Why your Southampton website gets no enquiries: the three patterns

When a Southampton business tells us its website gets no enquiries, the site almost always fits one of three patterns, and each has its own fix. The brochure looks expensive and says nothing a customer can use. The builder template was built in a weekend and has never been finished. The old site nobody can log into was fine in 2017 and has been decaying since. Find your pattern below, then the week's plan at the end.

Pattern one: the brochure

An agency built it, it looks good, and it reads like an advert. One page called Services lists everything the business does in a single paragraph. The photographs are stock. The words are about values and passion. There is a contact page with a form and nothing else that asks for a call.

Symptoms

• Visitors in Analytics, but no calls or forms; people arrive by name and leave.
• The site ranks for the business name and nothing else.
• No centre or town appears anywhere except the address in the footer.
• The service page could be any business in the trade with the logo swapped.

The fix

Keep the design, replace the words. A page for each service with what it involves, what moves the price, a photograph of the real thing and the centres you do it in. A number that is a tap and a form on every service page, not just the contact page. The brochure usually does not need rebuilding; it needs saying something.

Pattern two: the builder template

Built on a page builder by the owner or a friend, over a weekend, and never finished. Half the pages say Lorem ipsum or Coming soon. It takes eight seconds to load on a phone because every image is the original from the camera. The title of every page is Home.

Symptoms

• Google has indexed two pages, or none.
• The site is unusable on a phone: text too small, buttons off the edge, a menu that does not open.
• The form sends to an email address nobody checks, or nowhere.
• Nothing on the site has changed since the weekend it was built.

The fix

Usually a rebuild, because a template site that was never finished costs more to fix than to replace, and the builder's speed problems cannot be solved from inside it. The Starter package exists for exactly this: a page per service, the photographs resized, the form delivering, the profile matched, live in four weeks. Until then, finish the profile, because the map does not need the site.

Pattern three: the old site nobody can log into

Built years ago by someone who has moved on, on a platform that is out of date, with a login nobody has. The content was right once. The phone number is the old one, two services no longer exist, the prices are from before the pandemic, and the SSL certificate expired in the spring, so browsers now warn people off.

Symptoms

• Browsers show a Not secure warning before the page loads.
• The content contradicts the profile: different hours, a different number, services you stopped.
• The site still ranks for some things, and those visitors ring the old number.
• Nobody in the business can change a word on it.

The fix

Recover the domain first, because it holds whatever ranking the site has and it is the one thing worth keeping. Then rebuild on something you own the login to, carrying over the pages that rank with the same addresses so nothing is lost, and correct every fact. The old ranking transfers if the addresses are kept; it is thrown away if the new site starts from scratch.

A week's plan, whichever pattern

The pattern tells you the budget. A brochure needs writing, a template needs replacing, an old site needs recovering first. Guessing the wrong one is how businesses pay twice.