Is your website losing you customers? A simple 10-point check
Your website is often a customer’s first impression of your business. These ten checks take about half an hour, need no technical knowledge, and show you what might be quietly turning customers away.
Check your website on your phone, test its speed, make sure visitors instantly understand what you do, and make contacting you effortless. Test your own contact form, show you’re trustworthy, and see how you appear on Google and in AI assistants. Then fix the three things that affect enquiries most.
Grab your phone, a notepad and a cup of tea. Give yourself one point for each check your website passes.
Open it on your phone
Many customers will only ever see your website on a phone. Can you read the text without zooming in? Are the buttons big enough to tap easily? Does anything spill off the edge of the screen?
Check how fast it loads
Slow pages lose visitors. Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool (pagespeed.web.dev) tests your site in under a minute. Google suggests the main content of a page should appear within about 2.5 seconds; if yours takes much longer, it’s worth fixing.
Pass the five-second test
Show your home page to a friend for five seconds, then hide it. Can they tell you what you do and where you work? If not, your main message needs to be clearer and higher up the page.
Make contacting you effortless
Your phone number, a WhatsApp button or a short contact form should be easy to find on every page, not buried at the bottom of one. On a phone, tapping your number should start a call.
Test your own contact form
Send yourself a test enquiry. Did it arrive? How long did it take? Did it land in your spam folder? A broken form can lose you enquiries for months without you ever knowing.
Show you’re real and trustworthy
Visitors look for reassurance before they get in touch: genuine reviews, photos of your actual work, accreditations or insurance, and the area you cover. Stock photos alone can make a business feel anonymous.
Check it’s secure
Look at the address bar. Your site should start with https and show a padlock. If browsers display a “Not secure” warning, many visitors will leave straight away, and they won’t fill in your form.
Look for out-of-date information
Old prices, finished offers, a 2019 copyright line or links that go nowhere all suggest a business that isn’t paying attention. Click every link in your menu and footer, and check that your prices and opening hours are current.
Search for yourself on Google
Search for your business name, then for your service and area, as a customer would. Does your Google Business Profile appear, with the right hours, photos and phone number? Is your website easy to find?
Ask AI what it knows about you
More people now ask AI assistants for recommendations. Ask one what it knows about your business. If the answer is vague or wrong, your online information needs attention. More in “What is GEO, and why your business should care about AI search”.
Add up your score. If you scored under 7, your website is probably costing you enquiries. Don’t try to fix everything at once: start with the three checks that affect enquiries most, which are usually the phone test, easy contact and your contact form. If you’d like help, see Websites & e-commerce and SEO.
