Short answer: if your website is slow on mobile data, awkward on a phone, hides your contact details, cannot take local payments or has not changed in years, it is quietly sending customers to your competitors. The good news is that each of these can be fixed, often without starting again. Here are the five signs, how to check for each one in a few minutes, and what to do about it.

Your website is often the first place a potential customer checks you out, usually after seeing you on Instagram, WhatsApp or Google. If it lets them down, they rarely tell you. They simply close the tab and message someone else.

1. It is slow on mobile data

Most of your visitors are on a phone, and many are on mobile data with a patchy signal. Large images, video backgrounds and too many plugins make a page heavy. If it takes more than a few seconds to show anything useful, people give up, and every second also costs them data they paid for.

How to check: open your site on your own phone with Wi-Fi switched off. Then run your homepage through Google’s free PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score.

How to fix it: compress and resize images, remove plugins you do not use, use good hosting, and turn on caching. These four steps alone often make a site noticeably faster.

2. It is hard to use on a small screen

A site can look fine on a laptop and fall apart on a phone. Text that needs pinching to read, buttons too small for a thumb, menus that cover the page and forms that are painful to fill in all push people away.

How to check: try to do the main thing a customer would do, such as finding a price, booking or placing an order, using only your thumb. Ask a friend to try too and watch where they get stuck.

How to fix it: make text at least comfortable to read without zooming, use large buttons, keep forms short and put the most important action near the top of each page.

3. Customers cannot see how to contact you

If someone has to hunt for your phone number, WhatsApp or email, many will not bother. This is one of the most common problems we see, and one of the easiest to fix.

How to check: open any page on your site. Can you contact the business in one tap from where you are?

How to fix it: add a clear contact button in the header, a WhatsApp chat button that follows the visitor down the page, and your contact details in the footer of every page. Say how quickly you reply, so people know it is worth reaching out.

4. It does not take local payments

If you sell online, customers expect to pay the way they normally do: by card, bank transfer, USSD or mobile money. Sending them to a bank account number in a WhatsApp chat works, but it adds a step where many people drop off, and it is harder to track.

How to check: try to buy something from your own site with the payment method your customers use most.

How to fix it: connect a payment provider that supports local options, such as Flutterwave or Paystack, and make sure prices show in your customers’ currency. Test the full checkout on a phone before you go live.

5. It has not changed in years

Old prices, past events, a blog that stopped in 2021 and photos of staff who left long ago all tell visitors the business may not be active. Out-of-date software is also a security risk.

How to check: look for anything with a date on it. Then check when WordPress, your theme and your plugins were last updated.

How to fix it: update your prices and photos, remove anything out of date, and keep the software updated every month. A small monthly maintenance plan is much cheaper than fixing a hacked site.

A 10-minute website health check

Run through this list on your phone. Every “no” is a quick win.

  • Does the homepage load in a few seconds on mobile data?
  • Can you read everything without zooming in?
  • Is there a way to contact you on every page?
  • Is your WhatsApp one tap away?
  • Are your prices and opening hours up to date?
  • Can a customer pay online in their usual way?
  • Does the site show recent work, reviews or news?
  • Do you appear when you search your business name on Google?
  • Does the site have a padlock (https) in the address bar?
  • Has the site been updated in the last month?

Fix it or rebuild it?

If your site has two or three of these problems, a few targeted fixes are usually enough. If it has most of them, is built on a platform you cannot update yourself, or no longer matches what your business does, a rebuild is often quicker and cheaper in the long run.

How we can help

Not sure where to start? Our Digital Audit checks your website, SEO and social channels in 3 business days and gives you a clear list of what to fix first. If you need a new site, our Launch Page and Business Website packages have fixed prices and set delivery times, and come with WhatsApp and local payments built in. To keep things running, add monthly maintenance.

Common questions

How often should I update my website?

Update the software every month and review the content every few months. Change prices, offers and photos whenever they change in your business.

Does a slow website affect Google rankings?

Yes. Google looks at how quickly and smoothly pages load, especially on mobile, as one of many signals. More importantly, slow pages lose visitors before they ever see what you offer.

Want a second opinion on your site? Book a free call and we will tell you honestly whether it needs fixing or rebuilding.