Make sure you are counting enquiries properly
Before you redesign anything, check whether the leads are really missing. Many Fraser Valley businesses win work by phone, and a call that starts with a tap on the website number often leaves no trace in a report. For one month, add up calls, texts, form entries and emails, and ask each new customer how they found you. Then compare the total with your visit count.
If you cannot tell which enquiries came from the site, set up tracking first: tap-to-call events, form submissions and booking clicks sent to your analytics. Without them you are guessing which page works. Our conversion tracking team can set this up, and a careful owner can start by hand with a notebook beside the phone.
Check who is actually arriving
Traffic only counts if it is the right traffic. Look at the searches and pages behind your visits. A contractor in Mission may attract people hunting for jobs, supplies or a different town, and none of them will ever call. A clinic may rank for general health questions that bring readers rather than patients. Google Search Console, which is free, shows the searches that lead people to your pages.
Compare those searches with the work you want to win. If the match is weak, the fix is not a nicer form but better targeting: service pages that name the service and the town, location details that gently rule out people who are too far away, and answers to the questions buyers ask. It also means fewer wasted visits to read through.
Pass the five-second test on your first screen
Ask three people who have never seen your site to look at the homepage for five seconds, then close it and tell you what you do, where you work and what they would do next. If any of them is unsure, your first screen is hiding the answer. Usual culprits are a clever slogan standing in for a plain description, a stock photo with no link to your work and a service area that is never named.
Fix it with a headline that states the service and the place, a line about who you help and one clear button. On a phone the first screen is small, so order matters: what you do, where, then how to reach you. Save the long story for the About page and repeat the same plain promise on each service page.
Make the next step easy on a phone
Many visits to local business sites come from phones, so pick up yours and try to call. Is there a tap-to-call number in plain sight, or must you hunt through the footer? Try the form with one thumb. If it asks for ten things, has tiny fields or hides the send button behind the keyboard, people will give up. Then send yourself a test enquiry and confirm it arrives.
That last check catches more problems than you would expect. Form notifications sent to an old address, or into a spam folder, can swallow leads for months. Ask your web person to send them to two addresses and to show a thank-you message that says when you will reply.
- A tap-to-call button visible without scrolling
- A form limited to a name, a phone number or email, and what you need
- A thank-you message that says when you will reply
- Hours, service area and address close to the button
- A test enquiry sent every month to confirm it still arrives
Show proof, explain price, and reply quickly
People close to choosing look for reasons to trust you. Put real proof beside the button: a Google rating they can click through to, photos of your own work, the licences or insurance you hold and the towns you serve. Skip stock photos and invented praise. Visitors can tell the difference, and so can Google.
Then deal with price honestly. You do not need a rate card, but explain what drives the cost and how quotes work, so the visitor can tell whether you suit their budget. Finally, reply quickly. An enquiry that waits two days is often gone. If you are on a job site or behind a clinic desk all day, set an automatic text or email that confirms you got the message and says when you will call back.
What to measure over the next month
Pick one fix and make it this week, then give it two to four weeks before you judge it. Write down your starting numbers for calls, forms and visits so the comparison is honest. Seasons swing hard in the valley, so compare with the same stretch of last year if you have it, not with last month. If nothing moves, go on to the next check.
- 01Calls and texts received each week
- 02Form entries, and how many were answered the same day
- 03Which pages people viewed just before they enquired
Questions & answers
The usual causes are visitors who are not buyers, a first screen that does not say what you do, no easy way to call or book on a phone, a form that is long or broken, and slow replies. Start by checking your tracking, then test your own site on a phone as if you were a customer.
Give a change two to four weeks, longer if you only get a few enquiries a month, because small numbers swing widely. Compare with the same weeks last year if you can. Trades, tourism and farm businesses in the valley are seasonal, and a quiet January is not always your website’s fault.
Not until the pages you already have turn visitors into enquiries. Ads and new pages send more people down the same path, so a leak in that path wastes the extra spend. Fix the call button, the form and the first screen, then add traffic with a clear goal and a way to count the results.
Yes. Our free marketing audit looks at your website, search presence, ads and competitors, and shows what is working and what is not before any proposal. You get one account lead from start to finish, and our Abbotsford studio and Chilliwack office serve businesses across the valley.