Greetings Reader,

Benjamin Franklin said “A small leak will sink a great ship.”

He was talking about munny, but he could’ve been talkin about your website.

A few small problems can cost you leads, customers, and repeat sales every week.

There’s nothing more frustrating to a customer than trying to navigate a confusing website.

Customers usually visit a local business website to answer a simple question.

• What are your hours?
• Where are you located?
• What do you sell?
• How do I contact you?
• Can I set up an appointment, order, or get a quote?
• How much do your items cost?

But instead of finding an answer to their question right away.

They click on your link only to land on a giant photo of a cheeseburger.

Or a vague slogan, mission statement. Or a page filled with promo content.

The customer shouldn’t have to hunt for the answer to their question.

Are you open, and do you have what they need?

If you don’t, they end up back on Google and clicking on the next business.

And you’ve lost a customer before you’ve even had a chance to win them over in person.

Missing, hidden, or outdated pricing.

People hate having to contact a business just to get an idea of what your prices are.

• Menus without prices
• “Contact us for pricing” on everything
• Hidden fees revealed at checkout

If a customer has to go to the cart or enter an ordering system to see what things cost, you’re gonna lose em.

They’re thinking, “Are you hiding the price because it’s expensive?”

That doubt turns into suspicion, especially when your competitors are showing their prices.

A terrible user experience on their smartphone

Customers aren’t willing to fight tiny buttons, broken links, and PDF’s they can’t read.

When the page doesn’t cooperate, customers won’t investigate. They leave.

I’ve seen this with a lot of local businesses in my area.

And they don’t realize how damaging it is to their business.

Locals are usually checkin a website while…

• Sitting in a car outside your business
• Walking close by but they wanna see what you have to offer before they make a decision
• Looking for somewhere to eat
• Comparing your new fall collection to another local business
• Trying to call and ask if they can book a reservation or appointment
• Planning a night out with friends

Local websites still act like customers are lookin at their site on a desktop computer.

Nielsen Norman Group did a review of more than 90 local business websites.

The data showed that small or crowded links were frustrating mobile users.

This is devastating for local businesses.

Because a lot of searches happen while the customer is close. Or, getting ready to visit.

So how do you know if your website has a leak?

Let’s test it right now.

Get your smartphone out and pull up your website.

Pretend like you’re a customer who’s never seen it before.

And you’re gonna time yourself.

Can you find your hours, address, and phone number in less than 3 seconds or less?

If you can, that’s good.

If not, that’s a leak and you’re losing customers every day.

You can fix those 3 things right now, and make em impossible to miss.

Put your hours, address, and phone number at the top of your website before anything else.

Because your customers don’t wanna search, wait, or call about information that should be sittin right in front of em.

Mike “search party” Downs

PS - Sending a ton of traffic to a confusing website is leading potential customers to a dead end.

That means you lose sales and repeat business.

I was working with a local photographer who had his phone number, address, and email at the bottom of his website.

I wrote new copy with that info at the top and his conversions went up 15%.