Welcome back — or if this is your first time here, thanks for stopping by.
I look at a lot of trade business websites around Vancouver, and one of the most common issues I run into is surprisingly simple:
Someone tries to call…
and it doesn’t quite work the way it should.
Not completely broken.
Just enough friction to make someone give up.
When someone tries to call you, it should be instant
Think about how most people actually use your site.
They’re not reading through pages. Often times it’s an emergency—a burst pipe, a broken AC/furnace in the dead of summer or winter, locked out of their home or office, etc.
They land on your website, often times by clicking your paid ad, look for your number, and try to call.
That’s it.
There’s no patience in that moment.
So when they tap your phone number, they expect one thing:
→ their phone opens the dialer immediately with the same number.
That’s it. If that doesn’t happen, even for a second, they are usually gone.
What “not working properly” actually looks like
This isn’t always obvious.
In fact, most business owners test their site and think everything is fine.
But when you look a bit closer, you start to see things like:
- The number isn’t actually clickable (it’s just text)
- You have to press and hold to copy it and paste it into your phone app
- The tap area is small or inconsistent
- There are multiple numbers and it’s not clear which one to use
- The number works on some devices, but not others
- The number on the button is not the number it dials
None of these are too dramatic failures, except maybe the last one.
But they all add friction at the exact moment someone is trying to contact you.
Why this matters more than it seems
When someone decides to call, they’ve already made the decision. They’re not browsing anymore.
They’re acting.
So if something slows that down — even slightly — you risk losing them.
And they don’t wait around to figure it out. They go back to Google and they try the next business.
The part that makes this easy to miss
From your side, everything can look normal.
Your number is on the site.
Your site loads.
Nothing is obviously broken.
But unless you test it the same way your customers use it — quickly, on a phone, without thinking — it’s easy to miss.
A quick way to check your own site
Open your website on your phone.
Don’t scroll around or read anything.
Just do this:
- Find your phone number
- Tap it
- Does the number in the dialer match?
That’s it.
If anything about that interaction feels:
- Slow
- Unclear
- Questionable/sketchy
- Or slightly annoying
That’s exactly the kind of friction that causes people to leave.
It’s one small issue — with real impact
This is one of those problems that doesn’t look serious from the outside.
But it happens right at the most important moment:
→ when someone is trying to contact you
These are customers you’ve already paid for with either time or real money—especially if they got to your homepage by clicking your ad.
And because there’s no record of any customer’s failed attempts to call you, it often goes unnoticed, and they quietly move on.
The takeaway
If your website is getting visitors but not turning into calls, this is one of the first things worth checking.
Not because it’s complicated.
Because it’s simple and has real impact on getting calls and jobs for your business — and it’s so easy to overlook.
If you’ve never tested this on your own site, it’s worth a quick look now.
Most of these issues aren’t obvious, but they show up right at the worst time.
In the next post, I’m going to walk through another common point where customers drop off:
contact forms that look like they work… but don’t actually lead to real inquiries.