The website design mistakes that cost you enquiries are dull ones. A phone number nobody can find, pages that stall on a phone, a menu that hides your best work, text too small to read.

None of it is about taste. It’s about whether a stranger can work out what you do and how to reach you before they give up and go back to the search results.

Which website design mistakes actually lose you the job

Start with the ones that stop somebody getting in touch. If your phone number only appears in the footer, you’re relying on people scrolling to the bottom to find it, and plenty won’t bother. If the home page takes several seconds to draw itself on a patchy signal, some of them leave before they’ve seen anything at all. If the menu is full of words like Portfolio and Ethos rather than the trade you actually do, visitors have to guess where to click. And if the first screen doesn’t say what you sell and roughly where you sell it, a stranger has no idea whether they’re in the right place. Everything else, the colours, the animation, the clever typeface, sits a long way behind those four. Fix the boring ones first, and you’ll notice the difference in your phone bill before you notice it anywhere else.

Why does my site feel slow on a phone

Usually it’s the pictures. Photos come off a phone camera far bigger than any website needs, and if nobody shrinks them, every visitor downloads the lot on whatever signal they happen to have.

The fix is unglamorous. Resize the images before they go up, drop the sliding banner nobody waits for, and delete the plugins you stopped using years ago.

Where should the phone number go

Top of every page, and again at the bottom. On a phone it should dial when somebody taps it, not sit there as flat text they have to copy out by hand.

If you’d rather have email than calls, that’s fine, but say so and make it the obvious option. Giving people four ways to contact you works out much the same as giving them none.

Can you just tell me what to fix, and in what order

Work down this list. The top row costs you the most and takes the least time to put right.

The mistake	What it costs you	The fix
Contact details buried in the footer	People who liked the look of you ring somebody else instead	Number in the header of every page, tappable on a phone
Huge photographs straight off a camera	Visitors leave before the page finishes drawing	Resize and squash the files before you upload them
Menu labels like Portfolio and Ethos	Nobody finds the service they came for	Name the trade, not the concept
Small text and buttons crowded together	Thumbs miss, people give up	Bigger type, more space between links
No sign of where you work	Enquiries from miles away, none from your own town	Town names on the home page and in the footer

Does the writing count as design

It does, because the words are the part people actually read. A page can be laid out beautifully and still leave somebody guessing what you charge for, how far you travel, or whether you’d take on a job their size. Plenty of small business sites open with a line about caring about quality and putting the customer first, which every rival in the county also says, so it tells a visitor nothing useful at all. Swap it for the plain facts. What you do, who you do it for, the towns you cover, and what happens after somebody gets in touch. Then repeat the important bits near the bottom of the page, because the people who scroll all the way down are usually the ones about to ring. Good design gives those words room to breathe. Bad design buries them under a photograph of two strangers shaking hands.

How do you tell whether it’s the site or the traffic

If people arrive and leave straight away, the site is the problem. If almost nobody arrives at all, a redesign won’t help you, because you’re not being found in the first place.

Check where your visitors come from before you spend anything. It’s a small job, and it stops people paying good money to fix the wrong thing.

What can you sort out yourself this week

• Put your phone number in the header and make it dial when tapped.
• Open your own site on your own phone, on mobile data, and see how long it takes.
• Rename any menu item that doesn’t say what you sell.
• Swap stock photographs for pictures of your own work, even if they’re phone snaps.
• Add the towns you cover to the home page, in words a customer would use.

Questions people actually ask

Do I need a whole new site or will a few fixes do

Usually a few fixes. Start again when nothing can be edited without a developer, when it falls apart on a phone, or when what you sell has changed completely.

Will a new website get me to the top of Google

Not on its own. A faster, clearer site helps, but ranking depends on a lot of things nobody controls. Anyone promising you the top spot is guessing.

Can I not just build it myself on one of those website builders

You can, and for a simple site that’s a sensible choice. Watch for the same traps: heavy images, smart templates that hide your contact details, and text sized for a laptop screen.

Do I really need photographs of my own work

Yes. Stock pictures of people in hard hats look like every other site in your trade. A slightly wonky photo of a finished job you’re proud of does far more.

If your site is quietly losing you work and you’d rather somebody just sorted it, ring 01823 242424 or email info@reor.co.uk and tell us what’s wrong with it. One job, one price, no monthly fee, and the files are yours at the end.