10 website mistakes costing businesses customers
None of these are design opinions. Each one is a measurable leak between someone landing on your site and someone contacting you.
Ten leaks I find on almost every site I audit, in rough order of how much money they cost.
1. It's slow on mobile
Anything over three seconds and a third of visitors leave before seeing anything. Test it on 4G, not your office wifi, or run a free speed audit.
2. The phone number isn't tappable
If it's an image or plain text, mobile users have to memorise it. They won't.
3. One "Services" page for everything
Google can only rank a page for what it's about. Five services on one page means you rank for none of them properly.
4. Stock photos of people who don't work there
Every visitor spots it instantly. One real photo beats ten polished fakes.
5. No pricing signal at all
You don't have to publish a price list. You do have to say "projects typically start around X" so people can self-qualify instead of bouncing.
6. A contact form with eleven fields
Name, contact, and what they need. Everything else you can ask on the call.
7. No proof
Reviews, logos, before-and-afters, case numbers. Testimonials belong on the page, not just on Google.
8. Broken or orphaned pages
Pages nothing links to, 404s from an old redesign, dead menu items. Fix the redirect map, see Website Redesign.
9. No local signals
No address, no service areas, no LocalBusiness schema. That's most of Local SEO missing.
10. Nothing is measured
No GA4, no Search Console, no conversion events. If you can't see which page produces enquiries, every decision after this is a guess.
Fixing them
Most of these take a day, not a rebuild. Start with speed, tappable contact, and one page per service, those three usually move the number on their own.