Is your website not converting? You check your website report. People have visited. You check your inbox, and there’s very little to show for it. This shows your website is not converting even though there’s traffic.
Perhaps you’ve already changed the homepage, published more content or paid to bring in more visitors. You’re still left wondering where the inquiries are.
Before making another change, I’d check what happens between someone arriving on your website and their message reaching you.
A website may struggle to convert because visitors need something different from what you offer, the service is unclear, there isn’t enough relevant proof, or contacting you takes too much effort. Tracking and message delivery can also make inquiries appear to be missing.
Those possibilities need different fixes. Here’s how I’d start working out which one deserves attention.
1. Check which visitors are reaching your service pages
The total number of website visits gives you a starting point. To understand inquiries, you need to look more closely at the pages and people involved.
For example, a bookkeeping business might attract readers looking for a free invoice template. That article could be useful and relevant to the business. However, downloading a template and looking for ongoing bookkeeping support are different needs.
If most visits go to the template article, the site’s overall traffic tells you little about how well its bookkeeping service page converts.
Start with these questions:
- Which pages do visitors arrive on?
- What are they likely trying to find?
- Does the page answer that need?
- Is there a relevant next step towards your service?
For visitors arriving through Google, Search Console’s Performance report lets you examine search queries, pages, countries and devices. That can help you see whether the searches bringing people in match the services you want to sell. Google explains the report here.
Look at a consistent period and compare like with like. A handful of visits is too little evidence to declare that a page has failed.
If paid advertising is your main source of traffic, I’ve also written about why ads get clicks but no sales.
2. Make it easy to understand what you offer
Read your main service page as someone who has never heard of your business.
Can they tell what you do, whom you help and what happens if they contact you?
A heading such as “Solutions for your success” leaves the visitor to work out the details. “Monthly bookkeeping for independent consultants” gives them something concrete to assess.
The rest of the page should help them answer practical questions:
What is included? Is this suitable for their situation? Do you serve their location? Can they request a quote, book a consultation or buy directly?
You don’t need to explain every detail on the first screen. You do need to give people enough information to decide whether to keep reading.
One useful check is to ask someone unfamiliar with your business to read the page and describe the offer back to you. If their answer is different from what you intended, you have a specific part of the message to improve.
3. Put relevant proof near the decision
A visitor may understand your service and still hesitate.
They might be wondering whether you have worked on a problem like theirs, what your contribution would be, or whether the promised outcome is realistic.
Useful proof addresses those questions. Depending on the service, that could be:
- A short case study explaining the starting problem, your work and the outcome.
- A relevant work sample with enough context to understand it.
- A testimonial describing the service the customer received.
- A clear explanation of your process and its limits.
For example, on a website troubleshooting page, an annotated example of a broken inquiry process would help explain the work. A general compliment about being pleasant to work with answers a different question.
Keep the attribution clear, too. If a client reported an improvement, say that. If you measured a change yourself, explain what you measured. Readers should be able to distinguish the evidence from the interpretation.
4. Test the complete contact process
This is a check you can do today.
Open your website on your phone and follow the same steps a prospective customer would take. Find the service, choose the next step and complete a clearly labelled test inquiry.
Then check where that inquiry arrives.
| What you notice | What to investigate | A practical first action |
|---|---|---|
| You have to search for a way to contact the business | Placement and wording of the next step | Put a relevant contact option where readers evaluate the service. |
| The form asks for information you cannot easily provide | Whether every required field is necessary at this stage | Keep the information needed to assess and respond to the inquiry. |
| An error appears, or the form does not confirm submission | Form behaviour on that device and browser | Record the error and have the form checked. |
| The page confirms submission, but no message arrives | Notification delivery and any stored form entries | Trace the test inquiry through the form system and inbox. |
| A WhatsApp or telephone link opens the wrong destination | Link settings and displayed contact details | Correct the destination and retest it. |
| The inquiry arrives, but nobody knows who should reply | Responsibility and follow-up | Assign an owner and define the next action. |
Explain what happens after someone submits the form. If you usually respond within a particular period, give an accurate expectation.
The form’s length should reflect the decision being made. A detailed project inquiry may need more information than a request for an introductory conversation. Each question should have a purpose.
5. Check whether your reporting matches real inquiries
If your analytics report says you received leads, compare that with the inquiries your business actually received.
A click on a telephone number does not tell you whether a conversation happened. Opening WhatsApp does not confirm that someone sent a message. A recorded form action also needs checking against how your tracking has been configured.
Start with a simple record:
| Inquiry received | Source, if known | Relevant to your service? | Response sent? | Next step |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record the date and contact method | Search, referral, ad or unknown | Yes, no or needs clarification | Record the status | Conversation, quote, booking or closed |
Keep “unknown” where you do not have reliable source information. Guessing makes later decisions harder.
This comparison helps you separate three situations: people aren’t contacting you, messages aren’t reaching the right place, or inquiries are arriving but aren’t progressing.
If inquiries are reaching you but bookings remain low, look at suitability and follow-up before assuming the website needs another rewrite.
What this looked like in one AnksImage project
For an international publishing business, I reviewed a website that had traffic but a complicated inquiry process.
I found competing calls to action, unnecessary forms and unclear follow-up responsibilities. The work included redesigning four priority pages, reducing nearly 20 forms to four, and testing the complete inquiry process.
After the changes, the client reported approximately two to three genuine inquiries a day, compared with approximately five to ten a month previously. The owner also reported an improvement in inquiry quality.
Those are client-reported outcomes from one project. They do not establish that removing forms alone caused the improvement, or that another website should expect the same result.
The useful lesson was to examine how the pages, forms and response process worked together. You can read the project summary on the AnksImage diagnostic page.
Website not converting? What should you fix first?
I’d start by testing whether a prospective customer can successfully contact you and whether their message reaches the right person.
If that works, review the relevance of your visitors and the clarity of your service page. Then assess whether the proof and next step answer the questions a potential customer is likely to have.
Fix the clearest supported problem first. Record what you changed and when, then review the outcome over a suitable period. Changing the offer, design, advertising and form together makes it harder to understand which change helped.
The lesson is to gather enough evidence to choose the next fix before committing more time or money.
If you need help tracing that process, my Digital Marketing Enquiry Diagnostic reviews how people find you, what happens on your important pages and what happens after they inquire. You receive a written Enquiry Recovery Plan and a recorded explanation of the priorities. Implementation is quoted separately.