Most websites don’t fail loudly. There is no error message, no angry phone call, no alarm. People arrive, hesitate, and leave to ring someone else. You never hear about the customers you didn’t get, which is exactly why a leaky website can sit there for years, quietly costing you work.
The good news is that the leaks are easy to spot once you know where to look. Below are seven of the most common, each with a two-minute check you can run yourself and the fix that usually sorts it. Grab your phone, open your own website, and keep score as you go.
1. It’s Slow on a Phone
Speed is your first impression, and it is made before anyone reads a word. A Google-commissioned study by Deloitte found that when mobile sites loaded just 0.1 seconds faster, retail conversions rose by 8.4%. Slow sites are also far more common than most owners think: in Google’s Chrome data for October 2026, only 56.3% of websites passed all three of its Core Web Vitals tests for speed and stability.
The two-minute check: run your homepage through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile results. Your main content should appear within 2.5 seconds. Then try the site on your phone using mobile data, not the office wifi.
The fix: the usual culprits are oversized images, too many plugins and scripts, and budget hosting. All three are fixable without a redesign, and it is exactly the kind of work our hosting and performance team does.
2. Nobody Can Tell What You Do in Five Seconds
Visitors make up their minds quickly. If your homepage opens with “Welcome to our website” or “Solutions for a better tomorrow”, they have learned nothing, and the back button is right there.
The two-minute check: show your homepage to someone who doesn’t know the business. Give them five seconds, then close the laptop and ask three questions. What does this business do? Who is it for? Where is it? If they can’t answer all three, neither can your visitors.
The fix: a headline that says what you do, who for, and where. “Emergency plumber, Brisbane northside. On site within the hour” beats any clever slogan. Put it at the top of the page with one supporting sentence and let the rest of the page back it up.
3. There’s No Obvious Next Step
Every page should answer one question: what do I do now? Sites lose people when the phone number is buried in the footer, three buttons compete for attention, or the enquiry form asks twelve questions before it lets anyone say hello.
The two-minute check: start on your homepage, on your phone, and count the taps it takes to call you or send an enquiry. Is the phone number tappable? Then send yourself a message through your own contact form and make sure it arrives. Check the spam folder too. A form that quietly stopped working is the most expensive bug a business website can have.
The fix: one main action per page, repeated where people need it. Tap-to-call on every phone number. Short forms: name, contact details, message. On phones, a button that stays in reach as people scroll does a lot of heavy lifting.
4. It Fights You on Mobile
A site that was “mobile-friendly” when it launched years ago is not the same as a site that is good to use on a phone today. Tiny text, buttons packed too close together, pop-ups that cover the screen, and pages that slide sideways all send people elsewhere.
The two-minute check: use your site one-handed, thumb only. Find a service, read about it, and try to get in touch. Note every time you pinch, zoom, tap the wrong thing or scroll sideways. Each one is a small reason to give up.
The fix: design for the phone first and the desktop second, not the other way round. That is how we approach every web design project, because for a lot of local businesses the phone is where most visitors are.
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We’ll run these checks on your site and send you a plain-English list of what to fix first.
Ask for a Free Website Review →5. Nothing Proves You’re the Real Deal
A new visitor is a stranger deciding whether to trust you. Stock photos, no reviews, no address and no sign of real work all make that decision harder. A “Not secure” warning in the address bar makes it for them.
The two-minute check: look for five things. Real photos of your team or your work. Recent reviews with names attached. A street address or a clear service area. A phone number and an ABN. A padlock in the browser’s address bar. If the browser says “Not secure”, move that to the top of today’s list.
The fix: put proof where decisions get made: testimonials beside your enquiry buttons, real projects on your service pages, and a link to your Google reviews. It is why our own site leads with real client work rather than promises.
6. It Looks Like Nobody’s Home
A footer that says 2021, a news page that stopped three years ago, Christmas hours still showing in March. Small things, but together they make visitors wonder whether you are still in business.
The two-minute check: hunt for dates. The footer year, the latest blog post, opening hours, old promotions, and the team page. Then click every link in your main menu and make sure each one goes somewhere.
The fix: remove anything you can’t keep current. A blog you don’t update is worse than no blog. Set the footer year to update itself, and put a quarterly reminder in your calendar to read your own site. A site that is easy to edit is a site that gets edited, which is worth remembering when you choose what to build on.
7. Google and AI Assistants Can’t Make Sense of It
People find local businesses through Google, and more and more through AI assistants like ChatGPT and Google’s own AI answers. Both rely on your site spelling out what you do and where. If it doesn’t, you are invisible to anyone who doesn’t already know your name.
The two-minute check: open a private browser window and search for your main service plus your suburb, not your business name. Are you in the map results or on the first page? Then ask an AI assistant who does your kind of work in your area and see whether you get a mention.
The fix: a page for each service, clear page titles, your location and service area in plain text, a complete Google Business Profile, and a steady flow of reviews. Behind the scenes, structured data helps search engines and AI tools read your details correctly. This is the core of our SEO and digital marketing work.
Score Yourself
- 0 or 1 signs: you are in good shape. Run the checks again twice a year.
- 2 or 3 signs: time for a tune-up. Most of these can be fixed on the site you already have.
- 4 or more: your website is probably costing you more than a new one would. It is time to talk about a rebuild.
Tune-Up or Rebuild?
Not every leaky website needs replacing. As a rule of thumb, if your problems are about clarity and content (signs 2, 3, 5 and 6), fix what is there. A sharper headline, better buttons and fresh proof can go live in days.
If the problems are structural (a slow platform, a layout that fights phones, or a site so awkward to edit that nobody does), rebuilding is often cheaper than patching. For small brochure-style sites running on WordPress, we have made the case for moving to Astro, which fixes speed and security in one move.
The Final Whistle
Your website is the one member of the team that works nights, weekends and public holidays. It is worth twenty minutes to find out whether it is winning you work or waving customers through to the opposition.
Run the seven checks this week. You can’t win back the customers you never knew you lost, but you can stop losing the next ones.
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