Seven signs your website is losing you customers

You do not need a report or a specialist to find out whether your website is costing you work. You need a phone, ten minutes and the patience to act like a stranger. Open your site as if you had never heard of your business, and check these seven things.

1. A stranger cannot tell what you do in five seconds

Read only the first screen. Does it say what you offer, who it is for and where you work? "Welcome to our website" and "Quality you can trust" say nothing. "Deep cleaning for homes and offices in Leeds" says everything a visitor needs to decide whether to stay.

2. There is no obvious next step

Every page should have one main action: book, get a quote, call, buy. If the first screen has no button, or has four that compete, visitors read, nod and leave. Pick one action and repeat it down the page.

3. It is slow on a phone

Turn off wifi and load your homepage on mobile data. Count. If you reach four or five before you can read anything, a share of your visitors has already gone back to the search results. Oversized photos are the usual cause, and the easiest to fix.

4. The phone layout is an afterthought

For a local business, a large share of visitors arrive on a phone, often most of them. Check that text is readable without zooming, that buttons are big enough to tap and that nothing runs off the side of the screen. Then try to fill in your own contact form with your thumbs.

5. The contact details are wrong, hidden or dead

Tap your own phone number. Send your own form. Click your own WhatsApp link. It is common to find a form that has been sending enquiries to an old address for months. Nobody notices, because a missing enquiry looks exactly like a quiet week.

6. There is no proof

Visitors look for evidence that other people have trusted you: named reviews, photos of real work, projects they can check. Three real reviews with names beat thirty that read like marketing. If you have reviews on Google or another platform, put the best ones on the site, word for word.

7. Nothing happens after someone gets in touch

Submit your form and watch. Is there a confirmation on screen? Does an email arrive telling the customer what happens next and when? How long before a person replies? When several businesses get the same enquiry, the one that answers first often gets the job.

What to fix first

Start with number five, because a broken contact route makes everything else pointless. Then number two, then number seven. Those three cost little to fix and decide whether an interested visitor becomes an enquiry. Speed, layout and proof come next. The headline is last only because it takes the most thought.

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