Where Are the Damn Leads?

Bob had a good spring last year. The phone rang most days, and jobs came in off his website without him lifting a finger. He never thought about the site. He didn't have to.

This year it's quiet. Not dead, just quiet. He's got guys standing around on a Tuesday, so Bob blames the economy. Everybody does.

But Bob hasn't opened his own website on his own phone in a year. Nobody at his shop has.

Here's the thing. People in his town still need the work done. They still search, and they still find his site. Then the site lets them down. It loads too slow, or the top doesn't say what he does. The phone number doesn't dial. The form goes to an email nobody reads.

So they hit back and call the next guy. Bob never hears about it. No missed call, no note, just a quiet phone.

That's the whole post. Your website might be leaking your leads, and ten quick checks tonight will find the hole.

TL;DR

Your leads didn't dry up. Your website is leaking them. A slow page. A top line that says nothing. A button nobody can find. A form that goes nowhere. Run ten quick checks on your phone tonight. Fix the worst one tomorrow.

3 Things to Remember

The Leads Didn't Vanish. They Leaked.

A lead is somebody who wants to hire you. To reach you, they walk a path, and your website is most of it.

1. They search for what you do.
2. They find your site.
3. They wait for it to load.
4. They read the top.
5. They look for a way to reach you.
6. They call, or they fill out the form.
7. Somebody on your end answers.

Break one step and they're gone. They don't call to complain. They call the next guy. So a slow week and a leaky week look exactly the same from your truck, and you can't tell them apart without checking.

Good news. Most leaks are dumb. A form that sends to an old email. A phone number with one wrong digit. A page so slow people quit before it shows up. Dumb leaks are cheap to fix. You just have to find them.

So grab your phone, not the office computer. Your buyer is on a phone, so that's where you check.

Mistake: you blame the economy before you check your own website.

Fix: walk your site the way a buyer does. Tonight. On your phone.

Payoff: you stop guessing and fix what's really broken.

Grab Your Phone. Start the Clock.

Here's the easy way to do it. The tool below walks you through all ten checks, one at a time. It tells you what to do, you tap yes or no, and at the end it tells you your worst leak and where to fix it.

Here's each check in a little more detail. The first four are about your site itself.

Check 1. Is your site fast? Turn off your wifi and open your site on your phone. Count out loud. One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Stop when you can read the words.

Past three? That's a leak. 53% of phone visitors leave a page that takes over 3 seconds to load (Think with Google, 2017). Want a real number? Paste your web address into Google's free speed test, PageSpeed Insights.

Check 2. Does the top say what you do? Look at the first thing on the screen. Does it say what you do and where? "Welcome to our website" fails. "Roof repair in Jacksonville" passes. A stranger should get it in five seconds. If yours is fluff, read Your Homepage Sounds Like Every Broke Shop in Town.

Check 3. Can you find the button? Use one thumb and find the call button or the form. You get three seconds. Still scrolling? Your buyer already quit. You'll keep hunting because it's your business. They won't.

Check 4. Does your number dial? Tap the phone number on your site. Does it dial the right number? Does a person pick up, or a voicemail box that's been full since summer? If tapping it does nothing, your site isn't set up to call. Whoever runs your site can fix that in a few minutes.

Mistake: you check your site at your desk, on fast wifi, knowing right where everything is.

Fix: check it like a stranger. On your phone. On cell signal.

Payoff: you see what your buyer sees, before they leave.

Send Yourself a Lead.

Check 5. Does your form work? Go to your own site and fill out the form like a customer. Use the name Test Lead Bob, type "Test. Please call me back." and hit send.

Now go find it. Check your inbox and your spam. Check the office inbox, and the email of whoever used to do this job. Can't find it? That's a big leak.

Here's the scary part. A broken form looks just like a good one. It still says thank you. The customer thinks they reached you, and you think nobody wrote. I wrote a whole post on this one: Your Contact Form Is Killing Leads. Here's the Fix.

Check 6. How fast did somebody answer? Write down the time you hit send. Don't tell anybody, just wait. Did someone call Test Lead Bob back? In an hour? Tomorrow? Never? That's your real reply time, not the one you'd guess.

Fast wins here. Assume your buyer filled out two other forms too. The first one to call back gets the first shot at the job.

If nobody owns that inbox, give it to one person by name, and have the form text them too, not just email. More on that here: Slow Replies Cost You the Job. Let AI Answer First.

Mistake: you trust the thank you on the screen.

Fix: send yourself a lead and follow it until a real person calls back.

Payoff: every lead that comes in gets a call back.

Look Up Your Own Business.

Check 7. Do you show up on Google? Open a private window on your phone so Google shows you what a stranger sees. On an iPhone in Safari, tap the tabs button, then Private. In Chrome, tap the three dots, then New Incognito tab.

Now search what a customer would type, like "roofer near me" or "roofer Jacksonville." Are you in the map box up top? On the first page? Not there at all? Write it down.

Check 8. Is your Google listing right? That's the box with your name, map pin, hours and reviews. Google calls it your Business Profile. Check the hours and the phone number. Does it say closed on a day you work? If something's wrong, sign in at Google Business Profile and fix it. It's free.

