Common Business Website Mistakes (and How to Check Yours)

The mistakes that cost small businesses the most customers are nearly always the same: the phone number isn't visible (or can't be tapped to call), the site is awkward on a phone, heavy photos make it slow, there's no https, the information is out of date, or the "website" is really a Facebook page. You can check every one of them yourself, with your phone and two free tools. Below is each mistake, how to spot it and how to fix it.

This article is about making the site work properly. The next step, getting the people who arrive to actually call or message you, is covered in our guide to turning website visitors into enquiries.

Before you start, have ready: your phone (on mobile data, not the office Wi-Fi), a computer with Chrome, your site's address and your Google Business Profile. Set aside 15 minutes.

1. The phone number and address aren't visible

People who land on a local business's site nearly always want to call, find you, or check you're open. If your number only appears on the "Contact" page, customers have to work to find it.

How to check in 2 minutes:

• Open the site on your phone. Can you see the phone number without scrolling?
• Tap the number. It should open the dialler with the number filled in. If nothing happens, it's plain text or part of an image.
• Tap the address. It should open Google Maps (or your phone's maps app) with directions.

How to fix it: put the phone number at the top and bottom of every page as a call link (tel:, with your country code). Add the address with a "Get directions" link and your opening hours next to it. Never put contact details only inside an image: it can't be tapped, can't be copied and Google can't read it.

2. The site is hard to use on a phone

Google uses the mobile version of your pages to index and rank them, so a site that fails on a small screen fails in search too.

How to check: the thumb test. Use the site one-handed, the way a customer on the street would, and confirm that:

• You can read the text without zooming (body text should be around 16 px).
• The page doesn't scroll sideways.
• Buttons and links are big enough and far enough apart that you don't hit the wrong one (Google's guideline is a tap area of about 48 px).
• The menu opens, closes and goes to the right pages.
• No pop-up covers the whole screen as soon as you arrive.
• In the form, the phone field brings up the number keypad.

How to fix it: if you use a website builder, go through the mobile view in the editor page by page. If the site is old and was built with fixed desktop widths, patching it usually costs more than rebuilding.

3. Heavy photos make the site slow

The most common cause of a slow small-business site is simple: phone photos, several megabytes each and thousands of pixels wide, uploaded straight from the camera. Other causes: too many scripts (chat widgets, pop-ups, counters), autoplaying video and weak hosting.

How to check in 5 minutes with PageSpeed Insights (free, from Google, at pagespeed.web.dev):

1. Paste your address and pick the "Mobile" tab.
2. If you see real-user data, look at the three Core Web Vitals. Google rates LCP (time until the main element appears) as good up to 2.5 seconds, INP (how quickly the page responds to a tap) up to 200 milliseconds and CLS (elements jumping around while loading) up to 0.1.
3. Without real-user data (low-traffic sites), scroll down to the diagnostics: the report names the oversized images and slow scripts.

Then open the site on your phone, on mobile data, somewhere with poor signal.

How to fix it:

• Resize photos before uploading: around 1600 to 2000 px wide is plenty for a full-width image, and thumbnails need far less.
• Compress them with a free tool such as Squoosh and, where you can, use WebP.
• Turn on lazy loading for images further down the page.
• Remove scripts and plugins you no longer use.

4. No https, or https only "sometimes"

Without a certificate, browsers show "Not secure" next to the address, and the warning gets louder when there's a form on the page. In the 476 Google profiles with a website that we looked at, 177 (37%) listed an address starting with http://. Some will have a certificate and just an old link on the profile, but that is the link customers tap.

How to check in 1 minute:

• Type your domain into the address bar starting with http:// (no "s"). It should switch to https:// on its own and show the padlock.
• Try it with and without "www".
• Open your Google Business Profile and check which address is in the website field.

How to fix it: most hosts offer free certificates that renew automatically. Turn it on, add a permanent redirect from http to https, and update the link on your Google profile, social pages and business cards. A hand-renewed certificate that expires shows a worse warning than having none.

5. A Facebook or Instagram page instead of a website

In the same 476 profiles, 53 (about 1 in 9) pointed to a Facebook or Instagram page instead of a website, and another 24 to a free builder subpage (wixsite, sites.google, business.site or Linktree). Google's own business.site pages were discontinued in 2024: those links no longer show a site.

