A founder launches a website. It has a strong photograph, a clear statement of what the business does, an about page and a contact form.
Over the following months she answers the same questions by email, repeatedly. What it costs. Whether she covers a particular area. How long it takes. What happens after somebody gets in touch. Whether she can work with a particular kind of client.
None of those are on the website. It is a perfectly good brochure and a poor salesperson, and she has all the material to fix it sitting in her sent folder.
Mistake 1: no indication of price
The most common omission and the most damaging. Visitors who cannot establish a range assume the worst and leave without asking.
Mistake 2: no description of the process
What happens after somebody makes contact, in steps. Uncertainty about what they are starting stops a large proportion of enquiries.
Mistake 3: no coverage area
Which places are served. Visitors will not enquire to find out whether they are within range, they will simply assume not.
Mistake 4: no indication of availability
Whether the business can take work now, in a month, or not until next year. This is decisive information and it is almost never stated.
Mistake 5: no description of who it is for
And who it is not for. Specificity attracts the right enquiries and deters the wrong ones, which saves the founder more time than anything else.
Mistake 6: everything behind a contact form
Making contact the only route to information means the founder becomes the website, answering by hand what a page should answer once.
Mistake 7: no evidence of any kind
Which is difficult in a first year and not impossible, as covered in pricing questions when you have no track record.
Mistake 8: an about page about the founder rather than the customer
Visitors want to know whether this business can solve their problem. The founder's story matters after that, not before it.
Mistake 9: no answer to the obvious objection
Every business has one. A site that names it and addresses it is more persuasive than one that hopes nobody thinks of it.
Mistake 10: contact details that are hard to find
Along with hours, response times and what to expect, which is the basic set described in the questions every small business website should answer.
Mistake 11: never updating it after launch
A site built once and left is a site that never learns from the questions arriving every week.
Mistake 12: redesigning instead of answering
Founders reach for a new design when what is missing is content, and a better looking version of the same gaps performs identically.
Mistake 13: no way to ask a question in the moment
A contact form is a request for a callback rather than a route to an answer. Visitors with one small question will not fill in a form for it, and that one question is frequently the only thing between them and a booking.
Fix it from the sent folder
An assistant trained on the answers the founder already gives by email covers the price, process, coverage and availability questions immediately, and logs what it could not answer so the site gets written from real questions rather than guesses. The method is set out in unanswered questions into website pages, and the consistency problem in answering questions about a business you are still building. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under startups.