Should a small business website show prices?
Usually, somewhere. Sites with no pricing lose visitors who are price-sensitive at that stage, and a starting-from price filters out the wrong enquiries.
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Why your website gets visitors but not customers
Traffic that does not convert usually points to the site, and it is usually fixable without spending more on getting people there. The page does not say within a couple of seconds what you do and why it matters, the next step is buried or vague, the site is slow or a mess on a phone, or nothing gives a first-time buyer a reason to trust you. The fixes are mostly small: sharper wording, one clear action per page, a shorter form and a mobile experience that works.
What usually stops visitors becoming customers?
One of a few things. The page does not say quickly what you do and why someone should care. The action you want is buried, vague, or repeated so often it has become wallpaper. The site is slow or broken on a phone, which is where most visitors are. Or nothing makes a nervous first-time buyer trust you: no proof, no faces, no sign of real people behind it.
Often the problem is hidden. One client of mine was about to commission a full rebuild of a four-year-old site that ranked well and had decent traffic but seemed to lose leads at the contact form. The form was sending submissions to an inbox nobody had monitored in eighteen months. They thought their conversion rate was 0.4%; it was closer to 3%. Forms that work first time on the developer's desktop break on Safari mobile or with autofill, and I have seen a remarkable number of leads lost that way. It is also common for paid traffic to go to a homepage while a deeper service page converts at three times the rate.
Most businesses pour money into ads, search and social, then send all those people to a site nobody has touched in three years. It is like running a great campaign for a shop with a jammed front door.
Why does clear wording beat clever design?
Because a confused visitor never buys; they leave quietly and you never hear about it. I have watched businesses agonise over the shade of a button while the headline above it made no sense to anyone outside the company. Tell people what you do, who it is for and what to do next.
Look and feel is where clients spend the most time and where the smallest measurable difference comes from. A site that looks fine and works well beats a beautiful one with a broken checkout. What converts in 2026 looks remarkably like what converted in 2018: a clear value proposition, an obvious next step, and trust signals near the action. Most so-called personalisation, such as a first name in a subject line, builds nothing.
Which small fixes make the biggest difference?
The ones that take a day. Cut the form to the minimum: a typical B2B contact form has eleven required fields when email, name, message and perhaps company would start the conversation. Put one clear action on each page, above the fold on mobile. Replace an auto-playing hero video with a still image, because video slows mobile pages and most people do not watch it. Show a starting-from price, so price-sensitive visitors do not leave and the wrong enquiries filter themselves out. Make the cookie banner non-blocking.
Speed matters most on phones: a Lighthouse score above 80 and Core Web Vitals in the green. Most sites I look at pass on desktop and fail on mobile, which is the wrong way round, and when I open a site on a mid-range Android phone on patchy 4G, half the issues I find are mobile only.
How can you test your own site?
Sit someone who has never seen it in front of it and ask them, out loud, what the business does and what they would click. Do not help. It is uncomfortable, and it is the most useful 10 minutes you will spend all month: every hesitation is a place you are losing money. Then look at where people actually leave in your analytics, such as the page where the bounce rate spikes or the form many people start and few finish.
Does the site need rebuilding?
Rarely. The redesign reflex is strong when a site looks tired and conversion is down, and an agency will happily start again, but £30K to £80K later the shinier site often performs about the same. For around £1500 of focused work you can have the homepage and main money pages reviewed, the messaging sharpened, the calls to action sorted and the mobile experience checked, so the traffic you already pay for converts better. Most of it can be fixed in weeks rather than months.
Related evidence: 55 digital audits. Here’s what I found.. Earlier in this journey: The Covid digital scramble.
Questions people ask
Do auto-playing videos help a homepage?
Rarely. They slow sites down on mobile, hurt Largest Contentful Paint and use data, and most visitors do not watch them; a well-chosen still image usually performs better.
Not sure where to start?
Most clients begin with a conversation. No pitch, no hard sell.
Just a straightforward discussion about where you are and whether I can help.
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