"Our site is old, let's rebuild it" is usually a misdiagnosis. If visitors arrive but enquiries do not, the problem is rarely the design's age. It is usually the message, trust, or an obstacle halfway down the path.

Before budgeting a redesign, run these twelve checks. Some can be fixed in an afternoon.

Message

• 1. The five-second test. Show your site to someone new for five seconds. Can they say what you sell, to whom and why they should choose you? If not, your headline is not working.
• 2. A headline about outcomes. Not "innovative solutions" but what the customer gets, such as "A mobile-ready corporate site, live in two weeks".
• 3. One main action. Six different buttons on the homepage means none get pressed. One primary action, at most one secondary.

Trust

• 4. Proof right below the first screen. Client logos, concrete results, real reviews. Proof hidden at the bottom goes unseen by most visitors.
• 5. Real people. A real photo and name of the team or founder builds far more trust than stock images.
• 6. Contact details. Phone, address, WhatsApp. Nobody fills in a form for a company that does not look reachable.

Friction

• 7. Form length. At first contact, ask only what you truly need. Long forms can be split into steps; multi-step forms get completed more often when the first question is easy.
• 8. Mobile check. Fill in the form on your own phone. Does the right keyboard open, can buttons be tapped, does the page scroll sideways?
• 9. Speed. If the page is slow, visitors leave before seeing anything. Core Web Vitals thresholds are in our piece on motion sites.
• 10. Fear of an unknown price. Even without prices, explain the process: is the call free, when does the quote arrive, is there a commitment? Uncertainty is the form's worst enemy.

A visitor leaving your site has made a decision: "talking to these people is a risk". Conversion work is the work of shrinking that risk.

Follow-through

• 11. Measurement. Are form submissions, phone taps and WhatsApp taps tracked as conversions? You cannot improve what you do not measure. To know which ad sent them, see our UTM guide.
• 12. Replying to enquiries. If forms arrive but get answered late, the problem is the sales process, not the site. Our piece on response time explains why that is critical.

Suggested order

Set up measurement first (11), then sharpen the message (1 to 3), then work through trust and friction. Look at the numbers a month later. This often removes the need for a redesign; when it does not, it makes clear what the new design has to fix.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good conversion rate?

There is no single right number; it varies with sector, traffic source, price and what counts as a conversion. A B2B service site's form rate cannot be compared with a store's purchase rate. The meaningful benchmark is your own history, split by channel: visitors from ads, search and social should be tracked separately.

How much traffic does A/B testing need?

Each version needs enough conversions for a meaningful result; on a page with a few conversions a week, a classic A/B test can take months. Then testing big, clear changes in sequence beats small colour and copy tests.

Does a chat bubble or WhatsApp button lift conversion?

In most sectors, yes, as long as replies are fast, because it offers an easier route to visitors wary of forms. But an unanswered chat leaves a worse impression than none. Decide who answers, and when, before switching these channels on.

Pages that receive ad traffic follow their own rules; see our landing page guide. For conversion-focused sites and pages, see our web and e-commerce page.