Mistake 1: the site is slow on a phone
You test your site on office broadband, so it feels quick. Your customers are on a phone, on mobile data, and for them it may crawl. Slow loading is the most common quiet killer, because visitors leave before they see anything, and you never know they were there. The usual cause is oversized images. Sizing and compressing them properly is often the single biggest improvement a small-business site can make.
Mistake 2: it is not obvious what you do
A visitor decides within a few seconds whether they are in the right place. If your homepage leads with a slogan or a stock photo instead of plainly stating what you do and who you do it for, many visitors leave confused. Say it clearly, near the top: what you offer, where you work, and who it is for.
Mistake 3: there is no clear next step
Plenty of sites describe the business well and then forget to ask for the enquiry. Every page should make the next step obvious: call, email, book or enquire. If a visitor has to hunt for how to get in touch, a good number simply will not bother. Put a clear call to action where people can see it without scrolling.
Mistake 4: the contact form does not work on mobile
This one is painful because it hides so well. A form that submits perfectly on your desktop can silently fail on an iPhone, and every visitor who tries is a lost enquiry you never hear about. Test your own form on a real phone, not just a shrunk browser window. If it does not send, that is business walking out of the door.
Mistake 5: Google cannot find the pages
If your key pages are not indexed, they will never appear in search, no matter how good they are. Common causes are pages accidentally blocked from Google, a missing sitemap, or thin content that gives Google little to rank. Confirming your important pages are visible to Google is one of the highest-value checks you can do.
Mistake 6: weak page titles and descriptions
The title and description are what people see in a Google result. Vague ones like "Home" or "Welcome to our website" waste your best chance to earn a click, even when you rank. Give every page a clear, specific title and a description that tells the searcher exactly what they will get.
Mistake 7: the site looks untrustworthy
Small trust signals matter more than owners realise. A missing HTTPS padlock, an expired certificate that triggers a browser warning, no real address or phone number, or a dated design can all make a genuine business look unreliable. Fixing these is usually quick and removes a real barrier to enquiries.
Mistake 8: nobody has looked at the site in a year
Websites drift. Plugins update, images accumulate, links break, and what worked at launch slowly rots. A site left untouched for a year has usually picked up several of the mistakes above without anyone noticing. A quick check every quarter catches the drift early.
See which mistakes are on your site
Reading a list is useful, but the real question is which of these apply to you, and you cannot always tell from your own screen. That is what the scan is for. Paste your address and PageScore checks your speed, SEO, mobile, security and accessibility in about 8 seconds, then tells you which mistakes are on your site and which to fix first. For the full breakdown, the professional audit report is £29 with instant delivery, listing all 20 pages of findings in priority order. If you would rather have the whole site put right for you, the John Hitchens build is a fixed £400, delivered in 2 to 3 days.
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