When was the last time you looked at your own website through the eyes of a potential client?
Not as the person who paid for the site, wrote the copy, debated the button colours, or spent weeks following up with the developer about the contact form.
Think like a stranger who has never heard of you, has two competitor sites open, and will decide in eight seconds whether to keep reading.
This is hard to do because you know your business inside out. You understand what you offer, who it’s for, how it works, and why you’re better than the competition. When you read your homepage, you fill in the blanks without realising it. Your potential client doesn’t have that knowledge.
I spend much of my week looking at other people’s websites. I do competitor research for SEO, audits before a rebuild, and check out markets before making recommendations. The same problems show up again and again.
These aren’t bad websites. Most look fine. The problem is they make things harder for the business than they need to be.
Here are six of the most common issues I notice
The website speaks to a business owner, not a client
Industry jargon and impressive phrases might make sense in your office, but they often confuse people who want to buy from you.
A reader might finish your services page and still wonder, what does this actually mean for me?
They rarely ask. They just leave.
Try this: read a paragraph out loud and picture saying it to a customer face-to-face. If you wouldn’t say it that way in person, it probably doesn’t belong on your website.
The obvious questions go unanswered
What happens next? What does the process look like? Who is this for, and who isn’t it for? What should I expect? How long will it take? About how much will it cost? What if I’m not sure which service I need?
Your potential clients are thinking about all these questions. If your website doesn’t answer them, visitors have to figure it out on their own, which takes effort. Another website might make it easier for them.
Think about the last ten enquiries you received. The questions people asked before considering making a purchase are the ones your website should answer up front.
There isn’t much reason to trust you
Testimonials, case studies, genuine photographs of real people and real work, many years’ experience in the industry, qualifications, accreditations, and proof that the work actually produced results.
People often treat these as nice extras, but they’re not. They help someone feel confident choosing you instead of a stranger with a similar website.
Stock photos have the opposite effect. A real team photo taken on a phone, even in front of the office, is always better than a staged model at a laptop.
The website has been “SEO’d” without being optimised
The page title contains a keyword. The headings are tidy. Somebody has added alt text. Lovely!
But if your page doesn’t clearly answer your ideal client’s questions, technical SEO alone won’t help. Search engines and AI tools both look for pages that genuinely answer the question. They reward pages that are specific, clear, and focused on one topic.
Clarity is the real optimisation. Technical work helps, but it can’t replace clear content.
Every website sounds suspiciously similar
This is especially true when AI has helped write the content.
The writing might be polished, but it’s not always distinctive.
Try this: cover your logo and read your homepage. If it could belong to five competitors without any changes, you haven’t given people a reason to choose you. Price becomes the only thing left to compare.
What sets a business apart is usually something specific and sometimes awkward to write about. Maybe it’s the one thing you do differently from others nearby, the jobs you turn down, or the part of your process customers always mention. That’s what matters, but it often gets lost when you try to make everything sound perfect.
The website was finished, then forgotten
I still find sites proudly describing something that happened in 2023. Events “coming this January” in the middle of September. Team pages with two people who left. Prices from a different economy.
None of these issues are fatal by themselves. But together, they tell visitors you’re not paying attention, and they may wonder what else you’re missing.
Your website is part of your business, not just a one time project. It needs regular check-ins.
The five-minute version
If you do nothing else this week:
- Open your homepage on your phone, not your laptop. That’s where most of your visitors are.
- When you view your homepage, does it say what you do, who you do it for, and where you’re based? A stranger should be able to answer all three without scrolling.
- Ask yourself: what’s the single most important goal for this page? If you can’t sum it up in one sentence, the page probably can’t either.
- Find one question you get asked on every enquiry call and check whether the site answers it.
- Cover the logo. Would anyone know it’s you?
Even better, ask someone outside your industry to look at your site and explain what they think you do. Their feedback is often more helpful than any report.
None of this needs a flashy, expensive website
You need a website that makes sense to your ideal customers. It should give them the information they need to decide, show why they can trust you, and make it easy for search engines and AI tools to understand what you do and who you help.
A beautiful website that leaves potential customers confused isn’t doing its job.
This is what I focus on in my SEO work. There’s no point chasing rankings for a page that won’t convert visitors.
So, when was the last time you looked at your website as if you were a potential client?
If the honest answer is “not recently”, that’s where to start.
