The 30 places your enquiries are leaking
The 30 things we check when a page gets traffic and produces nothing: intent match, the next step, the form, proof and quiet costs, each with a pass test.
A conversion audit finds out why a page that gets visitors produces no calls or forms. It runs through 30 checks in five groups. Four ask whether the page answers the question the visitor asked, whether the next step is obvious, whether the form works and whether the proof holds up. The fifth covers the quiet costs such as speed and reply time. Enquiries are visits multiplied by conversion rate, so doubling the conversion rate does the same for enquiries as doubling the traffic, without buying a single extra visit.
In the accounts we audit, the most common finding is a page answering a different question from the one the visitor searched. That is our observation from our own client work, not an industry statistic, and it is why the first group of checks comes first.
The short version
- A conversion audit checks an existing page that gets traffic and produces few enquiries. It does not need new traffic, only a browser, a phone and your own analytics.
- Start with intent match: read the page as though you had typed one of its top five search terms, and check it names that thing above the fold.
- Every form field needs a visible label. The W3C says placeholder text is not a replacement for labels, because it disappears when people start typing.
- Reviews you control do not earn star ratings in Google. Google says self-serving reviews on LocalBusiness or Organization pages are ineligible for review stars.
- Measure how long you take to reply to an enquiry from your last twenty enquiries, not from memory.
- Score each section separately. One fail in the intent section outweighs several in the others.
What you get
| Format | What it is | Who it is for | Time to use |
|---|---|---|---|
| checklist | A printable 30-point conversion audit with space to score each item, so you can run it on one page or across a whole site. | Anyone whose analytics shows traffic arriving and whose phone disagrees. Works whether the traffic is paid or organic, and needs no tools beyond a browser and your own analytics. | About an hour per page |
The checklist at a glance
| Section | Checks | What it answers | What you need |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Intent match | 6 | Does the page answer the question that was asked? | Search Console or the Google Ads search terms report |
| 2. The next step | 6 | Is the action obvious and in proportion? | A phone and the page |
| 3. The form | 7 | Can someone finish it, and does it reach you? | A phone, the form, your inbox |
| 4. Proof | 6 | Would the claims survive someone checking them? | The page and your review profiles |
| 5. Quiet costs | 5 | What loses people before or after the form? | A phone on mobile data, your enquiry log |
Does the page match what the visitor searched for?
Often it does not, and a traffic report will never show it. A page that describes the company when the visitor searched for a service loses the visitor before any button or form comes into play.
| # | Check | Passes when |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Find the top five search terms or ads sending traffic to this page, and read the page as though you had typed one of them | Each of the five would recognise its answer on the page |
| 2 | The page names the thing that was searched for, in the searcher’s words, above the fold | The service and, for local searches, the place are in the headline or the line under it |
| 3 | The page is about the service searched for, not about the company | The first screen talks about the visitor’s problem |
| 4 | One page is not serving several different intents | One audience and one service per page, or it is split |
| 5 | The headline could not be lifted onto a competitor’s site unchanged | It says something only you can say |
| 6 | A stranger can tell what you sell, and to whom, within five seconds | Three people who do not know the business say it back correctly. Five seconds is a practitioner rule of thumb, not a published standard |
To find the search terms, open Search Console, choose the page under Pages, then switch to Queries. For paid traffic, use the search terms report in Google Ads.
Is the next step obvious and cheap?
The visitor should see one main action without scrolling on a phone, and it should ask for no more than the moment justifies.
| # | Check | Passes when |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | There is one primary action, not four competing ones | One main button or number per page |
| 8 | The action is visible without scrolling on a phone | It shows on the first screen at phone width |
| 9 | The button says what happens next | Words like “Get a quote by tomorrow”, not “Submit” or “Learn more” |
| 10 | There is a lower-commitment option for someone not ready to talk | A guide, a price list or a short form sits beside “Book a call” |
| 11 | What the visitor gives up is in proportion to what they get | No phone number or budget demanded for a download |
| 12 | The action repeats further down a long page | Nobody has to scroll back to the top to act |
Photo: Helena Lopes on Pexels.
Why do people start a form and not finish it?
In our audits it is usually difficulty rather than length: fields whose purpose is unclear, labels that vanish, and errors that do not say what to fix. Several of the checks below match published accessibility guidance, which also happens to make forms easier for everyone.
| # | Check | Passes when | The rule behind it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 13 | Count the fields and justify each one out loud | Every field is one you would use in the first reply | Mavix recommendation |
| 14 | Every field has a visible label, not just placeholder text | Labels stay on screen while typing | W3C: placeholder text is not a replacement for labels |
| 15 | Error messages say what is wrong and how to fix it, next to the field | Each error names the field and the fix in plain words | WCAG 3.3.1, errors identified and described in text |
| 16 | The phone keyboard matches the field | An email field brings up the @ key, a phone field the keypad | HTML input types and the inputmode attribute |
| 17 | The form works with autofill | Name, email and phone fill from the browser | WCAG 1.3.5, identify input purpose |
| 18 | What happens after submitting is useful | A confirmation says who replies and when | Mavix recommendation |
| 19 | The form actually delivers | You submit it yourself and the email arrives within a minute | Mavix recommendation |
The sources for the rules column: the W3C forms tutorial says placeholder text “is not a replacement for labels” and disappears once people start typing (W3C WAI). WCAG success criterion 3.3.1 requires that an automatically detected error is identified and described to the user in text (W3C). The inputmode attribute tells the browser which on-screen keyboard to show, including email and telephone keyboards (MDN). WCAG 1.3.5 covers marking fields so the browser can autofill them (W3C).
