Before anything else, pull out your phone, search for your business the way a customer would, and try to call yourself from your website. Most problems show up in the first thirty seconds.
The nine usual causes
1. The phone number isn’t tappable
If tapping the number doesn’t open the dialer, or the number is in an image, people won’t retype it. It should be a real link, at the top of every page and in a button that stays on screen.
2. The page is slow
Big uncompressed photos, sliders and heavy plugins make a site crawl on a phone signal. If you’re staring at a blank screen for more than a couple of seconds, customers are too.
3. There’s no number anywhere
Not one price, fee or range. Homeowners assume the worst and call someone who shows a number.
4. The photos are stock
People recognize them. It makes a real company look fake.
5. The services are vague
“Residential and commercial services” doesn’t tell anyone you fix their thing. List specific jobs, each with its own page.
6. The service area is unclear
If someone can’t tell whether you come to their town, they move on. Name the towns and neighborhoods.
7. The form is long or broken
Test it. Then cut it to what you need to call back: name, phone, address or town, what’s wrong. Make sure submissions reach someone who answers.
8. No reviews on the site
Show a few real reviews and link to your Google profile.
9. Nothing says what happens next
“We’ll call back within an hour during business hours” turns a hesitant visitor into a request.
If the site is fine and there’s still no traffic
That’s a different problem: people aren’t finding you. Start with your Google Business Profile and reviews, then add real pages for each service and area.
How do you know where your calls come from?
Ask every new customer how they found you and record it in your scheduling software. For more detail, many owners use a separate tracking phone number on the website, so website calls can be counted, or add analytics to see which pages visitors view before they call. Whatever you use, look at it monthly.
A one-hour website fix list
- Make the phone number a tappable link at the top of every page.
- Add a sticky call button on phones.
- Replace stock photos on the home page with your own.
- Add your service area, by town name, to the home page.
- Add your trip charge or a common price.
- Shorten the contact form to four or five fields.
- Add three recent reviews with names and towns.
- Test the form and make sure someone receives it.
When is it time for a new website?
When the fixes above aren’t possible on your current platform, when the site is too slow on phones, when you can’t edit it without calling someone, or when it doesn’t connect to the software you run your business on. At that point, patching costs more than starting over.