The Mystery of the Interested Customer Who Never Calls
Imagine a potential customer walks into your shop in Chermside. They spend five minutes looking at your displays, pick up a product, walk toward the counter, and then—for no apparent reason—drop the item on the floor and bolt out the door.
If that happened ten times a day, you’d be losing your mind. You’d be standing at the door asking, "What happened? Was the floor too slippery? Was I standing too close? Did you see the price and panic?"
Yet, this is exactly what happens on your website every single day.
Most Brisbane business owners I talk to check their website traffic and see 500 visitors a month. Then they look at their inbox and see only five enquiries. They assume those other 495 people just weren't interested.
I’m here to tell you that’s wrong. A huge chunk of those people were interested. They clicked your contact page. They started typing their name. And then, something you did—or something your website did—scared them off.
In the marketing world, people call this "form analytics." I call it "finding out why people are hanging up the phone before you even answer."
The Real Cost of a Bad Contact Form
I recently sat down with a landscaper over in Coorparoo. He was spending a couple of grand a month on Google Ads. He was getting plenty of clicks, but his phone wasn't ringing as much as it should have been.
When we looked at his website, he had a "Request a Quote" form that was longer than a tax return. He was asking for the customer’s full address, the square footage of their yard, their budget, how they heard about him, and he even had one of those annoying boxes where you have to prove you aren't a robot by clicking on pictures of traffic lights.
We looked at the data and found that 70% of people who started filling out that form quit halfway through.
Think about that. He was paying for those clicks. He’d already done the hard work of getting them to his site. But because his form was a headache, he was literally throwing away 7 out of 10 potential jobs.
When you see exactly where sales come from, you realise that the problem often isn't your ads or your prices—it’s the friction you’re putting in front of a customer who is trying to give you money.
Why Do People Quit Your Form?
People are busy, impatient, and usually looking at your site on a phone while they’re doing something else. If you make them work for it, they’ll leave and call the next guy on Google.
Here are the three biggest reasons I see Brisbane locals losing leads:
1. You’re asking for too much too soon
Do you really need their home address just to give them a rough idea of your hourly rate? Probably not. Every extra box you ask someone to fill in reduces the chance they’ll finish the form.2. The form is a nightmare on a phone
Have you ever tried to click a tiny little box on a smartphone screen with "tradie thumbs"? It’s frustrating. If your form doesn't work perfectly on a phone, you are losing at least half of your potential customers right there.3. They don't know what happens next
If your button just says "Submit," it feels like sending an email into a black hole. People want to know they’re going to get a call back or a quote.How to See Where the Leak Is
You don't need to be a computer whiz to understand this. You just need to know which parts of your form are causing the most "pain."
Modern tools (which we set up for our clients at Local Marketing Group) can show us exactly which box caused someone to quit. For example, we might find that 90% of people fill in their name and email, but as soon as they get to the "Upload a photo of the problem" box, they bail.
Why? Maybe they’re at work and don't have the photo. Maybe the upload button is broken. Once you know where they’re quitting, fixing it is easy.
Instead of guessing why your marketing isn't working, you can know which ads actually make money by seeing which ones result in a completed form, not just a click.
Practical Steps to Get More Enquiries Today
If you want to stop the bleeding and actually start turning those website visitors into customers, here is what I’d tell my mate to do over a beer at the pub:
Step 1: Kill the unnecessary boxes
Go to your website right now. Look at your contact form. If there is any question on there that isn't 100% vital for that first phone call, delete it. You can ask for their suburb or their life story once you’ve got them on the phone. For now, you just want their name and number.Step 2: Fix your buttons
Change your button from "Submit" to something like "Get My Free Quote" or "Book My Inspection." Make it big, make it a bright colour, and make it obvious.Step 3: Test it yourself (on your phone!)
Open your website on your phone while you’re standing outside in the sun. Try to fill out the form. Is it easy? Are the boxes big enough? Does it load fast? If it annoys you, it’s definitely annoying your customers.Step 4: Use a "Thank You" page
When someone finishes a form, don't just show a tiny bit of text that says "Message sent." Send them to a new page that says, "Thanks! We’ll call you within 2 hours." This makes the customer feel like they’ve actually achieved something, and it makes it much easier for us to track your results.Is it Worth the Effort?
You might be thinking, "Is it really worth worrying about a few boxes on a website?"
Let’s do the math. If you’re a plumber and a lead is worth $500 to you, and you’re getting 10 people a month starting your form but only 5 finishing it, that’s $2,500 a month you’re leaving on the table. Over a year, that’s $30,000.
Fixing a form usually takes an hour or two. I don't know many other ways to potentially make $30k in two hours of work.
When people talk about the small business marketing costs, they often forget that the most expensive part of marketing is the customers you almost had.
Summary: Stop Guessing and Start Growing
Most business owners in Brisbane are flying blind. They spend money on SEO or Facebook ads and just cross their fingers that the phone will ring.
You don't have to do that. By simply looking at how people interact with your website forms, you can find the "leak" in your bucket and plug it.
It’s not about fancy technology or "algorithms." It’s about making it as easy as possible for a local person who needs your help to reach out and say, "Hey, can you give me a price?"
If you’re tired of wondering why your website isn't bringing in the jobs you expected, it’s probably time to look at the data. At Local Marketing Group, we don't care about "impressions" or "engagement." We care about how many people actually filled out your form and how many of those turned into a sale.
Want us to take a look at your website and find out where you’re losing money? We’ve helped dozens of Brisbane businesses turn their websites from expensive digital brochures into lead-generating machines.
Ready to get more phone calls? Contact Local Marketing Group today and let’s get your business growing.