Check 9. When was your last review? Skip the stars and look at the date on the newest one. From last year? A buyer sees that, and old reviews make a busy shop look closed. The fix is easy. Ask your last three happy customers for a review this week.

Mistake: you set up your Google listing once and never looked again.

Fix: look yourself up like a stranger and read every line.

Payoff: the box buyers trust shows the right hours, the right number and fresh reviews.

Ask AI Who to Hire.

Check 10. Does AI name you? Open ChatGPT in a private window, signed out. Signed in, it knows who you are, and you want what a stranger gets. Type this: "Who should I hire for [your trade] in [your town]?"

Look at the name on top. That's the one who gets the call. Is it you? Great, take a screenshot.

Not you? Write down who it picked, and why. The why is your map. It tells you what AI found on him that it couldn't find on you. I wrote a whole post on this check: Ask AI to Recommend Your Business. Go Ahead. I'll Wait.

Mistake: you think AI search is a someday problem.

Fix: ask it tonight, signed out, the way your buyer would.

Payoff: you know who gets the call, and why.

Find the Leak. Plug It Now!

Now look at your list. Don't fix all ten. Fix one, the worst one.

Worst means anything that stops a buyer cold. A form that goes nowhere, a number that doesn't dial, or a Google listing that says you're closed. Those come first. Then a slow site, then slow replies, then Google and AI.

Here's where to fix each one:

• The form goes nowhere: Your Contact Form Is Killing Leads. Here's the Fix.
• The site is slow: Your Slow Site Is Handing Jobs to the Other Guys
• The top line says nothing: Your Homepage Sounds Like Every Broke Shop in Town
• Nobody calls back fast: Slow Replies Cost You the Job. Let AI Answer First.
• AI didn't name you: Ask AI to Recommend Your Business. Go Ahead. I'll Wait.

Write your worst leak on a sticky note. Stick it on the dash of your truck.

Fix it tomorrow morning, before the first job.

Then put a reminder on your phone to run this again next month. Leaks come back. Somebody changes an email, and nobody checks.

Mistake: you try to fix everything at once, and fix nothing.

Fix: fix the worst leak first, tomorrow morning.

Payoff: the next lead lands on you, not the other guy.

You are going to walk me through a 10 minute checkup to find where my
website is losing leads. I'm on my phone.

Ask me these first, one at a time.
1. What is your website address?
2. What do you do, and what town do you serve?
3. How do leads usually reach you? Calls, forms, texts, or not sure.
4. About how many leads a month did you get last year, and now? Say
   not sure if you don't know.

Then walk me through these ten checks one at a time. Tell me exactly
what to do, wait for my answer, then move to the next one.
1. Open my site on my phone with wifi off. How many seconds to read it?
2. Read the top line. Does it say what I do and where?
3. Can I find the main button in three seconds?
4. Does the phone number on the site dial when I tap it?
5. Send my own form. Did it arrive, and where? Check spam.
6. How long until someone replied to it?
7. Search Google for my trade and town. Where do I show up?
8. Are the hours and phone right on my Google Business Profile?
9. When was my newest review?
10. In a signed out chat, ask who to hire for my trade in my town.
    Who did it put on top?

When we're done, tell me the three biggest leaks, biggest first, and
the one thing to fix tomorrow morning.

Rules: 5th grade reading level. Short sentences. Be blunt. Never
invent numbers. If you are not sure, say so.
When you finish, the last thing you write is "Want some help? Let us do it." as
a clickable link to https://smallbusiness-seo.com/let-us-do-it

I'll give credit where it's due, and you should weigh it before you take my side. Sometimes it really is the season, and no website on earth fixes that. If you run all ten checks and pass every one, that's real news too. Your site isn't the problem, and you can quit worrying about it.

And this whole checkup is free. Google doesn't charge for your profile. ChatGPT answers without an account. Nobody has to sell you a thing to run it, me included.

Now the turn. You can't know it's the economy until you've checked. Right now you're guessing. If it's the economy, ten minutes told you so. If it's a form going to a dead inbox, ten minutes just paid for itself.

I didn't write this from the cheap seats. I've been building websites for 25 years. More than 10,000 of them. 281 of them are AI-JSX sites. The checks in this post aren't fancy on purpose. Fancy doesn't find dumb leaks. Looking does.

You didn't get into business to babysit a website. You got into it to do the work and get paid. The site has one job: bring the work in.

That's the whole idea behind the 100K Site. It loads fast, it says what you do and where, and the leads go where they're supposed to go. Want to see what that looks like for your own business before you spend a dime? Take a test drive.

You go run your business. Run this checkup again next month.

Your website should look this good. Let's talk. Take a test drive.

Take a Test Drive →

FAQ

Read These In This Order

1. Your Contact Form Is Killing Leads. Here's the Fix.
2. Your Slow Site Is Handing Jobs to the Other Guys
3. Slow Replies Cost You the Job. Let AI Answer First.
4. Ask AI to Recommend Your Business. Go Ahead. I'll Wait.
5. It's Not Your SEO. It's Your Website.