A company website that brings enquiries: what it needs and what to check

A brochure site and a site that works

Plenty of company websites look good and bring in nothing. They have a home page, an "About us" page, every service squeezed into one paragraph and a form at the bottom. Visitors arrive with a specific question — do you do exactly this, how long does it take, have you worked with firms like ours? They find no answer, close the tab and open the next search result. Good design does not make up for a missing answer.

One page per service, with the answer at the top

Someone searching for "bookkeeping for a limited company" or "roof repair in Plovdiv" should land on a page about exactly that, not on a general "Services" page. So each service gets its own page with its own heading and address. Search engines then know what to show, and visitors do not have to dig.

Open the page with the answer, not with the company's history. In the first few lines say what exactly you do, for whom, how long it takes and what you need from the customer to get started. Then give the detail. If the price depends on volume, explain what it depends on — that is an answer too.

• What the service includes and what it does not.
• Who it is for — type of business, size, sector.
• How the work runs, step by step.
• How long it usually takes.
• An example from a real project.
• A phone number and a form on the same page, not only under "Contact".

Contact that is easy on a phone

Many people open a website on their phone, often between two meetings. The phone number should be a link that dials with one tap, not an image or text to copy by hand. Put it at the top of every page. Keep the form short: name, phone or email, and a message. Every unnecessary required field puts some people off before they reach the button.

Try the form yourself on a phone. Does the keyboard cover the button? Does a number pad open for the phone field? Is it clear what happens after sending? Visitors should see that the enquiry has arrived and know when to expect a reply. Send yourself a test enquiry once a month — a form that has stopped sending is often noticed only weeks later.

Proof: real examples and numbers with a source

Visitors want to see that you have done this before. The strongest proof is a specific project: what the problem was, what you did and what changed. Photos from a real job say more than stock photos. Name customers only with their permission.

A number persuades when it is clear where it comes from. A sentence such as "on average 12 days from order to installation, across our 2025 projects" can be checked. "Thousands of happy customers" with no source raises doubts. Give every number a unit, a period and its origin. Never make up testimonials — one fake review that gets found out does more harm than having none.

Speed: test on a phone, not in the office

A site that opens instantly on the office computer can crawl on a phone over mobile data. Test from a phone, off the office Wi-Fi, at least on the home page and the service pages. The usual causes of a slow site are heavy images, video at the top of the page, too many fonts and third-party add-ons — chat boxes, visitor counters, embedded maps and social media buttons.

A lab speed test is a good starting point, but it is not enough. What matters is that the site stays fast after you add new pages and photos. Ask whoever builds it how speed will be kept after handover, not only how fast the site is on the day they show it to you.

You change the text, not the developer

Prices, lead times, phone numbers, people, a new service — all of this changes. If every change means an email and a wait, the site soon goes out of date, and an out-of-date site looks like a business that has stopped trading. Before you order, ask to see the admin panel and change one piece of text and one photo yourself.

There are two approaches. With free-form editing you move blocks wherever you like — convenient, but it is easy to spoil both the layout and the speed. With section-based editing every field has its place and a hint — less freedom, but the page stays tidy. If the person writing has no experience with websites, the second is usually the safer choice.

Which page brings in enquiries

Without this you cannot tell what works and what needs rewriting. At the very least, every enquiry should record the page it was sent from and where the visitor came from — a search engine, an advert or another site. After a few months you will see which services people look for and which pages people leave as soon as they arrive.

Counting does not have to rely on an outside service. A site can count visits and enquiries per page itself and keep the data in its own database. For example, in SellM8 Sites visits, funnels, heatmaps and the source of each enquiry are part of the built-in statistics and stay in the site's own database.

Before you order: plugins and rented sites

Many sites are assembled from a ready-made system and dozens of plugins — for the form, the gallery, SEO, caching. Each one is updated separately, and sometimes updating one breaks another. Ask who will update the plugins, how often, whether that is part of the maintenance, and what happens if one of them is abandoned.

The other risk is the rented site: you pay every month, and if you stop, the site disappears and you cannot move it elsewhere. That is not always bad — for a site of a few pages a ready-made solution is often the cheaper option and quite enough. What matters is knowing this up front, not when you decide to change supplier.

• Whose name is the domain registered in?
• Who updates the system and the plugins, and is that part of the maintenance?
• Can I change text, photos and prices myself?
• How will I see which page the enquiries come from?
• If I stop paying, what do I get — code, text, photos, enquiries?