A website rarely fails loudly. It just gradually stops producing, and because nothing looks obviously wrong, nobody investigates. Here is what to check.
1. Your contact form does not actually deliver
This is the most expensive fault on the internet and the hardest to notice, because the visitor sees "thank you, we will be in touch" and assumes you got it. Meanwhile the message went nowhere — a changed mail setting, an expired password, a spam filter.
Test it today. Send yourself one from your phone, on mobile data, not from your office. Then do it again next month.
2. It takes more than three seconds to appear
Every extra second costs visitors, and on a phone with two bars the difference is brutal. Run your address through Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score, not the desktop one.
3. Your phone number is not tappable
If the number is typed as plain text, or worse sits inside an image, a phone user cannot tap to call. They have to memorise it, leave your site and type it in — and a meaningful share of them simply will not.
4. Nothing says where you work
Plenty of small business sites never name a town. The owner knows where they operate, so it feels obvious. To a stranger it is not, and to a search engine trying to decide whether to show you for a local search, it is missing information.
5. The most recent news is from three years ago
A blog that stops abruptly is worse than no blog. It signals a business that may not still be trading. If you are not going to keep it up, take it down.
6. It is not obvious what you want people to do
Open your home page and ask what the single most important action is. If you cannot answer in a second, a first-time visitor certainly cannot. One clear primary action per page, repeated as they scroll.
7. Prices are completely absent
Not every business can publish fixed prices, and that is fine. But saying nothing at all makes people assume the worst and leave. A starting figure, a typical range, or an example project all beat silence.
A ten-minute audit
- Submit your own contact form from a phone. Did it arrive?
- Load the site on mobile data. Count the seconds.
- Tap the phone number. Did it dial?
- Search your own site for the towns you serve. Are they there?
- Look at the date on your latest post.
- Ask someone unfamiliar what you do, after five seconds on the home page.
Most sites fail at least two of these. The good news is that they are all fixable, and usually quickly.