Most brands have a website. It looks good and everything is in place. But no forms come in, and the phone doesn’t ring. The site is there; the work isn’t.
The problem is rarely the design. It’s what visitors actually do on the site.
Visitors give you ten seconds.
According to Nielsen Norman Group, visitors often leave a page within 10–20 seconds. The decision to stay is made in the first ten seconds. Their advice is clear: explain what you offer within ten seconds.
Does the first screen of your home page answer this: what does this place do, and what’s in it for me?
They don’t read; they scan.
Another study from the same group is even more striking. On an average page, visitors have time to read at most 28% of the words. 20% is more likely.
So most of what you explain in long paragraphs goes unseen. Headings, first sentences and buttons get read. If your message isn’t there, it may as well not exist.
They don’t wait.
Google’s 2017 research found that more than half of mobile visitors leave a page that takes longer than three seconds to load. As load time goes from one second to three, the probability of a bounce rises by 32%.
Most visitors arrive on a phone. A site that feels fast on a desktop can be slow on a phone.
What do you want them to do?
A fast, clear and short site can still bring no work if it doesn’t tell visitors what to do. Every page should have one task: a form, a booking, a call. The more options you add, the harder the choice.
You can measure this too. Don’t count how many people came; count how many did that one task.
Where to start?
Open your site on a phone, as if you were seeing it for the first time:
- Is it clear within ten seconds what you do?
- Does the page open in three seconds?
- Does every page give visitors one task to do?
If even one answer is “no”, the site is there but it isn’t working for you.
If you want your website to bring in work, let’s talk. We start with a short intro call.