Having a website is one thing. Having a website that actually works for your business is something else entirely. I've seen thousands of small business websites over the years, and the same problems come up again and again. Broken layouts on phones. Contact details buried three clicks deep. Pages that take forever to load.
The frustrating part? Most of these issues are dead simple to fix. So here are the five things your website absolutely must get right if you want it to bring in customers rather than drive them away.
1. It has to work properly on mobile
This isn't optional. It's not a "nice to have". Over 60% of all web traffic in the UK comes from mobile devices. For local businesses, that number is even higher because people are searching on their phones while they're out and about, looking for something nearby.
What does "working properly on mobile" actually mean? It means the text is readable without pinching and zooming. Buttons are big enough to tap with a thumb. Images resize to fit the screen. The navigation doesn't require a magnifying glass. And everything loads quickly even on a dodgy 4G connection.
Google has been using mobile-first indexing since 2019, which means they literally look at the mobile version of your site first when deciding where to rank you. If your site looks rubbish on a phone, Google treats it as a rubbish site. Full stop.
The worst offenders are websites built in the early 2010s that were designed purely for desktop. They might look fine on a laptop, but pull them up on an iPhone and it's like trying to read a newspaper through a letterbox. If that's your site, it's actively hurting you.
Quick test: pull up your website on your phone right now. Try to find your phone number. Try to read a full page. Try to fill in a contact form. If any of that felt awkward, your customers feel it too. And they're leaving.
2. Your contact details need to be obvious
This one drives me absolutely mad. You visit a business website because you want to hire them or buy something, and you cannot find a phone number anywhere. It's not on the homepage. It's not in the header. You have to click through to a "Contact" page, scroll past a paragraph about how much they value customer relationships, and then you find a contact form. No phone number. No email address. Just a form that goes into a black hole.
Why do businesses make it hard to get in touch? Every extra step between a customer wanting to contact you and actually doing it is a chance for them to give up and go elsewhere. And plenty of them do.
Your phone number should be:
- In the header of every single page
- Clickable on mobile (so people can tap to call)
- Visible without scrolling on your homepage
Same goes for your email and your physical address if you have one. If you serve a specific area, make that obvious too. People want to know straight away whether you cover their location. Don't make them guess.
And here's something loads of businesses miss: put your contact details in the footer as well. People scroll to the bottom of websites instinctively when looking for contact info. If it's there, they find it. If it's not, they leave.
3. Fast loading speed (the 3-second rule)
53% of mobile visitors abandon a page that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Three seconds. That's it. And the average small business website? It takes 8-12 seconds. Which means over half your visitors are leaving before they even see your homepage.
The usual culprits are massive images that haven't been compressed, cheap hosting with servers on the other side of the world, bloated website builders that load dozens of scripts you don't need, and those flashy sliders and animations that look impressive but add seconds to your load time.
Speed matters for two reasons. First, the obvious one: customers won't wait. They'll hit the back button and click on the next result in Google. Second, Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. Slow sites get pushed down in search results. So not only are you losing the visitors who do find you, you're also getting less visible to new ones.
You can check your site speed for free at Google's PageSpeed Insights tool. It'll give you a score out of 100 and tell you exactly what's slowing things down. Anything under 50 on mobile is a problem. Under 30 is a proper emergency.
The fix usually isn't complicated. Compress your images (TinyPNG does this for free). Use a host with UK-based servers. Ditch the unnecessary plugins and animations. A fast, simple site will always outperform a slow, flashy one.
4. Basic SEO so people can actually find you
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and before your eyes glaze over, let me explain it simply. SEO is just making sure Google understands what your website is about so it can show you to the right people.
Think of Google like a massive library. SEO is like putting the right labels on your book so the librarian knows where to shelve it and who to recommend it to. Without those labels, your book sits in a pile in the back room where nobody looks.
Here's what basic SEO looks like in practice:
- Page titles that make sense. Each page should have a title that describes what it's about. "Home" is not a good page title. "Plumbing Services in Manchester | Dave's Plumbing" is.
- Headings that use real words. If you're a painter and decorator in Bristol, your main heading should say that. Not "Welcome to our website" or "About our services".
- Content that mentions what you do and where. Google needs text to work with. If your homepage is just a big photo and a phone number, Google has no idea what you do or where you do it.
- Proper meta descriptions. That little snippet of text that shows under your link in Google results. If you don't write one, Google will grab a random sentence from your page and it often looks terrible.
You don't need to become an SEO expert. You just need the basics in place. Think of it this way: if a stranger landed on each page of your site, would they know what you do, where you do it, and how to hire you? If the answer's yes, you're 80% of the way there.
5. Clear calls to action
A call to action is just a fancy way of saying "tell people what to do next". And it sounds obvious, but a shocking number of websites don't do this. They describe the business, list the services, maybe show some photos, and then... nothing. The visitor is left thinking "right, so what now?"
Bad calls to action look like this:
- "Click here" (click where? For what?)
- "Submit" on a contact form (sounds like you're filing taxes)
- "Learn more" on every single button (learn more about what, exactly?)
Good calls to action are specific and tell the customer what happens next:
- "Get a free quote in 24 hours"
- "Book your free consultation"
- "Call us now on 0161 XXX XXXX"
- "See our latest work"
Every page on your site should have at least one clear CTA. Your homepage probably needs two or three. One near the top for people who are ready to act immediately, and one at the bottom for people who've scrolled through and been convinced.
The colour matters too, by the way. Your main CTA button should stand out from the rest of the page. If everything's blue, make the button orange. If the page is mostly white, a bold green or blue button grabs attention. It sounds minor, but these small details are the difference between a website that generates leads and one that just sits there doing nothing.
The bottom line
None of this is rocket science. Mobile responsiveness, visible contact info, fast loading, basic SEO, and clear CTAs. Five things. But getting them right is the difference between a website that earns its keep and one that's just an expensive business card nobody looks at.
If your current site is falling short on any of these, it's worth fixing. And if you're starting from scratch, make sure whatever tool or builder you use gets these fundamentals right from day one.
