Hardly any site fails for being ugly. It fails because it does not say what the business does in the first three seconds, because it hides the phone number, or because the form asks for seven fields. The mistakes we see over and over, and how to fix them.
After more than thirty projects delivered and plenty of other people's sites reviewed, a pattern repeats: hardly any site fails for being ugly. It fails because of specific decisions that can be named and fixed. These are the eight mistakes we see over and over.
1. It is not clear what you do
Someone lands on your site and within three seconds has to know what you sell, to whom and where. If the first thing they read is "Welcome to our website" or a mission statement, that time is gone.
The fix is one line: change the main headline to a sentence saying what you do and for whom. "Web design and development in Costa Rica" communicates more than any slogan.
2. The phone number is buried
A surprising number of small business sites bury the phone number on the contact page. If the business runs on calls or WhatsApp, contact has to be at the top, visible from every page and tappable on a phone.
3. The form asks for too much
Every extra field reduces the number of people who complete it. For a first enquiry, a name, a way to reach them and a message is enough. Company, job title, estimated budget and how you heard about us get asked later, once there is a conversation.
4. It does not work on a phone
Most traffic arrives from a phone, and yet many sites are designed while looking at a large screen. The symptoms: text you have to pinch to enlarge, buttons too close together, tables that overflow and menus that will not close.
Two-minute test: open your site on your own phone, on mobile data rather than the office wifi, and try to request a quote. Everything that annoys you is annoying a customer.
5. Stock photography
People recognise a generic photo instantly and read it as a sign that there is nothing real behind it. A photo of your premises, your team or your finished work — even taken on a phone — builds more trust than the best catalogue shot.
6. No proof that you exist
Reviews, client logos, completed work, years in business, a phone number that someone answers. Without any of it, a visitor has no way to tell you apart from a page put up yesterday.
If you have good reviews on Google, put them on the site. If you have done work you are proud of, show it with a name and a photo.
7. A blog that died in 2021
A news section whose latest article is three years old says the business has stopped. If you are not going to write, hide the visible date or remove the section entirely. A site with no blog is fine; an abandoned blog is not.
8. Nobody measures anything
The most expensive mistake of all, because it stops you correcting the other seven. With no analytics installed you do not know how many people come in, where they leave or which pages generate enquiries. Every decision about the site gets made on intuition.
Installing Google Analytics and tracking contact clicks as events takes little and changes the conversation completely: you stop arguing about taste and start arguing about numbers.
Where to start
If you can only fix two things this month, fix the homepage headline and the visibility of your contact details. Those two move the enquiry count the most for the least effort. And if you want us to review your site and tell you which of the eight are hitting you, get in touch: the review is free.
Want us to review your site or build a new one?
