The Website Lead-Leakage Checklist: 22 Places Local Businesses Lose Leads

Before you spend another dollar on leads, walk this list. It is the checklist we use on local service businesses, and it finds money almost every time — because most companies are not short of interest, they are leaking it.

Twenty-two checks, five minutes each. Work top to bottom. Everything here is free to check and most of it is free to fix.

Phone (where the most money leaks)

1. Missed call count, last 30 days. Pull the log. Count missed calls and calls under 20 seconds. If you cannot pull a log, that is finding number one.
2. Who answers during a job. If the answer is “whoever is free,” nobody is.
3. Listen to five recordings. Does the person answering sound glad the phone rang? Do they ask for the address and the appointment, or just answer questions?
4. After-hours path. What happens at 6:40pm? Voicemail is a decision, not an accident — decide it deliberately.
5. Call back speed on voicemails. Measure it in minutes, not “same day.”
6. Number consistency. Same phone number on the website, Google profile, invoices and truck? Mismatches split your tracking and your local search signals.

Website

7. Submit every form yourself, from a phone. Every one. Confirm the notification arrives, to a person who still works there.
8. Time your homepage on cellular. If you are waiting, so is the customer.
9. Tap-to-call above the fold on every page, not just the contact page.
10. Text option. A large share of customers will text who will not call.
11. Service area stated in plain words. Buyers should not have to guess whether you come to their town.
12. Pricing posture. You do not have to publish prices, but silence on “how does pricing work” loses the shopper who wants a range.
13. Proof on the page: real photos, reviews, license and insurance, years in business.
14. One clear action per page. Three competing buttons is zero buttons.

Follow-up

15. First-response time on the last twenty leads. Measure human contact, not the auto-reply.
16. Quote follow-up. Two scheduled touches after every estimate. Most companies have zero.
17. Unsold quote list. Can you produce it in one minute? If not, jobs are dying quietly.
18. Lead outcome logging. Every lead marked booked, quoted or junk. Without this, no marketing number you ever see is trustworthy.

Visibility

19. Check local rankings from four neighborhoods in your area, not from your office. Results change by location.
20. Review recency. When was your most recent Google review? If it is older than a month, your competitors are asking and you are not.
21. Google Business Profile completeness: primary category set to your money service, services listed in customer language, hours correct, photos added this quarter.
22. Ad geography. If you run paid ads, compare where clicks came from to where you actually want to drive.

How to score yourself

Count the checks you cannot answer with evidence today. Zero to three: you are running a tight shop, spend on demand generation. Four to eight: fix the leaks first, they are cheaper than leads. Nine or more: do not increase any ad budget this month. You would be paying to fill a bucket with holes in it.

The three fixes that pay fastest

1. Answer the phone, or route it to somebody who will. Nothing else on this list beats it.
2. Reply to web leads within the hour during business hours.
3. Ask for a review on every completed job, on site, out loud. It compounds into visibility, which compounds into calls.

None of those three require a marketing budget. They require a decision and somebody to own it. Make the list a standing monthly check, assign each line to a person, and you will stop buying leads to replace the ones you are dropping.

Related reading

• Where Palm Harbor home-service companies lose leads
• Lead follow-up: winning the customers who did not buy yet
• Call tracking: knowing which ad produced the call