Why Your Website Is Not Getting Leads and How to Fix It

You can see the visits in your analytics. People are finding the site. But the phone is quiet and the contact form has not sent anything in weeks. It is one of the most frustrating problems an owner can have, because it feels like the website is working and the business is not.

In our experience, the cause is rarely one big thing. It is usually several small leaks that add up. This guide walks through the five we see most often, how to check each one yourself in a few minutes, and what fixing it involves.

1. The site is slow on a phone

Speed is the leak you cannot see from your office computer. Your desktop is on fast internet and has the site cached. Your customer is on a phone, on a data connection, opening it for the first time.

Google and SOASTA research from 2017 found that the probability of bounce increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. Every extra second of loading is a chance for the visitor to hit the back button and pick a competitor.

How to check: open your site on your phone with WiFi turned off. Count how long it takes before you can read the headline and tap the phone number. Then run the page through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool and look at the mobile score.

Common fixes: compress and resize images, remove plugins and scripts you do not use, and drop heavy sliders and autoplay video from the top of the page.

2. The offer is not clear

A visitor should know within seconds what you do, who you do it for and where. Jakob Nielsen at the Nielsen Norman Group, writing about Microsoft Research data on how long people stay on pages, found that the first 10 seconds of a page visit are critical and recommended communicating your value proposition within 10 seconds.

Headlines like "Welcome to our website" or "Quality you can trust" use up that window and say nothing. Compare them with "Basement finishing in Mississauga and Brampton" or "Fades, beards and kids cuts on Jane Street." The second kind tells the visitor they are in the right place.

How to check: show your home page to someone who does not know your business for five seconds, then close it. Ask them what you do and where. If they cannot answer, the headline needs work.

3. The calls to action are weak or hidden

A call to action is the button or link that tells a visitor what to do next: call, book, request a quote. Many sites bury it in the menu or at the very bottom of a long page, or give it vague text like "Learn more."

Raluca Budiu at the Nielsen Norman Group notes in her guide to mobile usability that typing is perhaps the biggest problem on phones and that the gist should always come before the details. On a phone, the easiest action wins. A tap to call button beats a long form.

How to check: on your phone, count how many swipes it takes from the top of the home page to the first button that lets someone call, book or ask for a quote. It should be zero.

Common fixes: one clear primary action per page, repeated after each major section. Use plain words for the button, such as "Get a quote" or "Book a cut." Keep the phone number tappable in the header.

4. The form goes nowhere

This is the most common leak we find, and the most painful, because the customer did everything right. They filled in the form and pressed send. The message went to an old email address, a spam folder, or a plugin that stopped working after an update. The customer thinks you ignored them.

How to check: submit your own form today, from your phone, using a personal email address. Did it arrive? How long did it take? Did it land in spam? Did the customer get any confirmation? Then do the same for every form on the site, including any booking or estimate tool.

Common fixes: send every form to a monitored inbox and to a database so nothing is lost if email fails, set up proper sending records for your domain so messages are not flagged as spam, and send the customer an automatic confirmation so they know it worked. Then test it every month, or have whoever runs your site test it.

5. The follow up is slow

Even when the form works, an enquiry that waits until tomorrow morning may already be gone. A Harvard Business Review study of online sales leads by Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington found that most companies are not responding nearly fast enough. A customer who fills in your form may have filled in two others, and a slow reply gives one of them the chance to answer first.

Owner run businesses have a specific version of this problem. You are the person who would answer, and you are also the person on the job site, in the chair or with a client all day.

Common fixes: get every enquiry sent to your phone as a text, not just to an inbox you check at night, and send the customer an instant reply that confirms you received it and tells them when you will call. This is why every site we build includes what we call the 60 second lead system: each enquiry sends a text to you, an instant reply to the customer and a copy to your inbox, within 60 seconds.

A quick self audit

Set aside 20 minutes and check each of these on your phone:

• The headline says what you do and where.
• The page is readable within a couple of seconds on mobile data.
• A call, book or quote button is visible without scrolling.
• The phone number is tappable on every page.
• Every form reaches you, and not in spam.
• The customer gets an instant confirmation.
• You get a text or alert the moment an enquiry comes in.
• Your reviews and real work are visible on the home page.

Every item you could not tick is a place where an enquiry can slip away without you ever hearing about it. If you are a contractor, our guide to contractor website design in Toronto covers the extra pieces a trades site needs.

Patch it or rebuild it?

Some of these fixes are quick: a new headline, a bigger button, a tested form. If the site is slow because of the platform it is built on, or every change means waiting on someone, a rebuild is often cheaper than years of patching. Our guide to small business website costs in Canada lays out what each option costs over three years.

We build custom coded, mobile first sites for owner run businesses in Canada (outside Quebec) and the US. Builds start from $3,000 USD plus applicable tax, most owners choose the $5,000 build, and a $100 a month care plan covers hosting, your domain, security, monitoring, backups and changes. Every site is live in 14 days from kickoff, or your first 3 months of care are free, and you own the site, the code and the accounts. You can see what we have built on our work page.

If you would like to know what a rebuild would cost for your business, answer a few quick questions and we will give you a clear price on a short call.