How to get more enquiries from your website
If people are reaching your website and not contacting you, the problem is usually not the design. It is that the page does not answer the two questions somebody has to settle before they will get in touch: is this business right for me, and how do I do it without effort.
These are in rough order of how much difference they make for the least work. Most sites need the first four and nothing else.
Put the phone number where a thumb is
Most visitors are on a phone, and most small business sites bury the number in a footer or hide it behind a contact page. It should be in the header on every page, and it should be a tap-to-call link rather than text somebody has to copy.
Add whichever messaging route you actually answer. A lot of people will send a WhatsApp message at nine at night who would never ring, and for trades that is frequently the majority of first contact. Only offer it if you will reply, because an unanswered channel is worse than none.
Say what you do and where, in the first sentence
A heading that says Welcome, or Quality you can trust, tells a visitor nothing and tells Google nothing. The first thing on the page should name the service and the area: what you do, where you do it.
People scan for confirmation that they are in the right place, and they do it in seconds. If they cannot confirm it immediately they leave, and you never find out they were there.
Give a price, or a range, or explain why you cannot
Price is the commonest reason people leave without asking. They do not want to start a conversation that ends in embarrassment, so they take the business that told them.
If every job is different, say so and give something to anchor against: a typical range, a call-out fee, a minimum, or an example job with a real number. Contact us for a quote with nothing beside it reads as expensive and evasive.
Make the form as short as it can be
Every field costs you enquiries. Name, a way to reply, and a sentence about the job is enough to start a conversation. Address, postcode, preferred contact time, how did you hear about us: all of that can be asked once somebody is already talking to you.
Then test the form. Actually submit it. Forms fail silently far more often than anyone expects, and a business can go months not realising it is losing every enquiry. Check it every few months, or have someone check it for you.
Show the work, not stock photographs
Photographs of jobs you have genuinely done outperform professional stock images by a distance, even when yours are taken on a phone. Stock photography is recognised instantly and it quietly signals that there is nothing real to show.
The same goes for reviews. A screenshot of a genuine Facebook recommendation with a real name is worth more than a polished testimonial with no source attached.
Reply faster than you think you need to
Most people contact more than one business. The first useful reply usually wins, and useful means answering the actual question rather than acknowledging receipt.
If you cannot reply quickly during the day, say so on the page and give a time. Expectations met beat expectations exceeded and missed.
Then, and only then, worry about the design
Colour schemes, animations and layout changes are the most enjoyable things to fiddle with and the least likely to change your enquiry count. Do the six above first. If enquiries are still not coming after that, the problem is usually the traffic rather than the page: the wrong people are arriving, which is a search and advertising problem rather than a website one.
Common questions
- How many enquiries should a small business website get?
- There is no meaningful benchmark, because it depends entirely on how many people arrive and how ready they are to buy. A more useful question is what proportion of visitors contact you, and whether that number moves when you change something.
- Should I use a chatbot?
- Only if a person answers it quickly. An automated chat that cannot answer a real question annoys people more than no chat at all, and for most small businesses a visible phone number and a WhatsApp link do the same job better.
- Is my form working? How would I know?
- Submit it yourself from a phone on mobile data, not from the computer that built the site, and check the address it is supposed to arrive at including the spam folder. Do it every few months. Silent form failure is one of the commonest faults on small business websites.
- Do I need a blog to get more enquiries?
- Usually not. Blogging helps businesses whose customers research before buying. For a trade whose customers search for a service and a town, clear service pages and a findable phone number are worth far more than a blog nobody reads.
- People visit but leave in seconds. What does that mean?
- Usually that the page did not confirm quickly enough that they were in the right place, or that it loaded too slowly on a phone. Check what the first screen says and how fast it appears on mobile data rather than office broadband.
If you would rather somebody just did it
I build websites for self-employed tradesmen and small businesses across the UK: £249 to build, then £49.99 a month to host, maintain and update it. The sites I have built currently hold 97 page-one Google rankings between them.