Your website may be quietly losing customers

1. It's slow on a phone, on mobile data

Test it properly: turn Wi-Fi off and load your homepage on 4G. If the main image and headline aren't there within a couple of seconds, you're losing people who never see the site at all. Usual culprits are enormous uncompressed photos and a page that can't render until every script has loaded.

Fix: compress images to WebP, set width and height so nothing jumps around, and lazy-load anything below the fold.

2. It doesn't say where you actually work

A Huddersfield joiner whose site never mentions Huddersfield is invisible to somebody searching for a joiner in Huddersfield — and unconvincing to someone who does land on it. Name your town and the surrounding areas you genuinely cover, in normal sentences, on the pages where it matters.

3. The phone number isn't tappable

On mobile, a phone number written as plain text is a small act of hostility. Make it a tel: link, put it in the header, and add WhatsApp if that's where your customers already message you.

“Test your own site on 4G with Wi-Fi off — slow first screens lose people before they read a word.”

4. There's no obvious next step

Every page should end with one clear action: request a quote, book a call, send a message. Not three competing buttons, and not just an email address in the footer. If a visitor has to work out how to hire you, some of them won't.

5. There's no proof

Photos of real jobs, named case studies, and specifics about what you actually delivered do more than any adjective. Stock imagery of people in a glass office tells a customer in Brighouse nothing about whether you can do their kitchen.

6. Nothing has changed in three years

A site frozen in time signals a business that might not still be trading. It also means Google has nothing new to index. You don't need a blog post a week — a handful of genuinely useful pages that get updated is plenty.

7. The contact form is broken and you don't know

This is the most expensive one, and it's very common. Forms break silently when hosting, email or a plugin changes. Submit your own form today. If you don't get the email, you've been losing enquiries for however long it's been broken.

How to check all seven in ten minutes

1. 01Open your site on your phone with Wi-Fi off and time it.
2. 02Search your own homepage text for your town name.
3. 03Try to tap your phone number.
4. 04Scroll one page and count the calls to action.
5. 05Count the real photos of your own work.
6. 06Find the most recent date anywhere on the site.
7. 07Submit your own contact form and wait for the email.

If you fail three or more, a redesign is usually cheaper and faster than patching. If you fail one or two, they're normally quick fixes.