example. Similarly, a kitchen carpenter might service customers within a 100km radius from their location.
Because competition is restricted to a very small geographical area, it's not very hard to get a website to rank in local searches. Ranking for "kitchen cabinets" is hard, ranking for "kitchen cabinets Johannesburg" is easier, ranking for "kitchen cabinets Bela-Bela" is much, much easier.
It's not surprising that your dustfactory website was ranking well given that you said you're in a smaller town. Even if you weren't focusing on local SEO, Google knows where you're located and it knows where the searchers are located so it delivers locally relevant results. I'm not trying to be a dick, but the results you had are more likely to do with how good Google is at their job rather than how good you are at SEO.
If you target customers with small, local, service based businesses you could deliver similar outcomes for them. But before you can sell someone on outcomes, you need to make a good first impression (design) or they won't enquire.
Now let's talk about 'looking good'. There's no accounting for taste. Art is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are plenty of clichés that explain why people have very different tastes. This already makes being objective about design difficult.
On top of that, it's human nature to be proud of things we've done. All children think their drawings are on the fridge because they're clearly works of art. The only way to get real feedback on creative work is when you're doing it for someone else. People are rarely objective and honest enough with themselves to evaluate their own creativity.
You've been designing for yourself all this time, so you're clearly happy with what you've done. Again, not to be a dick, but you've been patting yourself on the back for the last 10 years so much you've decided to make a business out of it.
The feedback you've been getting here is reflective of the market, and that will include potential customers that want a website built. You don't exist in a vacuum, those potential customers can go online and see millions of websites that look better and find web developers from all over the world for cheaper. Web design/dev is not a local service, it can be done from anywhere.
This doesn't mean you should give up, but you need to be realistic. Your Web design skills, at this point, do not come close to your competitors. You need to update yourself on where the industry is at and learn the current best practices and conventions.
While you believe it's more noble/skilled/commendable/tech savvy to build websites using your custom CMS, that's because you aren't aware of where the industry is right now. Customers don't care about your CMS, they'll only care that their beautiful logo is on an equally beautiful website.
Design is hard, it's not for everyone. You can learn web development by reading, web design has a little more to do with innate creativity and judgement.
What if instead of designing websites you focused on local SEO services? Something more technical rather than creative might suit you better.