Social media doesn't replace a website: people without an account hit login prompts, your hours and prices get buried between posts, and a last post from months ago makes you look closed.

How to check: open a private/incognito window (not logged into any social network), search for your business on Google and tap "Website" on your profile. See where it goes and what a stranger can actually see.

How to fix it: a site of your own, even a single page, on your own domain, with your social profiles linked from it. If you're still deciding whether you need a site at all, our article on the signs you're losing customers without a website will help.

6. Out-of-date hours, prices and services

Wrong opening hours send a customer to a closed door, and that customer rarely tries again. In the 347 Google profiles we read in full to build sites, 8% had no opening hours at all. And when site, profile and Facebook contradict each other, customers don't know which to believe.

How to check in 3 minutes: open your site, your Google profile and your Facebook or Instagram page side by side. Compare name, address, phone, hours and services. Then look for signs of neglect on the site: "© 2019" in the footer, a Christmas menu from three years ago, past events, prices you no longer charge.

How to fix it: whenever something changes, update all three places the same day. Use the special-hours feature on your Google profile for holidays and closures. Our guide to showing up on Google explains how to keep the profile complete.

7. No way to get in touch out of hours, or a form that reaches nobody

Plenty of people look for services in the evening or at the weekend. If the only option is to phone during office hours, those requests are lost. In the 347 profiles we read, only 11% showed a public contact email.

The sneakiest version is a form that looks fine but sends to an old inbox, lands in spam, or doesn't send at all.

How to check: send a test message through your own form right now. Did it arrive? How fast? Did it go to spam? Did the visitor see a confirmation? Do the same with the email address and WhatsApp link on the site.

How to fix it: a short form (name, phone or email, message), a clear confirmation message and a test once a month. If the form collects personal data, the site needs a privacy policy saying who receives it and why (in the EU this is a GDPR requirement).

8. Hidden prices

With no hint of price, some visitors assume you're expensive and leave without asking.

How to check: ask someone who doesn't know your business to spend a minute on the site and tell you what your most popular service would cost. If they have no idea, the site isn't answering.

How to fix it: even when every job is different, you can show "from" prices, ranges or what makes the price vary. Our guide to converting visitors into customers shows formats that work.

9. A site nobody can update

This is the mistake that makes all the others permanent: the site was built by someone who no longer replies, nobody knows the password, or the domain is in someone else's name.

How to check:

1. Who has access to the site's admin, and can they log in today?
2. Whose name is the domain registered in? (Check a WHOIS lookup; for .pt domains, on the DNS.pt website.)
3. When do the domain and hosting renew, and on which card?
4. If it runs on WordPress, who updates the plugins and theme?

How to fix it: the domain should be in the name of the business or the owner, passwords kept in a password manager and renewals on automatic payment.

10. Missing the legal and search basics

• Legally required notices: in Portugal, businesses selling to consumers that have a website must show a visible link to the electronic complaints book (Livro de Reclamações Eletrónico). Other countries have their own equivalents, such as company details or a legal notice, so check what applies where you trade.
• Cookies: a cookie notice if you use non-essential cookies (analytics, advertising).
• Page titles: search Google for site: followed by your domain. Each result should have its own title with the service and the town. Google shows roughly 60 characters of a title; if every page is called "Home", you're wasting the most visible space you have.

The full audit in 15 minutes

Test	Tool	Passes if…
Visible contact	Your phone	Number visible without scrolling, calls with one tap
Mobile use	Thumb test	Readable without zoom, no sideways scroll, easy-to-tap buttons
Speed	PageSpeed Insights (Mobile)	Core Web Vitals green or, without real-user data, no oversized images in diagnostics
https	Address bar	http:// redirects to https:// with a padlock, with and without www
Google link	Private window	The "Website" button opens your site, not a social page
Consistent info	Site, Google profile and socials side by side	Same name, address, phone and hours everywhere
Form	Test message	Arrives within minutes, not in spam, with a confirmation for the visitor
Control	The four questions	You know who has access and whose name the domain is in
Titles	site: search on Google	Every page has its own title

Fix contact details and https first (they're quick and affect every visitor); speed and content after.

Next step

If your site failed one or two tests, most fixes take an afternoon. If it failed nearly all of them, rebuilding is usually faster than patching. WebGenPro generates a new site from your Google profile, with https, built for phones and automatically checked before you see it: you can get a free preview of a refreshed site without a card.