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Is Your Website Costing You Customers and Enquiries?
Clear signs your website may be costing you customers, plus practical checks any small business owner can use to spot problems and improve enquiries
For most small businesses, the website is where people decide whether to call, visit, or click away to a competitor. If it’s slow, confusing, or looks dated, you’re almost certainly losing enquiries you never see.
The good news is you don’t need to be technical to spot the warning signs. This guide walks through practical checks any business owner can do to see whether their website is quietly costing them customers, and what to do about it.
Your website is slow on mobile
People expect pages to load quickly. If a site takes more than a couple of seconds, many users simply leave, especially on mobile. Slow load times are a common reason for high bounce rates.
You may have a problem if your site takes more than three or four seconds to load on a phone over 4G, or if it’s weighed down with oversized images, auto-playing videos, or multiple sliders.
Running your homepage through tools like PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix will highlight issues such as Largest Contentful Paint and Total Blocking Time. A developer can usually make meaningful improvements by compressing images, reducing unused scripts and styles, and enabling proper caching and compression on the server.
It’s hard to understand what you actually do
If a visitor can’t quickly work out what you do and whether it’s relevant to them, they’re likely to leave. Many small business websites lead with vague slogans instead of clear, practical messaging.
A simple test is to show your homepage to someone who doesn’t know your business and ask them to explain what you sell and who it’s for. If they struggle, your headlines, service descriptions, or calls to action need work.
At the top of the page, aim for a clear message that explains who you help, what you offer, and what the next step is, whether that’s calling, requesting a quote, or making a booking.
Your contact and enquiry process is awkward
A website that makes it hard to get in touch is effectively turning customers away. Common problems include contact details hidden away, broken forms, or long, off-putting questionnaires.
Your phone number and email address should be easy to find on every page, ideally in both the header and footer. Contact forms need to be tested regularly to make sure submissions are actually being delivered to a monitored inbox.
In many cases, a short enquiry form asking for basic details is enough. For some businesses, adding online booking or a simple quote request option can remove friction entirely.
The site looks outdated or untrustworthy
Design isn’t just about looking good. It plays a big role in trust. A website that looks ten years old can suggest the business behind it is out of date too.
Warning signs include tiny text, layouts that don’t adapt well to mobile, or pages that require lots of zooming and horizontal scrolling. A lack of reviews, testimonials, or recent examples of work can also raise doubts for visitors.
Updating to a modern, mobile-friendly design and adding clear trust signals such as testimonials, client logos, or before-and-after examples often leads to an immediate improvement in engagement and enquiries.
You’re barely visible on Google
If your business depends on local customers and you don’t appear when people search for your service and location, your website is missing opportunities.
Search for your own business name and check whether a Google Business Profile appears with reviews, opening hours, and a link to your site. Then try searching for your main service plus your town or city and see whether you show up at all in the first few pages.
If visibility is poor, you may need clearer page titles and meta descriptions, more locally focused content, and a properly set up Google Business Profile.
Out-of-date information and broken links
Incorrect opening times, old pricing, broken links, or blog posts that stopped years ago all send the same message: no one is maintaining this site. That can be enough to put people off getting in touch, particularly for higher-value services.
A quick content tidy-up goes a long way. Update your services, opening hours, team information, and pricing structure. Fix obvious broken links and images, and remove anything that’s no longer relevant.
A lightly maintained site feels active and reliable, which reassures visitors that you’ll be responsive as a supplier.
What to do next
If several of these points sound familiar, your website is probably costing you customers. That doesn’t always mean a full rebuild. Targeted improvements and regular maintenance are often enough to turn a site into a consistent source of enquiries.
