Most website problems aren't dramatic. Nobody's site "crashes" in a way the owner would notice. Instead it quietly loses a percentage of visitors at each small friction point — a phone number that isn't there, a form that silently fails, a page that takes too long to appear. None of it shows up as an error message. It shows up as a quieter phone and a slower month. Go through these twelve checks on your own site now, on your own phone, with a coffee. Each one takes under a minute.
1. You can't find a phone number in five seconds
Open your homepage on your phone and time yourself finding a way to call you. If it takes scrolling, hunting, or a trip to a separate "contact" page, you've already lost the visitor who wanted to call right now, mid-errand, before they forget.
Why it costs money: A ready-to-buy visitor with a quick question will simply go to the next search result rather than dig for your number.
Smallest fix: Put a phone number, or a tap-to-call button, in the header of every page. It costs nothing and takes minutes to add.
2. The site takes more than a couple of seconds to appear on mobile data
Load your homepage on your phone with wifi off, using ordinary mobile data. Count the seconds until you can actually read something.
Why it costs money: Google's own research into mobile speed found that 53% of mobile site visits are abandoned once a page takes longer than three seconds to load. That's over half your potential traffic gone before they've seen anything.
Smallest fix: Compress your largest images — this alone is usually responsible for most of the delay. Free tools like Google's own PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) will tell you exactly which image or script is slowing you down.
3. You've never actually opened your own site on your phone
Be honest. If you built or last checked your site on a laptop and never once looked at it on a phone, you don't actually know what most of your visitors see — because more than half of all web traffic worldwide now happens on mobile devices, not desktop.
Why it costs money: Menus that don't open, text that runs off the edge of the screen, buttons too small to tap accurately — these are invisible on a laptop and glaring on a phone.
Smallest fix: Open your own site on your own phone today. Try to do the one thing you most want a visitor to do — call, book, or ask a question. If it's awkward for you, it's awkward for them.
4. Every photo on the site is stock
Scroll through your homepage and count the real photos — your actual premises, your actual team, your actual work — versus generic stock imagery of smiling strangers.
Why it costs money: People buy from people. A page built entirely from stock photography looks interchangeable with every competitor using the same image library, and it quietly signals "we didn't bother", even if the work itself is excellent.
Smallest fix: You don't need a professional shoot to start. A handful of clear, well-lit phone photos of your actual space, team or product will already outperform stock imagery for trust.
5. The contact form doesn't actually send you anything
Fill in your own contact form right now, exactly as a stranger would, and confirm the message lands somewhere you check.
Why it costs money: A silently broken form — often caused by an expired plugin, a changed email address, or a spam filter — means you're losing the exact visitors who were ready to reach out, and you have no idea it's happening.
Smallest fix: Test it monthly, or add a second way to reach you (a direct email address, a phone number) next to the form as a backup that can't silently fail.
6. Your browser shows "Not secure" instead of a padlock
Look at the address bar when your site loads. If it says "Not secure" rather than showing a padlock, your site isn't using HTTPS properly.
Why it costs money: Chrome has flagged non-HTTPS pages as "Not secure" since 2018, in plain text, right where visitors look. It's one of the fastest ways to make an otherwise fine business look untrustworthy in under a second.
Smallest fix: Most hosting providers now offer free HTTPS certificates (often via Let's Encrypt) that can be switched on in a control panel — this is usually a same-day fix, not a rebuild.
7. Prices are hidden behind "get a quote" for everything
Try to find out, from the site alone, roughly what your core service costs — even a starting price or a typical range.
Why it costs money: Hiding all pricing doesn't protect your margins as often as it feels like it should — it filters out busy people who won't chase a quote just to find a number, and sends them to a competitor who simply states one.
Smallest fix: You don't have to publish an exact price list. Even "from €X" or a typical range for your most common job removes the biggest reason people leave without asking.
8. The homepage doesn't say what you do, in one sentence, near the top
Read only the first sentence visible on your homepage, ignoring the logo and images. Does it say, plainly, what you do and for whom?
Why it costs money: A visitor who arrives from a search result decides in seconds whether they're in the right place. Clever taglines and vague mission statements cost you exactly the visitors who were in a hurry — which is most of them.
Smallest fix: Rewrite the first line to plainly state what you do and who it's for — save the clever wording for further down the page.
9. The newest thing on the site is over a year old
Check the copyright year in the footer, and the date on the most recent blog post or news item, if you have one.
Why it costs money: A stale-looking date makes visitors quietly wonder if you're still trading, still taking on new customers, or if the prices and offers shown are still valid.
Smallest fix: Update the copyright year and refresh at least one piece of visible content — even a small news line or a recent project photo — every few months.
10. You can't find or verify a real address
Look for a physical address, or at minimum a clearly stated service area, anywhere on the site.
Why it costs money: For any local business — a clinic, a salon, a workshop — an absent or vague location reads as evasive, and it also weakens your visibility in local Google search results, which rely on consistent, verifiable location information.
Smallest fix: Add your address (or clear service area) to the footer of every page, and make sure it matches your Google Business Profile exactly.
11. There isn't a single review, testimonial or third-party mention anywhere
Scan the site for any outside voice at all — a review, a client quote, a logo of someone you've worked with, a link to your Google reviews.
Why it costs money: A site that only ever quotes itself is easy to ignore. Even a small amount of outside proof does a lot of the trust-building work that your own copy can't do alone.
Smallest fix: Ask three recent, genuinely happy customers for a two-line review each. Real names beat polished but anonymous quotes every time.
12. Clicking your own main menu leads to a dead page
Click every single link in your main navigation menu, one at a time, right now.
Why it costs money: A broken link in your own main menu is the digital version of a locked door on your shopfront. It costs you the visitor who found it, and it costs you a little trust with Google, which factors broken links into how it evaluates a site.
Smallest fix: Fix or remove the dead link today — this is usually a two-minute job once you know it's there, which is exactly why it's worth checking regularly.
How many did you find?
One or two of these on a working, profitable site is normal — nothing here demands an emergency rebuild. But if you found four or more, it's worth treating this as a priority list rather than a curiosity: start with numbers 1, 2, 5 and 6, since those four directly block a ready-to-buy visitor from reaching you at all.