Your website might not be the problem
Before spending money on more marketing or a new website, it's worth understanding what's actually stopping people from becoming customers.
When a business isn't getting as many enquiries as it would like, the website often gets the blame. Perhaps it looks a bit dated, isn't appearing high enough on Google or hasn't been updated for a while. The obvious solution seems to be a redesign, some SEO work or a bigger marketing budget.
Sometimes that's exactly what's needed, but having spent years working with businesses on their websites, digital strategies and customer experiences, I think there's a question worth asking before committing to any of those things.
Are we actually solving the right problem?
A website can be doing everything it's supposed to do technically and still not generate the enquiries a business needs and the reason isn't always the website itself.
More website traffic doesn't necessarily mean more customers
One of the first things businesses tend to look at when enquiries slow down is how many people are visiting their website. It's understandable, if you want more customers, getting more people through the door seems like a sensible place to start.
Imagine you're already attracting a reasonable number of visitors, people are finding your business through Google, clicking through from social media or arriving directly at your website, they're just not getting in touch.
You could invest in SEO or paid advertising to increase those visitor numbers, but what happens if the reason people aren't enquiring remains unchanged? You've potentially spent more money attracting people into the same experience that wasn't working particularly well in the first place.
Before looking at how to increase website traffic, I'd want to understand what the existing visitors are doing, which pages are they landing on? What information are they looking for? Are they taking the next step, and if not, can we understand why?
Tools like Google Analytics can help answer some of those questions, although website data alone won't tell you everything. Sometimes you need to look beyond the numbers.
Perhaps the problem is how you're explaining what you do
This is an area I find particularly interesting. Business owners are naturally close to their businesses. They understand their services, know their industry and are familiar with the terminology, but customers don't necessarily think in the same way.
What makes perfect sense internally might be difficult for someone encountering the business for the first time. You might have a beautifully designed website, but if someone can't quickly understand what you offer, who it's for or why they should choose you, the design isn't going to solve that. This also isn't always a copywriting problem, sometimes the services themselves have become difficult to explain.
Perhaps new offerings have been added over time, different audiences are being
targeted or the business has evolved without its positioning quite keeping up. In that situation, rewriting the homepage might improve things, but it won't necessarily address the underlying issue.
It might be worth reviewing how the business presents its offering before deciding what the website needs to say.
What happens after someone makes an enquiry?
This is another part of the customer journey that can be overlooked when everyone is focused on generating more leads. Let's say your website is attracting visitors and people are making enquiries. On the face of it, the marketing is doing its job, but what happens next? How quickly are enquiries being answered? Is the response helpful? Does the customer understand what happens next? Are they being given the information they need to make a decision? And do you know how many of those enquiries actually turn into customers?
If a business receives plenty of enquiries but converts relatively few, increasing website traffic might not be the most valuable place to invest. I'd be interested in understanding what happens between the initial enquiry and the eventual decision.
There might be a perfectly reasonable explanation, maybe the enquiries aren't from the right customers or the service isn't suitable or people are simply comparing options, but there might also be something in the process that's making it harder than necessary for customers to move forward.
You won't necessarily discover that by looking at your website analytics.
Not every improvement needs a big project
I think there's a tendency in business to associate improvement with doing something new.
A new website. A new marketing campaign. A new system. A new strategy.
Sometimes those investments are absolutely justified, but I'd be cautious about making them before understanding what's already happening. If customers regularly ask the same questions, perhaps the information you're providing isn't clear enough.
If enquiries are coming in but aren't progressing, it's worth reviewing how they're handled. If a particular service isn't attracting much interest, is that because people aren't finding it, don't understand it or simply don't need it?
Those are three quite different problems, and they'd require different responses.
The useful part is identifying which one you're actually dealing with and sometimes the answer is fairly straightforward.
Your customers probably know things you don't
One of the most valuable sources of information a business has is its existing customers. Not just the happy ones who leave lovely reviews, but the people who ask questions, hesitate before buying or need a little more reassurance.
What do they regularly ask your team? What do they misunderstand? What nearly stopped them from choosing you?
It's also worth listening to the people who deal directly with customers every day.
They often have a much clearer picture of the little frustrations, repeated questions and unnecessary complications than someone looking at the business from a management perspective. You don't necessarily need a large research project to start learning from that information. A few conversations, a review of common enquiries or simply paying closer attention to customer feedback can highlight things worth investigating. Of course, a handful of opinions won't tell you everything, but they can give you a useful starting point for understanding where the experience might be falling short.
So, is your website actually the problem?
It might be.
If your website is difficult to use, doesn't work properly on mobile, isn't visible in search results or makes it unnecessarily complicated to get in touch, those are all things worth addressing and improving website conversion rates can make a meaningful difference to the number of enquiries you receive without necessarily increasing traffic. But I'd be reluctant to recommend a complete redesign, a new SEO strategy or a bigger advertising budget without first understanding what you're trying to improve.
I'd want to look at the wider picture.
How people discover the business, what they understand about its offering, how they experience it and what happens when they express an interest, because those things are connected, even if they're managed by different people or departments.
Sometimes the most useful thing is a different perspective
When you're involved in the day-to-day running of a business, it's not always easy to see where things could work better. You know why certain decisions were made, why processes work the way they do and what you've already tried. That knowledge is valuable, but it can also make it harder to question things that have become familiar.
Having someone look at the business without those assumptions can help uncover opportunities that aren't immediately obvious from the inside, not because the people running it don't know what they're doing, but because being close to something inevitably shapes how you see it.
That applies just as much to successful businesses looking for their next opportunity as it does to businesses trying to solve a particular problem.
Before deciding what needs changing, make sure you understand what actually needs improving.
You might find the answer is quite different from the one you expected.
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