You are getting traffic. Google Analytics confirms it — hundreds, maybe thousands of visitors per month. But the phone is not ringing. The contact form submissions are a trickle. The gap between your traffic numbers and your lead numbers is wide enough to drive a lorry through.
This is one of the most common frustrations we hear from business owners who come to us for help. They have invested in SEO, run ads, posted on social media — and the traffic is there. But the website is not converting that traffic into leads and customers. The good news is that conversion problems are almost always fixable, and the fixes often produce dramatic improvements.
Below are the seven most common reasons websites fail to convert, along with practical solutions for each.
1. Your Website Is Too Slow
Page speed is the foundation of everything. If your website takes more than three seconds to load, you are losing 53% of mobile visitors before they even see your content. Google's own research confirms this: the probability of bounce increases by 32% as page load time goes from one second to three seconds, and by 90% as it goes from one second to five seconds.
Check your website speed using Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Look at your Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) score — this measures how long it takes for the main content on your page to become visible. Google considers an LCP of under 2.5 seconds to be 'good'. Anything above 4 seconds is 'poor' and is actively hurting your conversion rate and your search rankings.
- Compress and resize images — this is the most common cause of slow load times; serve images in WebP format at the correct dimensions
- Enable browser caching and GZIP compression on your server
- Minimise third-party scripts (analytics, chat widgets, social embeds) — each one adds load time
- Use a content delivery network (CDN) to serve assets from geographically close servers
- Consider a hosting upgrade — cheap shared hosting is often the root cause of slow sites
Every website we build at Prism Digital Group ships with sub-2-second load times as standard. We obsess over performance because we know that speed is not just a technical metric — it is a conversion metric. A one-second improvement in load time can increase conversions by 7%.
2. Your Calls to Action Are Weak or Missing
A visitor lands on your website. They read about your services. They are interested. Now what? If the answer is 'they have to scroll to the bottom of the page, click on the Contact link in the navigation, and fill out a generic form', you are making them work too hard. Every additional step between interest and action is a point where potential customers drop off.
Your primary call to action (CTA) should be visible within the first screen — above the fold, without scrolling. It should be specific ('Book a Free Assessment', 'Get Your Quote in 60 Seconds', 'Call Us Now') rather than vague ('Learn More', 'Submit', 'Contact Us'). And it should appear multiple times throughout the page, not just at the top and bottom.
The most effective CTA strategy includes: a prominent CTA in the hero section, a sticky header or floating button with a CTA that follows the user as they scroll, a CTA at the end of each content section, and a dedicated CTA section before the footer. The goal is to ensure that no matter where the visitor is on the page, a clear next step is always visible.
3. You Lack Trust Signals
Would you hire a tradesperson with no reviews, no credentials displayed, no evidence of past work, and a website that looks like it was built in 2010? Neither would your customers. Trust is the most underappreciated conversion factor, especially for service businesses where the customer is making a significant financial commitment based primarily on their impression of your online presence.
- Display Google reviews prominently on your homepage and service pages — not buried on a separate 'Testimonials' page
- Show your Google review count and star rating near the top of the page
- Include case studies or before-and-after examples with specific results (not just 'we did a great job')
- Display industry certifications, accreditations, and professional memberships
- Show real team photos — stock photos actively damage trust
- Include your business address, phone number, and registration details in the footer
- Add trust badges: SSL, payment security, money-back guarantee, industry association logos
We redesigned a website for an HVAC company that had excellent reviews but was not displaying them on their site. After adding a review carousel to the homepage, conversion rate increased by 47% in the first month. The traffic was the same — the trust signals made the difference.
4. Your Mobile Experience Is Poor
Over 60% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices. For local service businesses, that number is often 70% or higher — because people search for local services on their phones while they are out, during an emergency, or during a quick break at work. If your website is not optimised for mobile, you are providing a poor experience to the majority of your visitors.
