Most business websites do not lose customers dramatically. They lose them slowly, one small friction at a time, and nobody notices because there is no baseline to compare against. These are the seven problems I find in almost every audit.
1. It takes more than three seconds to load
Every extra second of load time increases the chance a visitor leaves. On a mobile connection, a homepage weighed down with unoptimized images and three slider plugins can take six or seven seconds. Converting images to WebP and dropping one or two scripts usually fixes most of it.
2. The visitor cannot tell what you do in five seconds
If the first screen is a stock photo of a handshake and the headline reads “Welcome to our website”, the visitor has to work to understand you. They will not. A clear headline naming who you help and what you deliver does more for conversion than any redesign.
3. Mobile is an afterthought
More than half of visitors arrive on a phone. Text that requires pinch-zoom, buttons too close together or a form that opens a different page — each one is a drop-off point. Test your own site on a real phone, not just a desktop browser resized.
4. The contact form is buried
One click should be enough. If the only way to get in touch is a form on a separate page reachable through a footer link, you are losing the people who were ready to buy right now.
5. There is no proof
Testimonials, project examples, numbers, client logos — anything that shows you have done this before. A business site with no evidence asks the visitor to take a risk. Most will not.
6. The site has no idea what you want people to do
Some sites want a call, an email, a purchase and a newsletter signup, all at once. Nothing gets clicked. Pick one primary action per page and make everything else secondary.
7. Nobody can find it
A beautiful site with no indexable content, no page titles and no sitemap will not attract search traffic. It does not need a huge SEO campaign — correct titles, descriptions, headings and a handful of genuinely useful pages are enough to start.
Where to start
Fix the order above before spending on anything new. Load speed and a clear headline are usually worth more than a full redesign, and both can be done in days rather than months.
If you would rather have someone go through it properly, I run a website audit and speed optimization service that gives you a prioritised list with before-and-after measurements.