You paid for a website. It looks fine. But the phone isn’t ringing and the contact form is quiet. Sound familiar?
I look at a lot of small business websites, and the same handful of problems show up again and again. The good news is that most of them are fixable without starting over. Here are the seven I see most, and what to do about each one.
1. Your phone number is hard to find (or can’t be tapped)
Most of your visitors are on a phone. If your number is buried in the footer, or it’s plain text they have to copy and paste, you’re losing calls.
The fix: Put your number in the header of every page and make it a tap-to-call link. On mobile, consider a sticky “Call Now” button that stays on screen as people scroll.
2. The site is slow on mobile
People don’t wait for slow sites. They hit the back button and call the next business on the list. Oversized images, too many plugins and cheap hosting are the usual culprits.
The fix: Run your homepage through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool. Compress your images, remove plugins you don’t use, and if your host is the bottleneck, move to better hosting.
3. There’s no clear next step
A visitor should know within five seconds what you do, where you do it, and what to do next. A lot of homepages open with a vague slogan and a stock photo, and visitors have to guess.
The fix: Your top section needs a headline that says what you do (“Roof Repair & Replacement in Tampa,” not “Excellence in Every Detail”) and one obvious button: Call, Book or Get a Quote. Repeat that button down the page.
4. Your Google Business Profile isn’t pulling its weight
For local service businesses, a lot of calls come from Google Maps, not your website. If your Business Profile is incomplete, out of date or doesn’t match your website, you’re giving those calls to competitors.
The fix: Make sure your business name, address and phone number are exactly the same on your website, your Google profile and every directory you’re listed on. Fill out every field, pick accurate categories, add real photos and link to your site.
5. Your pages don’t match what people search for
If you offer six services but have a single “Services” page listing them all, Google has a hard time ranking you for any one of them. The same goes for the areas you serve.
The fix: Give each main service its own page with a clear title, a description of what’s included, and the areas you serve. This is one of the most effective SEO changes a small business can make.
6. Your contact form is broken, and you don’t know it
This one hurts. I regularly find forms that look fine but send messages nowhere: they go to an old email address, land in spam, or fail silently after a plugin update. The business owner has no idea leads are disappearing.
The fix: Fill out your own form right now. Did the email arrive? How fast? Test it every month, and have your site send email through a proper mail service rather than the server default.
7. Nothing on the site builds trust
Before someone calls a business they’ve never heard of, they look for proof. No reviews, no photos of real work and no faces make you look like a risk.
The fix: Add real customer reviews (pulled from Google if you can), photos of actual jobs, and a short About section with your face on it. Licenses, insurance and years in business belong near the top, too.
Bonus: Leads are coming in, but nobody follows up
Sometimes the website is working and the problem is what happens next. Slow replies and no follow-up let good leads go cold. I wrote more about this in Lead Nurturing: The Missing Link Between Website Traffic and Real Revenue.
A 15-Minute Website Checkup You Can Do Today
Grab your phone and go through this list:
- Open your site on your phone. Can you tap to call within two seconds?
- Does the top of the homepage say what you do and where?
- Submit your contact form. Did the message arrive?
- Search Google for your main service plus your city. Do you show up?
- Check that your Google Business Profile matches your website’s name, address and phone.
- Run PageSpeed Insights on your homepage.
- Count your reviews and real photos. Would you trust this business?
If two or more of these failed, your website is probably costing you work.
Want a Second Set of Eyes?
I build websites designed to bring in calls and bookings, not just look nice. You can see some of them on our work page.
Not sure what’s holding your site back? Send me your website address and I’ll tell you the first thing I’d fix.
