Why some websites generate no enquiries at all

"The site has been live for a year and nothing happens." It is the most common sentence in our first meetings. In almost every case the cause is not the one the owner imagines, and it is found by looking at two or three figures before touching the design.

First: is it a traffic problem or a conversion problem?

This question settles everything else, and your analytics answer it in a minute.

Redesigning a site that receives thirty visits a month will change nothing. Working on search for a site that receives a thousand visits without converting is filling a leaking bucket.

Cause 1: nobody searches with those words

Many sites are written in the company's vocabulary rather than its customers'. A firm talking about "global wealth accompaniment" cannot be found by someone typing "investment adviser Luxembourg". The content is excellent, it answers a question nobody asks in that form.

The test: write down five sentences your customers would use to describe their need, then search for them inside your own site. If none appears literally, you have found part of the problem.

Cause 2: the visitor cannot tell what you do in five seconds

A visitor decides to stay or leave before finishing a sentence. If your first screen shows a slogan and a photo of an office, it says nothing. If it shows what you do, for whom, where, and what to do next, the visitor knows whether they are in the right place.

In Luxembourg one point comes up constantly: the country is not mentioned. A site that never says it works in the Grand Duchy loses the visitors looking for a local supplier, and loses Google too, which has no reason to attach it to the Luxembourg market.

Cause 3: no proof

This is the most widespread cause and the easiest to fix. The site claims to be serious, experienced, attentive. Those are claims all your competitors write as well, so they carry no weight.

What carries weight: a number of completed projects, client names that agree to be quoted, reviews with a first name and a trade, a photograph of the actual team, a founding date. Three verifiable items beat ten paragraphs of promises.

Cause 4: the form puts people off

We regularly audit forms with nine or ten fields, including a VAT number and a budget to pick from a list. Every extra field costs enquiries, and asking for a budget before the first conversation drives away the prospects who do not have one yet.

Four fields are nearly always enough: name, contact method, nature of the need, free message. The rest is asked during the call, once a relationship exists.

Check one dully mechanical thing as well: that the form works. Several times a year we find sites whose messages have been going nowhere for months, because an address changed or a spam filter swallows them. Send yourself a test today.

Cause 5: the site is too slow on a phone

Most visits happen on a phone, often on an average connection. A site taking more than three seconds to appear loses a significant share of its visitors before it exists in their eyes. Those departures show up nowhere in your analytics, since the page never finished loading.

The usual causes: uncompressed images, a bought theme loaded with unused features, an accumulation of plugins. These are technical problems, so they can be fixed without rebuilding the site.

Cause 6: there is no reason to act now

Even once convinced, a visitor puts it off. A site that generates enquiries gives a reason not to wait: a reply promised within 48 hours, a free first conversation, a quote with no commitment, a stated availability. Nothing aggressive, simply a next step that is clear and carries no risk.

The order to work through

1. Check that the form arrives. Ten minutes, and several times a year it solves the entire problem.
2. Look at the traffic. Low traffic and poor conversion are not treated the same way at all.
3. Measure the speed on mobile, on a real phone, not on your computer.
4. Have someone outside your trade read your first screen. Ask them what you sell.
5. Add proof before redesigning anything.
6. Rebuild the site only if the five previous points are not enough.

In our experience, one in two sites that "generates nothing" does not need a redesign. It needs a shorter form, three pieces of proof, and an opening line that finally says what the company does.