Your analytics say hundreds of people visited last month. Your phone says otherwise. Before you spend more on getting people to the site, it's worth asking why the ones who already arrived didn't do anything.
In local business, it's almost always one of these eight.
1. Your phone number is hard to find
It should be in the header on every page, tappable on mobile, and visible without scrolling. Sounds obvious. Half of local sites bury it in a footer or, worse, render it as an image nobody can tap.
2. It isn't obvious what you do or where
A visitor decides in seconds. If your homepage opens with "Excellence in craftsmanship since 2009" instead of "Kitchen and bathroom remodeling in Montreal", you've lost the ones who needed to know they're in the right place.
Say the trade and the area, in plain words, at the top.
3. There's no proof
Nobody hands over $20,000 on a promise. Reviews, real photos of finished jobs, licences and insurance, years in business. Photos of your actual work do more than any adjective you can write.
4. The page is slow
Most local sites are slow because of huge unoptimised images. On a phone, on mobile data, a few seconds of blank screen means they're gone before they saw anything. Compress your images and the bounce rate falls on its own.
5. You're asking for too much, too early
A twelve-field form asking for budget and project details is a wall. Early on, you need enough to start a conversation: name, phone, what they need. Everything else can come when you're talking.
6. There are five things to do instead of one
Call us, book online, download the guide, follow us, join the newsletter, request a catalogue. Every extra option splits attention. Pick the one action you actually want, usually "book" or "call", and make it the obvious choice on every page.
If a visitor has to decide what to do next, many will decide to do nothing. Remove choices until only the best one is prominent.
7. It looks fine on your laptop
Most of your visitors are on a phone, often outdoors, one-handed. Open your own site on your phone and try to book a job. If you find yourself pinching to zoom or hunting for the button, so is everyone else.
8. Nobody answers the ones who do get in touch
This is the big one, and it's invisible in analytics. The form was submitted at 8:40pm. It sat in an inbox until morning. By then they'd booked someone who replied that evening.
Your site may be converting fine. The leak is downstream, in the hours after the enquiry, and no amount of design fixes a slow response.
Where to start
Open your site on your phone right now and time yourself booking a job as if you were a stranger. Whatever annoyed you first is your highest-priority fix. Then make sure every enquiry gets an answer within minutes, day or night. Those two changes usually do more than a redesign.
