Is your website costing you customers? 7 quick checks

A website doesn’t fail loudly. It fails quietly — a visitor who leaves because it’s slow, a customer who can’t find your phone number, a Google result that never shows up. Here are seven checks you can do in a few minutes to spot the leaks.

1. Does it load fast on a phone?

Most visits are on mobile, often on patchy connections. If your site takes more than a few seconds to become usable, people leave before they ever see your offer. Test it on your own phone on mobile data, not office WiFi.

2. Is it HTTPS?

If the address bar doesn’t show a padlock (https://), browsers warn visitors your site is “not secure.” That warning alone scares people off, and search engines penalise it. This is fixable quickly.

3. Can someone contact you in one tap?

Phone, WhatsApp, email or a short form — visible without scrolling and tappable on mobile. Every extra step between “interested” and “in touch” loses people.

4. Is it obvious what you do — in five seconds?

A first-time visitor should understand what you offer and who it’s for almost instantly. If your homepage headline is vague or clever-but-unclear, rewrite it to be plain.

5. Does it look current?

An outdated design reads as “out of business” or “not careful.” You don’t need flashy — you need clean, modern and trustworthy.

6. Do you show up on Google?

Search your business name, then search what you sell plus your town. If you’re nowhere, you’re invisible to people who don’t already know you.

7. Can AI assistants read it?

Increasingly, customers ask ChatGPT or Perplexity. If your content is buried behind heavy scripts or lacks structure, AI can’t cite you. (More on this in our GEO guide.)

Scored badly on a few?

None of these are hard to fix — they’re just easy to overlook. A free audit gives you a short, honest checklist of what to fix first, in order of impact.