A website can look perfectly healthy on the surface, and yet still be losing customers. Broken links, slow-loading pages and unclear user journeys can all create friction between someone discovering your business and choosing to work with you.
The good news is that you don’t always need a complete redesign to make a meaningful difference. Start with these three practical checks to identify some of the simplest ways to improve your website’s speed, experience and ability to convert.
01. Remove the friction: Fix broken links
As a business grows, pages move, services change and old content gets removed. Links can break along the way, creating dead ends for visitors trying to find their way around your website.
These broken links are not only frustrating for users, but can also make it harder for search engines to discover and understand your content. They’re also often easy to fix. And doing so is how you keep visitors moving towards the information or action they’re looking for.
Take action
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Check your website for broken pages.
Google Search Console can help you identify pages that aren’t being found, while tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush can crawl your website and highlight broken links.
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Prioritise the pages that matter.
You don’t need to fix everything all at once. Start with your most important pages, which are those generating enquiries, sales or valuable organic traffic.
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Redirect where there’s a genuine alternative.
If a page has moved or been replaced, use a relevant 301 redirect rather than leaving visitors at a dead end. A discontinued product, for example, might be redirected to its parent category or a closely related alternative. Never reroute to a generic homepage or journal page.
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Make your 404/410 page useful.
Broken links are a natural part of website growth and maintenance, and having some is inevitable. A helpful 404 or 410 page can turn a dead end into another opportunity to explore your website, so include clear links to important pages or a search function.
02. Improve the experience: Optimise your images
Large, poorly optimised images are one of the most common causes of slow-loading websites. This matters because speed is part of the experience. If someone has to wait for a page to load before they can understand what you offer, you’ve already introduced unnecessary friction.
Website performance is also something search engines measure, with Core Web Vitals providing a useful set of metrics for understanding how quickly and reliably pages perform.
We’ve created an in-depth guide on optimising website images, as it’s an often overlooked but vital part of website performance, but here’s a quick overview.
Take action
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Start by measuring your key pages.
Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check your homepage and the pages most important to your customers. Don’t worry about achieving a perfect score for its own sake. Look for issues that are having a meaningful impact on the real experience.
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Find your biggest images.
Hero banners, photography and other large visual assets are often responsible for unnecessary page weight. Compress them using a tool like TinyPNG, while keeping enough quality to maintain the intended experience.
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Serve images at the size they’re actually displayed.
There’s little benefit in uploading a 4,000px-wide image when the design only displays it at 800px. Resize images before uploading them and use appropriate formats where possible.
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Don’t optimise at the expense of the experience.
A premium website still needs to look premium. The objective isn’t to make every image as small as possible. Just try to find the right balance between visual quality and performance, removing the barrier between your audience and their experience.
03. Make the next step obvious: Remove friction from your CTAs
A website can be fast, well-designed and easy to navigate, but still fail commercially if visitors don’t know what to do next. Every website has actions that matter more than others. For one business, that might be booking a consultation. For another, it’s requesting a quote, making a purchase or contacting the sales team.
Your website should make those actions clear, especially across all lead capture pages and forms.
Take action
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Identify your primary commercial actions.
Choose the two or three actions that matter most to your business. These should be reflected consistently across the pages where customers are most likely to make a decision.
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Test the complete journey.
Don’t just check that the button works. Follow the journey from start to finish, on both desktop and mobile.
Does the button go to the right place?
Does the form submit correctly?
Does the confirmation message appear?
Does the right person receive the enquiry?
Can the customer easily understand what happens next?
Small technical issues at this stage can have a disproportionate commercial impact.
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Make your CTA copy useful.
Generic labels like ‘Click here’ or ‘Submit’ tell the visitor very little. Where appropriate, use copy that makes the next step clear and communicates the benefit, such as ‘Start your project’, ‘Request a quote’ or ‘Book a consultation’.
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Make contact easy on mobile.
If phone calls are an important route to enquiry, make your number clearly visible and clickable. Don’t make someone search for a way to contact you when they’re ready to take action.
The important thing is to think beyond the button itself. A strong CTA is part of a wider customer journey designed to make the next decision feel simple.
Your website doesn’t need to be perfect, it needs to work
If performance drops, you don’t need to rebuild your website. Start with the fundamentals. Can people find the right pages, can those pages load quickly, and can visitors easily take the next step?
These checks won’t solve every problem, but they can uncover some of the simplest sources of friction. And they’re worth repeating as your business, content and customer journeys evolve.
Remember, your website is where your brand, marketing and customer experience come together. And the better those elements work together, the more effectively your website can turn attention into meaningful action.
Looking for more website performance tips?
Here’s a more detailed guide on how to optimise your website and improve conversions. Think the issue might be deeper? Feel free to reach out to our Shrewsbury-based brand and digital agency. Whether your website needs a conversion rate optimisation strategy or the issue lies deeper with your brand, let’s grow your business with a bespoke strategy tailored to your business goals.
