We hear the same sentence from business owners all the time: “My website doesn’t really do anything for me.” When we ask what it was supposed to do, the honest answer is usually that nobody ever decided. If your website is not bringing in customers, that’s the first place we’d look, and it’s usually a much smaller problem than it feels like.
How a website ends up without a job
Most small business websites start the same way. Somebody says “we need a website,” a site gets built, and it goes live with a home page, an about page, a services page and a contact page. It looks fine, and it has the logo, the phone number and a few nice photos of the work.
But “build me a website” gets you a website, and that’s all it gets you. It’s a lot like telling a builder “build me a house.” You might get a lovely two-bedroom, one-bath place, which is great unless you have five kids. Nobody did anything wrong. The builder built what was asked for, and nobody asked for the thing that was actually needed.
So the site sits there and does a little bit of everything. It tells the company’s history, lists every service, shows a gallery, links to social media, and somewhere near the bottom there’s a form. Every page asks the visitor to do something slightly different, which means the site isn’t really asking them to do anything.
Why doing everything looks like doing nothing
Think about the person who actually lands on your site. They have a problem, they found you on Google or a friend mentioned your name, and they’re probably on their phone in between other things. They’re going to give your site a few seconds to answer two questions: can you help with this, and what do I do next?
If the answer to the second question isn’t obvious, most people won’t go hunting for it. They’ll hit the back button and try the next name on the list. Nobody calls to complain about your website. They just leave, and you never find out they were there.
That’s why a site with no job feels like it “doesn’t do anything.” It isn’t broken. It’s just never been pointed at anything.
What one job looks like
For most local service businesses, the website’s job is one of a few things. It gets the phone to ring, it books the appointment, or it collects the estimate request. Some businesses need a mix, but there’s almost always one action that matters more than the rest, and it’s the one that turns a stranger into a customer.
Once you know which one it is, a lot of decisions get easier. That action goes near the top of the page, where people see it without scrolling, and it shows up again on every page, worded the same way. The phone number taps to call on a phone. The form asks for what you actually need and nothing else. Everything else on the site, the about page, the gallery and the reviews, is there to give people enough confidence to take that one step.
It also becomes a lot easier to tell whether the website is working. “Is my website good?” is a hard question to answer. “Did the website get the phone to ring this month?” is not.
When your website is not bringing in customers, check its job first
Here’s a quick check we’d suggest doing this week. Pull up your own website on your phone, and pretend you’ve never heard of your business.
First, ask yourself what the site wants you to do. If you can’t answer in a few seconds, your visitors can’t either. Then count how many different things the home page asks you to do, like call, fill out a form, follow on Facebook, read the blog or sign up for a newsletter. If that list is long, the one that matters is competing with all the others.
Finally, try to actually do the thing. Tap the phone number and fill out the form, then see what happens after you hit submit and whether anyone on your end would know you did.
It’s usually smaller than it feels
This is the part we want business owners to hear. Most of the time, this isn’t a rebrand, and it isn’t a whole new website. Most websites are close to the mark, and a site that already has your services, your photos and your phone number on it has most of what it needs. It just needs somebody to decide what it’s for, and then to make every page agree.
So before you decide your website is a lost cause, decide what you’d want it to do if it were working, and write it down in one sentence. That sentence is the job. Once your website knows it, you’ll find out pretty quickly whether it’s doing it.
