7 signs your Westchester business website is costing you customers

Most people meet your business on a phone. They search, tap your website, and decide in a few seconds whether to call, visit, or go back and pick someone else.

This fall I tested 63 independent business websites across Peekskill, Cortlandt, Croton-on-Hudson, Yorktown, and Ossining with Google’s own mobile speed test. The full results are on my Peekskill page. The same problems kept coming up, and most of them are invisible to the business owner, who usually visits their own site on fast office Wi-Fi.

Here are the seven signs to look for, how to check your site in a few minutes, and what fixes them.

1. It takes more than a few seconds to show anything on a phone

Google’s target is for a page’s main content to appear within 2.5 seconds. In my study, only 1 of 55 local sites met that target. The typical site took about 10 seconds, and 28 took longer than that.

How to check: go to pagespeed.web.dev, enter your website address, and look at the Mobile tab. Check the score, and the line called “Largest Contentful Paint,” which measures how long your main content takes to appear.

How to fix it: the usual causes are oversized photos, too many apps or plugins, and heavy fonts or video in the top section of the page. Shrinking and modernizing images alone often cuts load time in half.

2. The website link on your map listing is broken

When people find you on Google Maps or another map app, they tap your website link. In my study, 8 of the 63 website links listed for local businesses didn’t work: 6 didn’t respond at all, and 2 led to a “page not found” error.

How to check: search for your business on Google Maps on your phone, tap Website, and make sure it opens your current site. Do the same in Apple Maps if you can.

How to fix it: update the link in your Google Business Profile and any directory listings. If you changed web addresses or let an old domain expire, set up a redirect from the old address to the new one.

3. The page jumps around while it loads

You go to tap “Menu” or “Call,” the page shifts, and you hit something else. On 1 in 4 sites in my study, the layout moved noticeably while loading.

How to check: open your site on your phone using cellular data, not Wi-Fi, and watch the first few seconds. If text or buttons move after they appear, you have this problem.

How to fix it: reserve space for images, banners, and embedded widgets so they don’t push content down when they arrive. Pop-ups and cookie bars that slide in late are frequent causes.

4. It wasn’t really built for phones

A few sites in my study (5 of 55) were missing the basic setting that tells a phone to display the site at phone size. Visitors see a tiny desktop page and have to pinch and zoom.

How to check: open your site on your phone. If you have to zoom to read the text or tap a button, it isn’t mobile-friendly.

How to fix it: the setting itself is one line of code, but sites missing it usually need a mobile-friendly redesign so the layout adapts to small screens.

5. It looks abandoned

The copyright year in a site’s footer is a small detail, but customers notice it. Of the sites in my study that show a year, 10 of 18 hadn’t updated it in two years or more. If the year is old, visitors wonder whether the hours, prices, and menu are old too, and often they are.

How to check: scroll to the bottom of your homepage. Then check your hours, prices, menu, staff, and holiday notices against what’s actually true today.

How to fix it: update what’s out of date, and set the footer year to update automatically. More importantly, make it easy for you or your staff to change hours and menus yourselves, so the site never falls behind.

6. The browser says “Not secure”

Sites without HTTPS show a “Not secure” warning in Chrome, right next to your address. Only a couple of sites in my study had this problem, but for those businesses, it’s the first thing a visitor sees.

How to check: look at your site’s address in your browser. It should start with https://, and there should be no “Not secure” warning.

How to fix it: most hosts include a free security certificate, often a single switch in your hosting settings. Turn it on and redirect all http:// traffic to https://.

7. Visitors can’t tell what you do, or how to reach you, in five seconds

This one doesn’t show up in a speed test, but it costs the most. Picture someone standing outside your shop or sitting in their car. They need your phone number, address, hours, and what you offer, without hunting through menus.

How to check: hand your phone to a friend, open your homepage, and ask them to call you or find your hours. Count how many taps it takes.

How to fix it: put a tap-to-call phone number, your hours, and your address near the top of the homepage on phones, along with one plain sentence about what you do and where.

The good news

Almost everything on this list can be fixed without starting over. Most slow local sites I tested are slow for the same few reasons, and a broken link or an old footer takes minutes to fix once you know it’s there.

Want to know how your site did? I offer a free check for businesses in Peekskill, Cortlandt Manor, Croton-on-Hudson, Yorktown, Ossining, and the rest of Westchester County. Email me your website address, and I’ll reply with your mobile score and the two or three changes that would help most. You can also see what I build for local businesses.