Why Your Website is Costing You Customers (And You Don't Even Know It)
I see it every week here in Brisbane. A local electrician or a law firm in Milton spends thousands on a beautiful new website, only to wonder why the phone isn't ringing. They look at the site on their high-speed office Wi-Fi, and it looks great.
But here’s the reality: your customers aren't sitting in your office. They are at a construction site with two bars of reception, or they’re at a cafe in Chermside on patchy public Wi-Fi, trying to book a service quickly.
If your website takes too long to load, or if the buttons jump around while they’re trying to click "Call Now," they will leave. They won’t wait. They’ll go back to Google and click on your competitor instead.
Google calls these technical performance measures "Core Web Vitals." I call them the "Don't Annoy Your Customer" metrics. If you fail these, Google will hide your business in the search results, and the few people who do find you will get frustrated and quit.
Here are the most common mistakes I see Brisbane business owners making with their website performance and how to fix them to get more enquiries.
Mistake 1: Using Massive Images That Kill Your Speed
This is the number one reason websites feel sluggish. You take a high-quality photo of a completed renovation on your iPhone and upload it straight to your site. That file is massive. Every time a customer visits your page, their phone has to download that giant file.
The Result: Your site takes five or ten seconds to load. In the world of the internet, ten seconds is an eternity.
The Fix: Every image on your site should be resized and compressed before it goes live. You want your photos to look sharp, but they shouldn't be bigger than they need to be. If you can reduce your image sizes, your site will load instantly. This is a foundational part of any solid SEO strategy because Google prioritises fast sites.
Mistake 2: The "Jumping" Website Content
Have you ever been on a website, went to click a button, and suddenly the whole page shifted down because an image finally loaded? You end up clicking an ad or the wrong link by mistake.
It’s infuriating.
Google actually tracks this. They measure how much the elements on your screen move around while the page is loading. If your "Book Now" button jumps half an inch just as a customer is about to tap it, you’ve likely lost that lead forever.
The Fix: Your website developer needs to set "placeholders" for images and videos. This tells the browser exactly how much space a photo will take up before it actually downloads. This keeps your text and buttons exactly where they should be, making it easy for customers to get in touch with you.
Mistake 3: Paying for Cheap, Slow Hosting
I get the temptation to use a $5-a-month hosting plan from a giant international company. But if you are a Brisbane business, why is your website living on a server in Texas or Singapore?
Every time a customer in Indooroopilly clicks your link, that request has to travel halfway across the world and back. It adds a delay that you simply cannot fix with fancy coding.
The Fix: Use high-quality Australian-based hosting. When your website files are physically located in Sydney or Brisbane, your site loads noticeably faster for local customers. It might cost you $30 or $50 a month instead of $5, but if that extra speed wins you just one extra job a year, it has paid for itself ten times over. Fast hosting is one of the easiest ways to show up first when people search for your services.
Mistake 4: Too Many "Whistles and Bells"
Many business owners want their website to look like a Hollywood movie. They want background videos, pop-up boxes, scrolling animations, and live chat widgets that slide in from every corner.
Every one of these features requires a piece of "code" to run. The more code your site has to process, the slower it becomes. I've seen sites for local plumbers that take longer to load than a Netflix movie because they have too many unnecessary gadgets.
The Fix: Be ruthless. Ask yourself: "Does this feature help me get a phone call?" If a background video of people shaking hands doesn't directly lead to a sale, get rid of it. Simple, clean, and fast will beat "fancy and slow" every single day.
Mistake 5: Ignoring the Mobile Experience
Most business owners check their own website on a desktop computer. But for most service industries—tradies, doctors, emergency repairs—80% of your customers are finding you on a mobile phone.
If your site is fast on a computer but slow on a phone, you are failing. Google looks at the mobile version of your site first when deciding where to rank you. If the mobile experience is poor, you won’t get more phone calls regardless of how much you spend on marketing.
The Fix: Open your website on your phone right now. Use your 4G or 5G connection, not the office Wi-Fi. Try to navigate to your contact page. If it feels clunky or slow, your customers feel it too.
How Much Will This Cost and Is It Worth It?
Fixing these issues usually requires a professional. It’s not something you can typically do yourself with a plugin.
The Cost: Depending on how messy your site is, a professional "speed tune-up" can range from $500 to $2,500. The Timeline: You should see the technical improvements within a week. Google usually takes 4 to 6 weeks to recognise these changes and start moving you up in the search results.
- The ROI: This is the most important part. If your site currently has 100 visitors a month and 2 of them call you, a faster, better-performing site could easily bump that to 5 or 6 calls from the same 100 people. You aren't just paying for "speed"; you're paying to stop your marketing budget from leaking out of a bucket full of holes.
Summary: What Should You Do First?
Don't get bogged down in the technical jargon. You don't need to know how the engine works; you just need to know the car is fast enough to win the race.
1. Test your site: Use a free tool like Google PageSpeed Insights. If the score is in the red, you have a problem. 2. Optimise your images: This is the quickest win. 3. Check your hosting: Make sure your site is hosted in Australia. 4. Simplify: Remove any widgets or animations that don't help you sell.
Most of what you read online about this is rubbish—focused on tiny technical details that don't move the needle for a local business. Focus on the customer experience. If the site is fast and easy to use, the results will follow.
Need a website that actually works as hard as you do? At Local Marketing Group, we specialise in making sure Brisbane businesses don't just have a "nice" website, but a high-performance tool that generates leads.
Contact Local Marketing Group today to see how we can help you turn your website into a lead-generation machine.