3 DIY website mistakes that are costing you clients (and how to fix them)

You’ve poured time, energy and probably a fair amount of late-night frustration into building your website. You’ve picked the colours, chosen the fonts and upload the photos. It looks pretty good, so why isn’t it converting?

As someone who works with founders in the wellness, lifestyle and creative industries every day, I see the same website mistakes come up again and again. The good news? They’re all fixable. Here are the three I come across most often, and what you can do about them.

Grace reviewing a client website from her home studio in Worcestershire.

1. It’s either wall to wall text or practically empty

There’s a real temptation when you’re building your own site to either say everything: every service, every detail, every qualification or to keep it minimal because you’ve heard ‘less is more.’ Both extremes cause problems.

Too much text with no visual breathing room and your visitor will bounce before they’ve even read a word. But too little copy is just as damaging, not just for the reader, but for search engines too. Google needs enough content on your pages to understand what you do and who you serve. A homepage with three short sentences and a nice image isn’t going to get you found.

What to do instead:

• Break your content into clear sections with distinct visual blocks. White space is your friend.

• Each section should have a clear purpose: an intro, a services overview, a trust-builder, a call to action.

• Aim for enough copy that the page tells a story, but edit ruthlessly. If it doesn’t serve your reader or help them take action, cut it.

2. The user journey is confusing

Imagine arriving at a beautifully designed yoga studio where none of the doors are labelled. That’s what a clunky website feels like to a visitor. They want to know what you offer, whether it’s right for them, what it costs and they want to find all of that without having to dig around.

If your services are buried in a dropdown, your pricing is nowhere to be found, or your navigation doesn’t make it obvious where to go next, you’re making your potential client work too hard. Most won’t bother.

What to do instead:

• Map out the journey you want your ideal client to take from homepage through to enquiry and make sure your site supports that flow.

• Keep your navigation menu simple. If someone can’t find what they need in two clicks, revisit the structure.

• Be upfront about your services and pricing where you can. Transparency builds trust and trust converts.

3. There’s no clear call to action

This is the big one. Your website might look beautiful, read well and clearly explain what you do, but if you haven’t told your visitor what to do next, most of them won’t do anything at all.

A call to action (CTA) is simply a prompt that guides someone towards the next step. That might be booking a discovery call, signing up for your email list or getting in touch to find out more. Without one or with too many competing for attention, your visitor leaves without taking any action at all.

This is especially common on DIY sites where the instinct is to offer every possible option. But giving people too many choices can be just as paralysing as giving them none. Pick one primary action you want visitors to take, and make it easy to find on every page.

What to do instead:

• Decide on one primary CTA for your site. For most service based businesses, this is a discovery call or an enquiry form.

• Make it visible. Your CTA should appear in your header, throughout your pages and at the end of every section where a decision might be made.

• Use clear, action led language. ‘Book a free call’ or ‘Get in touch’ will always outperform a vague ‘Learn more.’

Sound familiar?

If you’re nodding along to any of these, you’re not alone. These are the things I fix most often when I’m working on a website refresh or redesign and the difference they make to how a site performs is significant.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed and just need some focused support to work through these, a Power Hour is a great place to start. We’ll look at what’s not working and leave you with a clear plan of action.

If you’re starting to think your site might need more than a few tweaks,or that it’s time to start fresh, I can help with that too. Either way, the best first step is the same.

Book a Social Brew call. It’s free, it’s 20 minutes and we’ll figure out together what your website actually needs.