The top 10 mistakes small business websites make (and how to fix each)

After building and rescuing a lot of small business websites, the same faults keep appearing. Almost none of them are design problems. They are decisions — usually made quickly, usually years ago — that quietly cost enquiries every week.

One: it is not obvious what you do and where you do it. A visitor decides in about three seconds whether they are in the right place. A headline that says "Excellence, delivered" fails that test. "Post-construction cleaning in Prince George" passes it. Say the thing, then say where.

Two: no clear next step. Every page needs one obvious action — request a quote, book a slot, send a message. When a page ends with nothing to do, the visitor does nothing, and you never learn they were there.

Three: contact details hidden behind a menu. If a person has decided to get in touch, do not make them hunt. The contact route belongs in the header, at the end of every page, and on a page of its own.

Four: one page listing every service. Search engines index pages, not bullet points. A dedicated page for each service is the difference between being found for the work you want and being invisible for all of it.

Five: nothing that builds trust. Real photographs of real work, names, an honest about page, insurance and certifications, and reviews with dates on them. Stock photography of a smiling stranger in a headset does the opposite of what it is meant to do.

Six: heavyweight images. A single unoptimised photograph can be larger than an entire well-built page. On a phone with two bars, that is the difference between an enquiry and a back button.

Seven: forms that ask too much. Every field you add reduces completions. Name, contact, and what they need is usually enough — you can ask the rest once a conversation has started.

Eight: no pricing signal at all. Very few businesses can publish fixed prices, but almost all can publish a range, a starting point, or how the price is worked out. Complete silence on price filters out serious buyers, not tyre-kickers.

Nine: content that has not been touched in three years. An out-of-date site reads as a business that might not still exist. One honest update a month beats a redesign every five years.

Ten: nobody owns it. No login, no access to the domain, no idea who hosts it. This is the mistake that turns all of the others into emergencies, because the day you need a change you find you cannot make one.

The fix order matters as much as the fixes. Start with clarity and the next step, because they change conversion immediately. Then speed and service pages, because they change how many people arrive. Then trust and freshness, because they change how many of those people pick you. A site that does those six things well beats a beautiful one that does none of them.

Open your own site on a phone, on mobile data, and time yourself against these checks.

• Within three seconds, can a stranger say what you do and where?
• Is there one obvious next step visible without scrolling?
• Can you reach a contact route in one tap from any page?
• Does each main service have its own page with its own title?
• Are there photographs of your actual work, dated reviews and a real about page?
• Does the page finish loading before you get bored?
• Does the form send, and did you test it this month?
• Is there any pricing signal at all?
• Has anything changed on the site in the last ninety days?
• Do you personally hold the domain and hosting logins?

Anything you answered no to is a task, and most of them are an afternoon rather than a project.

Strip the list back and there are really two root causes. The first is writing for yourself instead of the customer — describing the business in the language of the trade rather than the language of the person searching. The second is treating the website as a project that finished, rather than a tool that needs ten minutes of attention a month.

Fix those two habits and the ten symptoms mostly stop coming back. Ignore them and you will be reading this list again after the next redesign.

• Rewrite your home page headline to say what you do and where.
• Add one obvious action to the end of every page.
• Split your services page into separate pages.
• Compress the five largest images on the site.
• Send a test through your contact form and confirm it arrives.
• Add a pricing signal, even if it is only a starting figure.

That is one evening of work, and for most sites it produces a bigger lift in enquiries than a full redesign would.