Nine faults that cost enquiries, ranked by what they cost

These are ordered by what they cost, which is not the order anybody notices them in. The first three are invisible from the outside and do the most damage.

One: the enquiry form that stopped delivering

The mechanism. A hosting change, an expired mail setting, a plugin update. The form still says thank you. Nothing arrives. Nobody is told.

What it costs. Everything the form would have produced, for as long as it has been broken. We have seen this running for years, with the business concluding that enquiries had simply dried up.

The check. Two minutes. Submit it from a phone on mobile data, then look in the inbox and the spam folder. Run this monthly. More in how to find out whether your enquiry form still works.

Two: the phone number as an image

The mechanism. A designer put the number in the header graphic. On a phone it cannot be tapped, cannot be copied, and cannot be read by a search engine or an assistant.

What it costs. The share of mobile buyers who will not switch apps and retype eleven digits, which is most of them when a competitor is one tab away.

The check. Open the site on a phone and tap the number. If the dialler does not open, that is the fault. Fix is minutes.

Three: the range that only exists as a PDF

The mechanism. The catalogue was made for print, uploaded once, and never turned into pages. Search engines index almost none of what is inside it, and AI assistants read none of it.

What it costs. Every search containing a product name, size or grade you make. This is usually the single largest missed opportunity on a manufacturing site.

The fix. A fortnight of careful work for a couple of hundred products. Detail in the catalogue trapped in a PDF.

Four: a home page that takes eleven seconds

The mechanism. Photographs uploaded at camera resolution, scaled down in the browser instead of on the server. Eight megabytes of images to show six hundred pixels of picture.

What it costs. Published benchmark research puts mobile abandonment above half once a page passes three seconds, and the rest of the figures we work to are on the benchmarks page.

The check. PageSpeed Insights, mobile tab, and read LCP. Then the arithmetic and the calculator.

Five: no city anywhere in the text

The mechanism. The address sits inside a map embed or a footer image. The words Coimbatore or Ludhiana never appear as text.

What it costs. Every geographic search, which in Indian B2B is a large share of the ones with real intent.

The fix. Write the cities out in sentences. Then complete your Google Business Profile. Cluster detail on the locations pages.

Six: certifications as logos with no numbers

The mechanism. A row of logos in the footer. No standard numbers, no scope, no validity dates.

What it costs. Credibility with exactly the careful buyers worth having, because anybody can paste a logo. In compliance led trades this decides the shortlist before price is discussed.

The fix. Publish the number and scope. BIS, FSSAI, NABL, GOTS, OEKO TEX, whichever apply.

Seven: one page listing forty products

The mechanism. A single Products page with a table or a grid of photographs.

What it costs. Thirty nine potential rankings. That page can rank for one thing and will rank badly for it.

The fix. One page each, following the nine field template.

Eight: the six slide carousel

The mechanism. Every slide loads before anything appears. Published research on carousels puts engagement with slide two in low single digits.

What it costs. Load time, paid for content almost nobody sees, in the most valuable space on the site.

The fix. Keep the first slide. Turn the other five into pages that can rank on their own.

Nine: the signals that say nobody is home

The mechanism. A copyright year four years out of date. A news section ending in 2017. A team page naming somebody who left. Best viewed in 1024x768.

What it costs. Buyers checking whether you are still trading conclude you might not be, and they do not ring to find out.

The fix. An hour a month, owned by somebody named. Which is the argument in somebody has to own this.

Where to start

The first four, in order, this month. That is about a week of work and it recovers most of the loss on a typical dated site. Then measure before deciding anything larger, using the baseline method in how to tell whether your website is working.

Written by Sameer Gaikwad, founder of Buildgin. Thirty three years in electrical power systems across global MNCs, now applying the same condition monitoring habit to websites.