Mobile optimisation is not just about responsive design (though that is the baseline). It is about designing the experience for thumbs, not mice. Buttons need to be large enough to tap easily (minimum 44 pixels). Text needs to be legible without zooming (minimum 16 pixels for body text). Forms need to be short and use mobile-friendly input types (tel for phone numbers, email for email addresses). Phone numbers need to be tap-to-call. The navigation needs to work flawlessly on a small screen.
Test your website on an actual mobile phone, not just in a desktop browser resized to mobile dimensions. Better yet, test it on multiple devices — iPhone, Android, different screen sizes. Watch someone who has never seen your website try to complete the primary action (call you, fill out a form, book an appointment) on their phone. You will almost certainly discover friction points you never noticed.
5. Your Forms Are Too Long
Every additional field on your contact form reduces completion rates. This is one of the best-documented findings in conversion rate optimisation: reducing form fields from four to three can increase conversions by 50%. Reducing from seven to four can increase conversions by 120%.
Ask yourself: what is the minimum information you need to start a conversation with a potential customer? For most service businesses, the answer is a name, a phone number or email address, and a brief description of what they need. That is three fields. Everything else — budget, timeline, service type, how they found you — can be gathered during the follow-up conversation.
If you genuinely need more information to provide a quote, use a multi-step form that breaks the process into two or three screens. Multi-step forms consistently outperform single-page long forms because they reduce the perceived effort and create a sense of commitment once the first step is completed.
6. Your Value Proposition Is Unclear
A visitor lands on your homepage. Within five seconds, they should be able to answer three questions: What does this business do? Who is it for? Why should I choose them over the competition? If your hero section leads with 'Welcome to [Business Name]' followed by a paragraph of generic copy about 'quality service' and 'customer satisfaction', you have failed the five-second test.
Your value proposition should be specific and differentiated. 'Emergency plumber in Manchester — average 45-minute response time, 4.9-star rating from 350+ reviews, no call-out fee' tells the visitor exactly what you do, gives them a reason to trust you, and removes a common objection — all in one sentence. Compare that to 'Professional plumbing services for residential and commercial customers', which says almost nothing.
The most effective value propositions combine three elements: what you do (specific service), proof (a number, a rating, a credential), and a differentiator (what makes you different from the ten other businesses they are considering). If your headline does not include at least two of these three elements, rewrite it.
7. There Is No Follow-Up System
This is not technically a website problem, but it is the single biggest conversion killer we see. A lead fills out your form. They wait an hour. Two hours. Half a day. By the time someone from your team responds, the lead has already called two competitors and booked with the one who answered first.
Your website conversion rate is a function of two things: how well your site turns visitors into leads, and how well your team turns leads into customers. The best website in the world is worthless if leads go unanswered for hours. An instant automated response (SMS and email) that acknowledges the enquiry and sets expectations can bridge the gap between form submission and human follow-up.
This is where CRM automation becomes essential. An automated system that sends an instant acknowledgement, follows up if there is no response, and notifies your team in real time ensures that no lead falls through the cracks. Our CRM and marketing automation service is designed specifically for this purpose — turning your website from a brochure into a lead generation machine.
How to Prioritise These Fixes
You do not need to fix everything at once. Start with the issues that have the biggest impact for the least effort. In our experience, the highest-impact fixes are typically, in order: page speed improvements, CTA placement and copy, trust signal additions, and form simplification. These four changes alone can produce a 50% to 100% improvement in conversion rate for most websites.
If your website is fundamentally outdated or was not built with conversion in mind, a full redesign may be more cost-effective than incremental fixes. Our website design and development service builds sites that are fast, mobile-optimised, conversion-focused, and integrated with your CRM from day one. Every site ships with sub-2-second load times, schema markup, and strategic CTA placement as standard.
Whatever approach you take, measure the results. Set up Google Analytics 4 with conversion events for form submissions, phone calls, and chat conversations. Track your conversion rate (leads divided by visitors) monthly. Test one change at a time so you know what is working. Continuous measurement and improvement is the difference between a website that simply exists and a website that generates revenue.