Recognising the signs you need a new website can be difficult when you’re close to it. Most tradespeople either don’t look at their website critically or assume it’s “fine” because it exists. But a website that merely exists and a website that actively wins you work are very different things. These seven warning signs are the most common indicators that your current site is costing you enquiries rather than generating them.
1. It doesn’t work properly on mobile — one of the clearest signs you need a new website
Most local searches happen on mobile. If your website doesn’t display correctly on a smartphone — if text is too small to read, buttons are hard to tap, or the layout breaks on smaller screens — you’re losing the majority of your potential visitors before they’ve had a chance to contact you.
The test is simple: open your own website on your phone right now. Can you read the text without zooming? Is your phone number visible immediately without scrolling? Can you tap the navigation easily? If the answer to any of these is no, you have a mobile problem.
Google uses mobile-first indexing — it ranks your site primarily based on its mobile version. A poor mobile experience hurts both your ranking and your conversion rate simultaneously. Picture a Hull carpenter who fixes his site’s mobile issues (text was too small, the contact form didn’t work on iOS) and sees his call rate from the website increase within weeks of the fix.
2. It’s slow to load
Page speed is both a ranking factor and a conversion factor. Research is consistent: if a page takes more than three seconds to load on mobile, roughly half of visitors will leave before it loads. Google’s own data shows that a one-second improvement in mobile load time can increase conversions by 27%.
Test your site at pagespeed.web.dev. Enter your URL and look at the mobile score. Under 50 is a serious problem. Under 70 needs improvement. The most common causes of slow loading on trade websites: uncompressed images (the single biggest offender), too many plugins, cheap hosting, and large unoptimised video files.
If your site was built on a cheap shared hosting plan several years ago and has accumulated photos and plugins since, a rebuild on faster hosting with compressed images will produce a dramatic improvement in both speed and conversions.
3. It doesn’t show up on Google
A website that doesn’t appear in Google results for any relevant search is not working. This could be because:
- The site has a technical issue preventing Google from indexing it (“noindex” tag, no sitemap submitted)
- The site has no local SEO — no location-specific content, no optimised page titles
- The site is brand new and hasn’t built enough authority yet
- The site is on such cheap hosting that it loads too slowly to rank
Run a quick check: search for your exact business name on Google. Do you appear? Then search for your trade and your town: “electrician [your town].” Are you anywhere in the first page? If neither produces useful results, you have an SEO problem that goes beyond simple tweaking.
Imagine a Derby painter who’s had a website for three years and discovers through a free audit that the site is set to “noindex” — a development setting left on by mistake at launch. Google has never indexed a single page. Three years of missed rankings fixed by a one-line code change.
4. It looks dated next to competitors
Website design expectations move quickly. A site that looked modern in 2018 now looks dated, and customers notice — consciously or not. A website that appears older than your competitors’ immediately raises doubts: Is this business still trading? Have they invested in their company recently?
Search for your direct competitors and compare their websites honestly to yours. Better font choices, more professional photography, a cleaner layout, a fresher colour scheme — these visual signals affect trust before a single word is read.
You don’t need to redesign every two years. But if you look at your site and think “that’s a bit 2016,” your customers are thinking the same. A professional redesign that’s genuinely current in its design and technology pays for itself by improving the conversion rate of visitors who might otherwise be put off.
5. No clear way to contact you
This seems too basic to be a real problem — but it’s one of the most common issues we see on existing trade websites. The phone number is only in the footer. The contact page exists but isn’t linked prominently from navigation. There’s no click-to-call button on mobile. The contact form sends emails to an address that’s no longer monitored.
Every one of these costs you enquiries from people who intended to contact you but couldn’t find a frictionless way to do so.
Take a typical scenario: a Swansea roofer has a phone number on his site, but it’s formatted as plain text (not a linked phone number), buried in the footer, and too small to tap accurately on mobile. Visitors who want to call have to copy the number, switch to their phone app, and dial manually — enough friction that many don’t bother. Fixing this — a simple code change — improves his mobile contact rate significantly.
6. You can’t update it yourself
A website you can’t modify is one you can’t keep current. Services change. Prices change. Photos get outdated. If every small update requires emailing a developer and waiting days for a response — or if you’ve simply lost contact with whoever built the original site — your website slowly becomes less relevant.
A good trade website should let you add photos, update your services list, and change your contact details without needing technical help. If yours doesn’t, that’s both a practical problem (stale content) and a signal that you need a more maintainable platform.
7. It hasn’t won you a single job
This is the most decisive sign. If you can’t point to a single enquiry or booked job that came through your website in the last six months, the website is not working as a business asset.
This happens for all the above reasons — poor mobile experience, slow loading, no SEO, outdated design, poor contact mechanics — and sometimes for subtler reasons like weak copywriting, poor page structure, or no social proof.
A non-performing website isn’t necessarily unfixable. But if you’ve had a site for more than 12 months and it hasn’t generated measurable work, the question isn’t whether to fix it — it’s whether to fix the existing site or start fresh with something built to perform from the start.
Get a free audit to confirm
For a full guide on what a well-performing trade website should look like, see what makes a great trade website. For the mobile-specific issues in detail, see our mobile-friendly website guide.
If any of these signs sound familiar, the next step is a specific diagnosis of what’s wrong with your current site — not a vague feeling that something isn’t right, but a clear list of issues and how to fix them.
Our free website and online presence audit identifies exactly which of these signs apply to your site, what the specific technical or design issues are, and what a fix would involve. No obligation, no cost — just clarity about where the problems are.
FAQs
How do I know if my website is actually generating enquiries?
Connect Google Analytics (free) and set up a “goal” that triggers when someone submits your contact form or clicks your phone number. This tracks exactly how many of your website visitors are converting into enquiries. Without tracking, you’re guessing.
Can an old website be fixed, or is it better to start fresh?
It depends on what’s wrong. Technical SEO issues, slow loading, and contact mechanics can often be fixed on an existing site. But if the platform is proprietary, the design is fundamentally poor, or the structure needs reworking, a rebuild is often faster and cheaper than a patch job.
How often should a trade website be redesigned?
There’s no fixed rule, but a full visual redesign every 4–5 years is reasonable. More important is ensuring the site is technically current (fast, mobile-friendly, properly indexed) and that the content is updated as your services evolve. Regular small updates are better than letting it stagnate and doing a total overhaul every decade.
Think your site might have issues? Get a free audit to find out exactly what’s wrong.
