How to get more customers from your website

Why isn't your current website working?

You paid for a website. It looks alright. But nobody's calling, nobody's booking, nobody's filling in the contact form. Sound familiar?

Here's what's usually going wrong:

• It doesn't appear on Google. If your site isn't on page one for what you do and where you do it, it's invisible. Nobody scrolls to page two.
• It doesn't say what you do clearly enough. Visitors decide in 3 seconds whether your site is relevant to them. If your homepage says "Welcome to our website" instead of "Family solicitors in Bolton" or "Italian restaurant in Didsbury", you've lost them.
• There's no clear next step. No phone number in the header. No booking button. Contact form buried at the bottom of page five. People won't hunt for a way to reach you.

Step 1: Get your Google Business Profile right

Before you touch your website, sort your Google Business Profile. It's free and it's often the first thing people see.

• Make sure your name, address, and phone number match your website exactly
• Choose the right business categories — be specific ("family law solicitor" not just "solicitor")
• Add real photos of your business, your team, your food, your office
• Post updates regularly — Google rewards active profiles
• Respond to every review, good or bad

For a cafe in Chorlton or an accountant in Leeds, your Google Business Profile can generate more calls than your website. But the two should work together.

Step 2: Make your website say what you do and where

Every page on your site should answer two questions: what do you do, and where do you do it?

If you're a solicitor in Manchester, your homepage title should be "Solicitors in Manchester" — not "Smith & Jones LLP". Your page titles and headings are what Google reads first. Make them count.

Specific examples:

• A restaurant in Altrincham should have "Indian restaurant in Altrincham" in the homepage title, not just the restaurant name
• An accountant in Huddersfield should have a page titled "Self-assessment tax returns in Huddersfield"
• A cafe in the Northern Quarter should mention "Northern Quarter" on the homepage, not just "Manchester"

This isn't keyword stuffing. It's telling Google and your visitors exactly what you offer.

Step 3: Make it easy to get in touch

Your phone number should be in the header of every page. On mobile, it should be tappable. Your contact form should be short — name, email, message. That's it. Nobody wants to fill in 12 fields to ask a question.

For restaurants and cafes, add a booking button that's visible without scrolling. Link to your reservation system, your menu, and your location on Google Maps. If someone lands on your site at 7pm on a Friday, they want to book a table in 10 seconds, not read your story.

For solicitors and accountants, offer a free initial consultation and make the call-to-action clear: "Book a free 15-minute call" is better than "Get in touch".

Step 4: Speed up your site

Page speed affects everything. Google uses it as a ranking factor. Visitors leave slow sites. A one-second delay reduces conversions by 7%.

Test your site at pagespeed.web.dev. If your mobile score is below 80, you're losing customers. Common fixes:

• Compress and resize your images — a 5MB photo of your shopfront doesn't need to be 5MB
• Remove plugins and scripts you're not using
• Switch to faster hosting — budget hosting is one of the biggest speed killers
• Use a CDN so your site loads fast regardless of where the visitor is

Step 5: Add structured data

Structured data is code that tells Google exactly what your business is. It helps you appear in rich results — the boxes with star ratings, opening hours, and addresses that appear at the top of search results.

For a restaurant, this means adding schema markup for your menu, opening hours, cuisine type, and location. For a solicitor, it means marking up your services, areas of law, and office address.

Most business owners don't know this exists. Your web designer should handle it. If they haven't, ask them to.

Step 6: Get reviews and display them

Reviews build trust and improve your local ranking. Ask every happy customer for a Google review. Then display those reviews on your website.

A solicitor with 40 five-star Google reviews will outrank one with zero — even if the second solicitor is technically better at law. That's how local search works. The same applies to restaurants, accountants, and every other local business.

Step 7: Track what's working

Install Google Analytics and Google Search Console. They're free. They tell you how many people visit your site, where they come from, and what they do when they arrive.

If you're getting 500 visitors a month but zero enquiries, the problem is your site. If you're getting 10 visitors a month, the problem is your visibility. You can't fix what you don't measure.