Simple Website Changes That Can Get You More Enquiries

If your website gets a steady stream of visitors but the phone rarely rings, more traffic probably isn’t the answer. The quickest gains usually come from the pages and forms people already reach: making the next step obvious, asking for less, and removing the small obstacles that stop someone who was ready to get in touch.

None of the fixes below needs a rebuild. Most can be done in an afternoon by whoever looks after your site.

Find out where visitors give up

Before changing anything, look at what’s happening now. In Google Analytics 4, the Landing page and Pages and screens reports (under Engagement) show which pages people arrive on and how engaged they are once they’re there.

If a service page gets plenty of visits but hardly anyone moves on to your contact page or fills in a form, that’s where to start. It helps a lot if form submissions and taps on your phone number are tracked as key events, so you can see which pages produce enquiries rather than guessing. Our guide to working out which marketing is bringing you enquiries explains how.

Give every important page one clear next step

An interested visitor shouldn’t have to hunt for a way to contact you. On your homepage, your service pages and any page you send ads to, check that:

• your phone number is near the top and can be tapped to call on a mobile
• there’s a way to enquire without scrolling all the way to the footer
• there’s one main call to action, not five competing ones (“Get a quote”, “Book a call”, “Download our brochure”, “Follow us on Facebook”)

If you run Google Ads, this matters twice over, because you pay for every click that lands on a page with no obvious next step. We cover ad landing pages in more detail in why your website is half of your Google Ads campaign.

Ask for less on your enquiry form

Every extra field is another small decision, and another point where someone thinks “I’ll do this later” and never does. For most service businesses a first enquiry needs three things: a name, a way to reply, and a short description of what they need. A postcode can earn its place if you only cover certain areas. Budget ranges, company names, preferred contact times and “how did you hear about us” can usually wait for the first conversation.

Two fields put people off more than most:

• A required phone number. Plenty of people are happy to email but don’t want a call, especially when they’re enquiring in the evening. Make the phone field optional, or let people choose how they’d like you to reply.
• Long dropdown menus. Scrolling through fifteen service types on a small screen is fiddly, and people don’t always know which category they fit. A free-text box where they describe the job in their own words is easier and often tells you more.

If you’re worried a shorter form will bring in more time-wasters, remember you can still ask qualifying questions when you reply. The difference is that you get the chance to have that conversation.

Make the form easy to fill in on a phone

Check the device split in your analytics; for many local businesses, phones account for most visits. Forms built and checked on a desktop often behave badly once they’re squeezed onto a small screen. A few details make a real difference:

• The right keyboard. The phone field should bring up the number keypad and the email field a keyboard with the @ key. Your developer does this by giving the fields the correct type (tel and email), and adding autocomplete settings lets phones fill in a name and email address with one tap.
• Room to tap. Fields and buttons should be big enough to use without zooming.
• No interruptions. Nothing should pop up over the form while someone is typing.

Then test it yourself. Every few months, fill in your own form on your own phone, using mobile data rather than office wifi, as if you’d never heard of the business. Plugins get updated and themes change, and forms can break quietly because nobody on the team ever uses them.

Confirm it worked and say when you’ll reply

A form that submits with no clear confirmation leaves people unsure whether it went through. Some send it twice; others give up and ring a competitor. A clear thank-you message or page fixes that, and it’s the right place to set expectations. “Thanks, we’ll reply within one working day” reassures the visitor and gives your team a deadline to meet.

Then meet it. Someone asking three businesses for a quote will often go with whoever replies first, so an enquiry left unanswered over a weekend can be lost even though the form worked perfectly.

It’s also worth checking where form notifications go. If they only reach one person’s inbox, enquiries stall while that person is on holiday. Website form emails that aren’t sent through a properly authenticated email service can also end up in spam or never arrive at all. Ask whoever manages your site to fix that, and to keep a copy of every submission on the website itself, so a lost email never means a lost enquiry.

Stop spam without blocking real enquiries

Spam is a genuine nuisance, but heavy-handed filtering can catch real people too, particularly messages that include a phone number or web address. If enquiries dropped after a new spam plugin went in, check the spam folder and the plugin’s blocked submissions before assuming demand has dried up.

Lighter options usually do the job: a hidden “honeypot” field that bots fill in but people never see, or a background check such as Google reCAPTCHA or Cloudflare Turnstile that most genuine visitors never notice. Either beats making someone pick out traffic lights in blurry photos before they’re allowed to ask you a question.

Fix the accessibility problems that lose enquiries

Accessibility is often treated as a compliance job, but the most common problems are also reasons ordinary visitors fail to get in touch. Checking your main pages for these is a good use of an hour:

• Form labels. Each field needs a visible label, not just grey placeholder text that disappears as soon as someone starts typing. Screen readers rely on the label, and everyone else loses track of what a half-filled field was asking for.
• Error messages in words. If something’s wrong, say what (“Please enter an email address”) rather than only turning the box red. Someone who can’t see the colour change, or simply doesn’t notice it, won’t know why the form won’t send.
• Colour contrast. Pale grey text on white, or text over a busy photo, is hard for anyone to read on a phone in daylight. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines ask for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text, and free online contrast checkers will tell you in seconds whether your colours pass.
• Keyboard navigation. Put the mouse aside and press Tab to move through your homepage and form. You should be able to reach every menu item, field and button in a sensible order, and always see where you are. Custom menus and pop-ups are the usual culprits when this fails.
• Alt text. Give meaningful images a short, accurate description (“fitted oak kitchen with island unit, Cheltenham”), not a filename or a list of keywords. It tells screen reader users what the image shows and helps Google understand it too.
• Heading order. Use headings in a logical order (a main heading, then sections, then sub-sections) rather than picking them for their size. Screen reader users often skim a page by jumping between headings, much as sighted visitors scan.

On the legal side, the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 apply to public sector websites, which must meet the WCAG 2.2 AA standard. Most private businesses aren’t covered by those regulations, but as the government’s guidance points out, all UK service providers have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled people under the Equality Act 2010 (or the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in Northern Ireland). The fixes above are a sensible, low-cost place to start, and a specialist can advise if you need a full audit.

Put real proof next to the enquiry form

“We’re the best in the business” persuades nobody. Specific evidence does: genuine reviews, photos of real jobs, accreditations that mean something in your trade, and straight answers to the questions people have before they get in touch, such as typical prices, the areas you cover and how soon you can start.

Put that proof where people make the decision, near the form and the phone number, not only on a separate reviews page or behind a small badge in the footer. If you have good Google reviews, show a few on your key service pages. It’s the same reason we publish case studies and client testimonials rather than asking you to take our word for it.

Try small changes before paying for a rebuild

Sometimes a new website is the right answer, if the current one is broken, painfully slow or impossible to update. But a rebuild is expensive, takes months, and won’t help if the same weak calls to action and long forms are carried across. It also brings risks of its own, which we cover in redesigning your website without losing Google rankings.

Start with one change from this list, give it four to six weeks, and compare enquiries before and after. Say you run a roofing firm in Stroud and your quote form has nine fields, including a required phone number. Cutting it to four and making the phone optional is a quick, low-risk test, and it tells you far more than a redesign based on guesswork. If the problem turns out to be technical, such as speed, broken forms or pages Google can’t read properly, that’s what our onsite technical SEO work is for.

Get an outside view

It’s hard to see your own website the way a stranger does. If you’d like us to go through your main pages and enquiry form and tell you what we’d fix first, get in touch or call 0330 223 0847.