Five things small business websites get wrong

We get asked to look at a lot of existing sites. The same handful of problems come up again and again, and almost none of them are about how the site looks.

1. The phone number is not a link

More than half your visitors are on a phone. If your number is typed as plain text they have to memorise it, leave your site, and open the dialler. A properly linked number is one tap. This is a five-minute fix and it changes enquiry rates more than a redesign will.

2. Nobody knows where you are

"Serving the Algarve" is not a location. If someone is searching for a service near them, the town name needs to be on the page — in the text, not only in a map embed that search engines cannot read.

3. The contact form goes nowhere

This is the big one. Forms break quietly: a host changes its mail settings, a plugin updates, an address stops accepting. Nothing errors. The form still says "thanks, we'll be in touch". The enquiries simply stop arriving and you assume business is slow.

Send yourself a test enquiry through your own form today. Genuinely, today.

4. It takes eight seconds to load

Usually one enormous unresized photograph straight off a phone. A 6 MB hero image on a mobile connection is most of your bounce rate.

5. There is no reason to get in touch

A lot of sites describe the business perfectly and never ask for anything. No "get a quote", no "check availability", no next step. People do not work out what to do next — they leave.

If you want a second opinion on yours, ask us. We will tell you honestly whether it needs rebuilding or just needs a good afternoon, and we have no incentive to say the former — a rebuild is the more expensive answer for both of us.