Most websites do not fail because they are ugly. They fail because they make the visitor work. Someone lands on your page with a question in mind, they cannot answer it in a few seconds, and they leave for the next result on Google. Nothing dramatic happens. You simply never hear from them.

After auditing hundreds of small business sites, the same problems come up over and over. Here are the ten worst offenders, in the order they usually cost the most money.

1. It is not obvious what you do

The first thing on the page should say what you do, who for, and where. "Welcome to our website" tells a visitor nothing. "Emergency plumbing across Surrey, usually with you within two hours" tells them everything they needed to know.

If a stranger cannot describe your business after five seconds on your homepage, that is the first thing to fix.

2. No clear next step

Every page needs one obvious action. Call, request a quote, book an appointment. When a page offers six equally weighted options, people choose none of them. Pick the action you want most, make it a button, and repeat it as the page gets longer.

3. Hiding your phone number

A surprising number of small business sites bury the phone number in a footer. If people phone you to buy, your number belongs in the header, clickable on mobile, and repeated at the end of every page.

4. A slow first load

Speed is a design decision. Huge uncompressed images, a stack of plugins and heavy page builders all add seconds. Every extra second measurably lowers the number of people who stay. Compress your images, remove what you do not use, and test your homepage on 4G rather than office broadband.

5. Broken or awkward on mobile

Most of your visitors are on a phone. Text that requires pinching, buttons too small for a thumb and forms that push content off screen are all quiet killers. Open your own site on your phone and try to book yourself in.

6. Stock photos instead of your actual work

People want to see the real thing: your team, your vans, your finished jobs, your premises. A dozen honest photos of your own work will outperform the smartest stock library every time, because they answer the question behind every enquiry — can I trust these people?

7. No proof

Reviews, ratings, accreditations, recognisable clients and before-and-after photos all reduce risk in the visitor's mind. Put them near your call to action, where hesitation happens, not on a testimonials page nobody visits.

8. Writing about yourself instead of the customer

"We are a dynamic, forward-thinking company" is invisible. Rewrite each headline so it names the problem the customer arrived with, then explain how you remove it. Read the page aloud — if it sounds like a brochure, keep editing.

9. Forms that ask too much

Every extra field lowers completions. For a first enquiry you usually need a name, one way to reach them, and a sentence about the job. Ask the rest on the call.

10. Never touched since launch

A site that has not changed in four years starts to look abandoned, and Google notices too. Add recent work, refresh your services, publish the occasional article. A living site outranks and outsells a frozen one.

Where to start

Pick the first three on this list and fix them this week. Clarity, a single obvious action and a visible phone number are usually worth more than a full redesign. Once those are right, speed and proof are the next best returns on your time.

If you would rather see it than read about it, we build a working preview of your new homepage for free, so you can judge the improvement on your own business before spending anything.