The trouble with a website that is losing you work is that you never hear about it. Nobody rings to say they gave up and called someone else. So you have to go looking. Here are seven checks, and none of them need any technical knowledge.
1. Send your own enquiry form
Fill in your contact form and send it to yourself. Did it arrive? Check spam too.
This is the single most common fault we find. A form that quietly stopped sending months ago, and an owner who thought things were just a bit slow.
2. Tap your phone number on a phone
Open the site on your mobile and tap the number. It should offer to call you straight away. If you have to copy it out by hand, so does every customer.
3. Read your home page for five seconds
Look at the top of your home page for five seconds, then look away. Could a stranger say what you do and where you do it? If the first thing they see is "Welcome to our website", the answer is no.
4. Click every link in your menu
Dead pages and "coming soon" pages tell a visitor that nobody is looking after the place. Check the links at the bottom of the page too, and your social media buttons.
5. Look for dates
A copyright line saying 2019. A "latest news" post from four years ago. An offer that ended last winter. Each one makes a visitor wonder whether you are still trading.
6. Search for yourself on Google
Search your business name. Then search what you do plus your town, the way a customer would. Are you there? Are the details right, including your phone number and opening hours?
If your business name does not bring up your own website, that is worth fixing first. We explain the usual reasons in why your website is not showing up on Google.
7. Run Google's free speed test
Go to pagespeed.web.dev, type in your web address and press Analyse. Google grades your site out of 100 on speed, accessibility, good practice and search readiness, and it tests it the way a phone on slow internet would see it.
You do not need to understand the detail. Low scores in red mean visitors are waiting, and people do not wait long.
What your results mean
- One or two small things wrong. That is a tidy up. Fix them this week.
- Three or more. Your site is probably costing you enquiries. Have a read of refresh or rebuild to work out how big the job is.
- You could not log in to fix any of it. That is the real problem. Start with who actually owns your website.
If you would rather someone else ran the check, we do a free one on any Australian small business site and tell you what we found in plain English.