Small business websites
How to read a client's site, name the problem, and match it to what we sell.
Contents
What this module covers
The customer profile
Who buys, and what their site has to do
Discovery questions
What to ask before you propose anything
The service line
Four products and what each one fixes
Objections
The five you will hear this week
The site audit
Metrics, thresholds and failure points
Qualifying
Signals that a lead is worth a proposal
The customer profile
Owner-operated businesses with one to twenty staff. The owner approves the spend, and usually built or paid for the current site themselves.
The site has to book a job
Service area, phone, after-hours coverage. Most enquiries arrive as calls from a phone.
The site has to book an appointment
Scheduling, insurance and intake forms, credentials. Reviews carry more weight than design.
The site has to answer a question
Hours, menu, location, parking. Discovery happens in maps and social, not search.
The service line
| Product | What it fixes | What we deliver |
|---|---|---|
| Websites | Slow, unmaintained or unmanaged sites that lose visitors before the page paints | Rebuild, managed hosting, TLS, image pipeline, form and call routing |
| Videos | Sites with nothing to show — stock photography and no evidence of the work | On-site shoot, cut for the homepage hero and for social, captioned |
| Voice AI | Calls that ring out while the owner is on a job or after hours | Answering agent, qualification script, booking handoff, call transcripts |
| 5-Star Reviews | Thin or stale review counts that hold the business out of the local map pack | Request automation after each job, response drafting, profile monitoring |
Diagnosing the site
Measure first. Every recommendation you make on a call should point back to a number you can show the owner.
What the audit covers
Performance
Field and lab timings on a throttled mobile connection, not on office wifi.
Mobile rendering
Viewport meta, tap target size, horizontal overflow, fixed-width tables.
Technical SEO
Indexed page count, titles, canonical tags, sitemap, LocalBusiness schema.
Local presence
Google Business Profile claim status, category, hours, review count and recency.
Lead path
Submit a test form, place a test call. Confirm both arrive and are answered.
Trust and security
Certificate validity, mixed content, platform version, domain expiry date.
Core Web Vitals thresholds
| Metric | Good | Needs work | Poor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Largest Contentful PaintTime until the main image or headline is drawn | ≤ 2.5s | 2.5–4.0s | > 4.0s |
| Interaction to Next PaintDelay between a tap and a visible response | ≤ 200ms | 200–500ms | > 500ms |
| Cumulative Layout ShiftHow far content jumps while the page loads | ≤ 0.1 | 0.1–0.25 | > 0.25 |
Mobile and local discovery
A local customer usually finds the business in the map results and taps through on a phone. Both surfaces have to work, and they are audited separately.
ON THE PHONE
Viewport meta present, tap targets at least 44px, no horizontal scroll, click-to-call in the header, forms that fit one thumb column.
IN THE MAP RESULTS
Business Profile claimed and verified, primary category correct, hours current, name, address and phone matching the site exactly.
ON THE PAGE ITSELF
LocalBusiness schema with address and opening hours, one page per service area, embedded map on the contact page.
Common failure points
| What the owner sees | Technical cause | The fix we sell |
|---|---|---|
| “The site takes forever on my phone” | Full-resolution JPEGs in the hero, render-blocking scripts, no CDN | Rebuild with an image pipeline and managed hosting |
| “Nobody can find us on Google Maps” | Business Profile unclaimed, wrong category, no LocalBusiness schema | Profile claim, schema markup, listing cleanup |
| “I never get the form enquiries” | Host mail function with no SPF or DKIM, so mail lands in spam | Transactional email, DNS records, autoresponder |
| “I miss calls when I am on a job” | Single mobile number, no overflow, no record of the missed call | Voice AI answering with booking handoff |
| “Browsers warn people about my site” | Expired certificate or assets still served over HTTP | Managed certificates and an HTTPS rewrite |
The sales conversation
The owner does not buy a metric. Translate every finding into work booked or work lost.
Discovery questions
Who has access to the domain and the host?
Tells you whether we can actually ship, and who else is involved.
What happens to an enquiry after hours?
Opens Voice AI without naming the product.
What platform is the site on, and when was it last changed?
Sets the scope: takeover, rebuild, or migration.
What is one booked job worth to you?
The number every price is compared against later.
How do enquiries reach you today?
Form, call, message or walk-in — and which one they trust.
What do you spend each month on hosting, ads and listings?
Existing spend is the budget you are working with.
From finding to value
Largest Contentful Paint on a throttled 4G connection, against a 2.5s target
Most mobile visitors leave before the first image appears.
Unanswered inbound calls in one month, taken from the client’s own phone log
Priced against one booked job, this is the easiest arithmetic on the call.
Reviews on the Business Profile, none in the last eighteen months
Competitors with current reviews sit above them in the map results.
Objections and responses
| What you will hear | Where to take it |
|---|---|
| “My nephew built our site.” | Keep the design. We take over hosting, performance and lead routing, and the domain stays in the owner’s name. |
| “All our work comes from word of mouth.” | A referral still checks the site and the reviews before calling. Ask what a referral sees when they look. |
| “We tried SEO before and nothing happened.” | Ask for the last report. Most of that spend went to directory listings; nothing was done to the site itself. |
| “That is more than I want to spend.” | Go back to what a booked job is worth, then set the monthly figure beside it. Offer the smaller first phase. |
| “I do not have time for this.” | Name exactly what we need: registrar and host access, and one twenty-minute call. We handle the rest. |
Qualifying checklist
Worth a proposal
- Site older than three years, or no visible change in that time
- A Core Web Vital in the poor band on mobile
- Business Profile unclaimed, or fewer than twenty-five reviews
- Enquiries land on one mobile number with no overflow
- Already paying for ads that point at the homepage
Log it and move on
- Nobody on the call can approve the spend
- Domain or host controlled by an agency under contract
- Business is closing, selling, or mid-rebrand with no date
- Wants a rebuild but will not give registrar access
- Franchise site the owner is not allowed to change
Before your first call
Audit three local businesses
Run all six passes and write the findings up in the audit sheet.
Rehearse the debrief
Symptom, cause, fix — in that order, in the owner’s language.
Bring your objection answers
Written in your own words, reviewed with your team lead.