10 Website Mistakes That Are Costing Your Small Business Money

Your website might be losing you customers right now and you'd never know it. People who visit, get frustrated, and leave don't send you a complaint email. They just call your competitor instead. Here are 10 mistakes I see constantly on small business websites.

1. No Clear Call-to-Action Above the Fold

A visitor lands on your homepage. They see a hero image, your logo, maybe a tagline. But what should they DO? If the answer isn't obvious within 3 seconds — a phone number, a "Get a Free Quote" button, a "Book Now" link — they bounce.

Fix: Put your primary call-to-action in the hero section. Make it a button with action language. "Call Now," "Get Your Free Estimate," "Book an Appointment." Not "Learn More."

2. Using a PDF Menu or Service List

Restaurants are the worst offenders, but contractors, salons, and service businesses do this too. A PDF download for your menu or service list is a dead end on mobile. It requires a download, doesn't render well on phones, and Google can't read it for SEO purposes.

Fix: Put your menu/services directly on a webpage. HTML text, not an image or PDF.

3. Stock Photos of Handshakes and Laptops

Nothing screams "we're not a real business" like generic stock photos. The handshake photo. The diverse team gathered around a laptop. The woman laughing alone with salad. Your customers can spot stock photos instantly, and it erodes trust.

Fix: Use real photos of your business, your team, and your work. Even phone photos of your actual office beat stock photos of a fake one.

4. Hiding Contact Information

Some businesses make you click through three pages to find a phone number. Others put contact info only in the footer in 10px font. If a potential customer is ready to call and can't find the number, they Google your competitor instead.

Fix: Phone number in the header. Contact form on every service page. Click-to-call on mobile. Make contacting you the easiest action on the entire site.

5. Slow Load Times

Your website takes 6 seconds to load. You don't notice because you're on fast office WiFi. Your customer on a phone with 3 bars of LTE noticed — and left. Over 50% of mobile visitors abandon sites that take more than 3 seconds to load.

Fix: Compress images, remove unnecessary plugins, upgrade hosting, and test at pagespeed.web.dev regularly.

6. Not Mobile Optimized (For Real)

"Responsive" and "mobile optimized" are not the same thing. Responsive means the layout adjusts to screen size. Mobile optimized means the experience is designed for thumbs, not mouse cursors. Tiny buttons, horizontal scrolling, text that requires zooming — these kill mobile conversions.

Fix: Test every page on an actual phone. Can you complete every important action (call, fill out a form, find an address) easily with one thumb?

7. No Reviews or Social Proof

Your website says you're great. That's nice. What do your customers say? If there's no evidence of satisfied customers on your site — no reviews, no testimonials, no case studies — visitors have no reason to trust you over the next result on Google.

Fix: Embed Google reviews. Add testimonials with real names and specific outcomes. Display your review count and average rating prominently.

8. One Generic Services Page

"We offer plumbing, electrical, and HVAC services." Cool. So does everyone else. A single services page with a bullet list tells Google nothing specific and gives visitors no reason to choose you.

Fix: Create a dedicated page for each service. "Emergency Plumbing Repair" gets its own page. "Water Heater Installation" gets its own page. Each one targets a specific search query and addresses specific customer concerns.

9. Outdated Information

Nothing kills trust faster than landing on a website that says "Happy Holidays 2024!" in February 2026. Outdated promotions, old team photos, discontinued services listed — all signals that this business might not be active.

Fix: Audit your website quarterly. Remove seasonal promotions after they expire. Update team pages when staff changes. Keep your copyright year current.

10. No Analytics Tracking

If you don't know how many people visit your website, where they come from, or what pages they look at, you're flying blind. You can't improve what you don't measure.

Fix: Install Google Analytics (free) and Google Search Console (free). Check them monthly. Even basic data — like knowing 70% of your visitors come from mobile — informs better decisions.

The Compound Effect

Any one of these mistakes is a small leak. But most small business websites have 4-5 of them simultaneously. Together, they create a sieve that lets potential customers pour through to your competitors.

The good news: every one of these is fixable. Some take 15 minutes. Some require a website redesign. But the ROI on fixing them is almost always positive — because you're not attracting new traffic, you're converting the traffic you already have.