Marketing

Why Your Website Isn't Getting Leads (8 Things to Check)

By The Rankwyre TeamAugust 8, 20264 min read

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Cream illustration of a blue paper plane flying away from a phone that shows a blank contact form.

Key takeaways

A broken contact form is the most common and most expensive fault on a small business website, and it fails silently on both sides.
If a visitor cannot tell what you do, whether you cover them, and how to start within about ten seconds, that is where you are losing people.
Most of what you will find on this list is a wording problem, not a design problem, and you can fix it yourself this week.
Slow replies lose more work than websites do. Measure your real reply time before spending money on the site.

Before you read any further, open your own website on your phone and send yourself a message through the contact form. It takes thirty seconds. Then come back.

The short answer

A surprising number of those messages never arrive. Nobody gets an error when a form breaks. The customer thinks they contacted you, you think business is slow, and both of you are wrong for months. That is the first of eight checks, and it is the one that costs the most.

Does my contact form actually deliver?

Test it and see. You have just done that. If nothing arrived, check spam, then check whether it is sending to an address belonging to somebody who left the business. Both are common and both look identical from the customer's side, which is to say invisible.

Notice what happened after you hit send, too. If the page said nothing at all, a fair number of people assume it failed and go find somebody else. A confirmation message is one line of work and it stops that.

Can someone understand my homepage in ten seconds?

Open it on your phone and time how long it takes to answer three things: what does this business do, do they cover where I am, and how do I start.

If any of those takes real hunting, that is where you are losing people, and it is nearly always wording before design. That is good news, because wording is the cheapest thing on this list to fix. We went into the mechanics of this in what a homepage needs to do in the first five seconds.

Is my phone number tappable?

Tap your own number on your phone. If it does not start a call, it is plain text rather than a link, and everyone who wanted to ring you had to memorise ten digits and switch apps. Some did. Not all.

How does the site load on cell data?

Turn wifi off and load your homepage somewhere with an average signal. That is the real experience for someone looking you up from a car park. If you are waiting long enough to wonder whether it is working, so is everybody else, and they will wait less patiently than you will for your own site.

Failing a few of these and not sure what to fix first? Send us the address through the free site check. Within two business days you get a written list of exactly what is costing you calls, plus a straight answer on whether it needs rebuilding or just a few fixes. We will tell you if it is fine.

Get a free site check

Are the photos actually mine?

Ask honestly whether a customer would recognise them as your business. A stock photo of a stranger in a clean uniform reads as stock to nearly everyone, and it quietly makes people discount the real claims sitting beside it.

Photos of your own work, taken on a phone, beat polished stock almost every time. People are not looking for beautiful. They are looking for evidence you exist and have done this before, which is the same reason case studies work.

Does the site say where I work?

Service area is the question people most often cannot find an answer to, and it decides whether they bother calling. Name the areas in plain text somewhere obvious, not inside a map widget that takes a moment to load, because on a phone that moment is often longer than the patience available.

Does the site answer price at all?

You do not have to publish a price list. But silence makes people assume the worst, and the ones who assume the worst do not ring to check.

A range, a starting figure, or a sentence about what makes a job cost more keeps them in the conversation. Think about it from their side. They are working out whether you are in their world at all. If you want a sense of what your own project would run, the cost calculator gives you a number in under a minute.

What happens after someone gets in touch?

Send yourself one more message and time the reply in real life rather than in theory. Plenty of businesses lose more work to a Wednesday reply than to anything on their website, and it is worth knowing which problem you actually have before you spend money on the other one.

What should I do with all this?

Work them in order. The form first, because if that is broken nothing else matters. Then the ten second test, because it affects every visitor.

Most of what you find is fixable in an afternoon without hiring anybody, and we would genuinely rather you did that. If you fix it all and the phone still does not ring, the problem is bigger than the page. Often it is maintenance, because sites break quietly and nobody is watching.

Two ways to go from here

If you already know it needs rebuilding, you can start today. Build is $399 a month with a $299 one-time setup. You fill in a short onboarding form and one of our developers is in touch within 24 hours. No minimum term, cancel any month.

Start today

If you would rather someone looked first, use the free site check and we will send you the list.

FAQs about websites that do not generate leads

Why is my website getting traffic but no enquiries?

Traffic without enquiries usually means one of three things: the visitors are the wrong people, the page does not answer the question stopping them, or the contact route is broken. Test the form first, because it is the cheapest to rule out and the most common fault.

How do I know if my contact form is working?

Submit it yourself from a phone, then check the inbox it is meant to reach, including spam. Also confirm the destination address still belongs to someone at the business. Forms most often break when a staff member leaves or a plugin updates.

How long should a website take to load?

On cell data with an average signal, if you notice the wait, it is too slow. Test on a real phone away from wifi rather than on your office connection.

Do I need to put prices on my website?

Not a full price list. But saying nothing makes people assume the worst and they will not call to check. A starting figure or a range keeps them in the conversation.

Should I redesign my site if it is not producing leads?

Not until you have run the checks above. Most lead problems are wording, a broken form, or slow replies, and none of those are fixed by a redesign.

About Rankwyre

Rankwyre is a digital technology company based in Miami, Florida, that builds custom websites, ecommerce stores, web apps, CRM systems, and dashboards, then runs the SEO and advertising that bring in customers. We work with local service businesses, independent brands, professional services and online stores. We bill monthly rather than taking a large fee upfront, and there is no minimum term, so clients can leave any month. Plans start at $299 a month. See the work or read what is included in each plan.