Why your website gets visits but no enquiries

How quickly do visitors decide to leave?

Quickly. Jakob Nielsen of Nielsen Norman Group wrote that users often leave web pages in 10 to 20 seconds, and that a page must make its value clear within 10 seconds to hold them (Nielsen Norman Group, How Long Do Users Stay on Web Pages?, 11 Sep 2011).

In a 2018 eyetracking study of 120 people, about 57% of viewing time was spent above the fold, the part you see before scrolling (Nielsen Norman Group, Scrolling and Attention, 15 Apr 2018). Both studies are old, so treat the figures as a guide. In our experience, an enquiry is won or lost on the first screen.

What are the six common causes, and how do you fix each one?

1. The visitors searched for something you don’t sell

   A clinic’s article on a common injury can pull in foreign readers who will never book. Search Console’s Performance report lists the searches that brought people in, on its Queries tab (Search Console Help, Performance report).

   The fix is to give each service its own page, written in the words a buyer would type, with the service and the place in it. Google’s starter guide says to think about the words a user might search for, and that a good title is “unique to the page, clear and concise” (Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide, 10 Dec 2025).

2. The first screen doesn’t say what you do

   Many homepages we review open on a slogan and a stock photo. A visitor who can’t tell in a few seconds what you do, for whom and where goes back to the search results.

   The fix is one plain sentence at the top that answers those three questions, with one button below it: “Orthopaedic clinic in Ahmedabad for sports and spine injuries. Book a consultation.” Check it on a phone, where the first screen is smallest (what a stranger sees covers the rest).

3. There’s nothing to make a stranger trust you

   A referral arrives trusting you. A stranger from Google has only your page. Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center found that a product with five reviews was 270% more likely to be bought than one with none, and that reviews lifted conversion more for higher-priced products (Spiegel Research Center, How Online Reviews Influence Sales, first published 2017). That study covered online shops; we think it carries to services, where decisions are bigger.

   The fix is proof beside each claim: projects named with the client’s consent, before and after photos, how many cases you’ve handled and since when, certifications, and your Google reviews. Reviews also shape whether AI assistants recommend you.

4. Getting in touch takes too much effort

   Count the taps from your homepage to a sent message. A long form, a contact page hidden in the footer, or a phone number inside an image all lose people who were ready. Nielsen Norman Group advises cutting any form field whose answer you could get another way, ask for later, or do without (Nielsen Norman Group, Website Forms Usability: Top 10 Recommendations, 1 May 2016).

   The fix: a contact button on every screen, a form with three or four fields, a phone number as text that opens the dialer, and a WhatsApp button, which in our experience many buyers in the UAE and India prefer.

5. The page is slow on a phone

   A slow page loses visitors who were ready to ask. The fix starts with PageSpeed Insights, Google’s free speed test, which reports on phone and desktop from real Chrome visitors’ data and a simulated test (Google, About PageSpeed Insights, 21 Oct 2024). Then shrink images and remove scripts you don’t use; our article on slow phone pages has the measured cases and the full list.

6. Nothing gives a reason to get in touch today

   A visitor who likes the page can still close the tab, meaning to come back. Give them a true reason to write now: a free first check, a reply within one working day, or the date bookings for a season close.

   It has to be true. India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority bans “false urgency” in its 2023 dark patterns guidelines, including a fake limited-time sale, and its rules cover advertisers and sellers (Central Consumer Protection Authority, Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 30 Nov 2023). If you promise a fast reply, keep it: our article on enquiries that go cold explains why.

How do you tell which cause is yours?

Run these three free checks in order; they take an afternoon.

1. Search Console: who is arriving

   Open the Performance report’s Queries tab and filter to your main service page. If most top searches are general questions, job hunts, places you don’t serve or the word “free”, cause one is yours.

2. Google Analytics: what they do next

   Mark your enquiry actions, such as a sent form or a tap on WhatsApp, as key events (Analytics Help, Mark events as key events). Then open Reports, Engagement, Landing page, which shows key events for each page (Analytics Help, Landing page report).

   Analytics counts a visit as engaged if it lasts over 10 seconds, includes a key event, or views two or more pages (Analytics Help, Engagement rate and bounce rate). A low engagement rate points to causes two or five. Good engagement with few key events points to causes three, four or six. With form tracking on, many form starts and few submissions (Analytics Help, Enhanced measurement events) point at the form itself.

3. Five people: what they understand

   Find five people who match your buyer and haven’t seen your site. Show each your homepage on their own phone for ten seconds, take it away, and ask: what does this business do, who is it for, and what would you do next? Then ask them to contact you while you watch without helping.

   Jakob Nielsen found that a test with five users turns up about 85% of a design’s usability problems, and that more people in the same round mostly repeat what you’ve seen (Nielsen Norman Group, Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users, 18 Mar 2000). If three of the five can’t say what you do, fix the first screen. If they stall on the way to contact you, fix the contact path.

Before you change anything, write down this month’s enquiries for each page, with the date. Then change one thing at a time, and you’ll know which fix worked.