Greg Merrilees has designed websites for over 2,000 businesses and counts Hollywood A-listers among his clients. As founder of Studio1 Design and author of Next Level Website Design, he’s spent 25 years watching what actually converts — and what just wins design awards. When he came on the Unscripted SEO Podcast, we got into the weeds on intent-based design, why copywriting beats everything else on a page, and why vibe-coded websites might be damaging your brand.
Read the full interview with Greg Merrilees
The Cold / Warm / Hot Traffic Model
Greg breaks website visitors into three buckets — and most businesses treat all of them the same. Cold traffic gets a lead magnet. Warm traffic gets a deeper offer. Hot traffic gets a stripped-down page with one action. The biggest mistake he sees: serving a sales CTA to cold content page visitors who just found you via Google.
Why Copywriting Is the Real Design Element
Greg put it plainly: the most important thing on your website is the copywriting — not the animations, not the video background, not the parallax. Clarity beats cleverness every time. He recommends reading Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller and running a quick test: count ‘I/we’ vs. ‘you/your’ in your copy. The ratio tells you everything about whose story you’re telling.
Standing Out as a Local Service Business
For commoditized niches — law, construction, remodeling — Greg’s approach starts with pulling themes from existing reviews and testimonials. His work on Yoshua Law shows what’s possible: individual case studies with before/after storytelling and video that resulted in 60% more conversions.
AI-Generated Websites: Cheap Now, Expensive Later
Greg’s soapbox moment: vibe-coded websites all look the same. They all feel the same. And in a world where Google rewards brand signals, looking like every other AI-generated site in your niche is a brand liability. His take: the bottom of the market may drop off, but there will always be brands that need custom, differentiated design.
Listen & Resources
Hear the full episode on the Unscripted SEO Podcast. Get Greg’s free resources at nextlevelwebsitedesign.com/free.