Why Your Website is Leaking Money (And How to Stop It)
I’ve sat down with hundreds of business owners across Brisbane—from landscapers in Samford to accountants in the CBD—and almost all of them have the same frustration. They say, “I’ve spent thousands on this website, I’m paying for ads, and Google tells me people are visiting the site... but the phone isn’t ringing.”
It’s a gut-wrenching feeling. You’re pouring money into a bucket that has a hole in the bottom.
Normally, when you want to know why customers aren’t buying, you look at your bank balance or your call logs. But that only tells you what happened (or didn't happen). It doesn’t tell you why.
Imagine if you owned a physical shop in Chermside. If 100 people walked in every day, looked at one specific shelf, shook their heads, and walked out without buying anything, you’d go over to that shelf and see what was wrong. Is the price too high? Is the sign confusing? Is the product broken?
Online, you’re usually flying blind. But there is a way to “watch” your customers move through your digital shop. We call these tools heatmaps and session recordings. In plain English, it means seeing where people click and watching video replays of their visits.
This isn't about technical data or complex graphs. It’s about seeing exactly why a potential customer got frustrated and left so you can fix it and make more money.
The Truth About Your Website Visitors
Most business owners think people read every word on their website. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they don’t.
People are busy. They are looking at your site on their phone while waiting for a coffee or sitting in traffic. They are skimming. They are looking for two things: 1. Can this person solve my problem? 2. How do I contact them?
If they can’t find those two things in about five seconds, they hit the 'back' button and go to your competitor.
By using tools that show you exactly where people are looking, you can see exactly why customers leave before they ever pick up the phone. This is the fastest way to turn a quiet phone into a busy one.
What is a Heatmap, Really?
Forget the fancy name. A heatmap is just a picture of your website with "glow" marks on it.
Red spots mean lots of people are clicking or looking there. Blue spots mean nobody cares about that part.
If your "Call Now" button is blue and a random photo of your truck is bright red, you have a problem. People are distracted by the photo and ignoring the way to give you money.
What are Session Recordings?
This is the real game-changer. A session recording is a video playback of a real person using your site. You see their mouse move, you see them scroll, and you see exactly where they get stuck.
I recently worked with a plumber in Coorparoo. He had a great-looking site, but his "Book Online" form was buried. When we watched the recordings, we saw dozens of people scroll right past the form because it looked like an advertisement, not a booking box. We moved it, changed the colour, and his enquiries doubled overnight. No extra ad spend, just fixing the "hole in the bucket."
Three Signs Your Website is Frustrating Your Customers
When we look at these recordings for Brisbane businesses, we usually see three big mistakes that are costing them thousands in lost sales.
1. The "Dead Click"
This is painful to watch. A visitor thinks a picture or a piece of text is a button, so they click it. Nothing happens. They click it again. Still nothing. They get annoyed and leave.If people are clicking on things that aren't buttons, it means your site is confusing. You need to either make that thing a button or change how it looks so it doesn't trick people.
2. The "Rage Scroll"
Have you ever been on a website and just flicked your thumb up and down really fast because you couldn't find the price or the phone number? That’s a rage scroll.When we see this in recordings, it’s a massive red flag. It means your most important information is hidden. Small business owners often try to be too "clever" with their website design. Don't be clever. Be clear. If you’re a tow truck driver, your phone number should be the biggest thing on the page.
3. Mobile Phone Meltdowns
Most of your customers are looking at your site on a phone. If your website works great on your office computer but the buttons are too small to click with a thumb on an iPhone, you are losing money.Recordings show us exactly when a mobile user tries to click a link but hits the wrong one because they are too close together. This is an easy fix that has a huge impact on your bottom line.
How to Use This Information to Grow Your Profit
You don't need to spend 40 hours a week looking at this. You have a business to run. But checking these insights once a month can help you track which clicks make money and which ones are just wasting your time.
Step 1: Look at Your Homepage
Your homepage is your digital storefront. Watch 10 recordings of people on your homepage. Do they see your phone number immediately? Do they scroll to the bottom, or do they stop halfway?- If they stop halfway, what stopped them?
Step 2: Check Your Contact Form
If you have a form on your site, watch how people fill it out. Do they start, get halfway through, and then quit? Maybe you're asking too many questions. Do you really need their home address just to give them a quote? Probably not. Shortening a form is the easiest way to get more leads.Step 3: Watch the "No-Shows"
Look at the recordings of people who spent more than two minutes on your site but didn't contact you. They were interested! They stayed for two minutes! Why didn't they take the final step? Usually, it's because they had one final question that your site didn't answer.Is This Expensive?
Here’s the good news: it’s actually very cheap. There are tools like Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity (which is actually free) that can do this for you.
Setting it up takes about 15 minutes. The real "cost" is the time spent looking at the videos, but even then, you only need to watch a handful to see the patterns.
If you find one broken button that was stopping two people a week from calling you, and an average job is worth $500, that’s $1,000 a week you were losing. The tool pays for itself in about an hour.
Stop Guessing and Start Growing
Marketing isn't magic. It's just about removing the obstacles between a customer and your business.
Most Brisbane business owners are guessing. They guess what their customers want, they guess why their ads aren't working, and they guess why their website is quiet.
Stop guessing. Start watching. When you see exactly what your customers are doing, the path to growing your business becomes incredibly clear. You’ll know exactly where to put your time and money to get the best result.
If you’re too busy running your business to watch videos and analyze heatmaps, that’s where we come in. At Local Marketing Group, we do the heavy lifting for you. We find the holes in your bucket, plug them, and make sure your marketing spend is actually turning into bank deposits.
Ready to see what’s really happening on your website?
Contact Local Marketing Group today at https://lmgroup.au/contact and let’s get your phone ringing.