Would your proof survive someone checking it?
A cautious buyer is looking for a reason to stop, and a claim they cannot check gives them one.
| # | Check | Passes when |
|---|---|---|
| 20 | Every claim on the page could be checked by someone trying to disprove it | Each number or promise has a source, a date or a named customer |
| 21 | Testimonials carry a real name and company | No initials-only or anonymous quotes |
| 22 | Any star rating comes from a platform that actually holds those reviews | The rating links to the profile it came from |
| 23 | Logos are labelled | Each logo says what the relationship was: client, certification or partner |
| 24 | Numbers carry the method behind them | Each figure says what was counted and over what period |
| 25 | There is a real address, a monitored phone number and a named person | All three are on the site and answered |
Two rules sit behind this section. Google says that if the business being reviewed controls the reviews about itself, its pages using LocalBusiness or Organization structured data are not eligible for review stars in search (Google Search Central). In the US, the FTC’s final rule on fake reviews, announced on 14 August 2024, bans fake reviews and testimonials and lets the FTC seek civil penalties against knowing violators (Federal Trade Commission).
What quietly costs you enquiries?
Speed, things that move or cover the page, and slow replies. None of them appear in a traffic report, and all five checks below cost little to run.
| # | Check | Passes when |
|---|---|---|
| 26 | Load the page on a phone on mobile data and count the seconds until you can read the headline | The main content appears within 2.5 seconds, Google’s “good” target for Largest Contentful Paint |
| 27 | Nothing moves as the page loads | Layout shift of 0.1 or less, Google’s “good” target |
| 28 | No popup covers the page before anyone has read it | Any offer uses a small banner, not a full-screen overlay |
| 29 | Any chat widget is staffed | Someone replies within the hours shown, or the widget comes off |
| 30 | You know your real reply time to an enquiry | The median of your last twenty enquiries, measured |
The speed targets come from Google’s Core Web Vitals guidance (web.dev). On popups, Google says intrusive interstitials and dialogs make content hard for search engines to understand and may lead to poor search performance. It recommends banners that take up little screen space instead (Google Search Central). Reply time is our own emphasis: in the accounts we work on, it is one of the cheapest things to fix, because it costs a process rather than money.
Photo: RDNE Stock project on Pexels.
Why this list exists
Traffic multiplied by conversion rate equals enquiries. Doubling the conversion rate has exactly the same effect on enquiries as doubling the traffic. It is often the cheaper of the two, because the traffic has already been paid for in money or in months of search work. That is not an argument against buying traffic.
It is an argument for fixing the multiplier before buying more of the input, since more traffic through a leaking page only makes the leak bigger. Work through section one first. In our audits, intent mismatch is the most common finding and the one no amount of work further down the page makes up for.
The bottom line
A page that gets visits and no enquiries usually has a reason you can find in an hour with a phone and your own analytics. Check that it answers the question asked, make the next step obvious, make the form work, make the proof checkable, and reply fast. Fix those before paying for more visitors.
Questions people ask about this
Should I A and B test these changes?
Usually not on a small site. Detecting a realistic improvement at a normal conversion rate needs thousands of sessions per variant. The rule of thumb we use is that below roughly ten thousand sessions a month a test will either run for months or return a result driven by noise. That threshold is a practitioner’s estimate, not a fixed number. Make the larger change and measure a clean before and after over a comparable period.
Which of these matters most?
Section one, by a distance. If the page is answering a different question to the one that was typed, nothing in sections two to five will rescue it. After that, reply speed from section five, which costs nothing but a process.
What conversion rate should I expect?
There is no universal benchmark that holds up, because the rate depends on traffic source, intent and offer. In the accounts we see, branded search converts far better than cold display, so comparing them tells you little. The only useful comparison is your own page against itself, before and after, on the same traffic mix.
How do I find which search terms send traffic to a page?
Open Search Console, choose the page under Pages, then switch to the Queries tab to see what people typed before they landed there. For paid traffic, open the search terms report in Google Ads and filter by the landing page. Take the top five from each. Those are the questions the page is being asked, whatever you meant it to answer.
Should I audit the homepage or a service page first?
The page receiving the most paid or organic traffic that is meant to produce an enquiry, which is rarely the homepage. Sort your landing pages by sessions in analytics and start with the top one that has a form or a phone number on it. A fix there pays back on every visit. The homepage usually serves too many intents to score cleanly.
How do I measure my response time to enquiries?
Take the last twenty enquiries, record when each arrived and when the first human reply went out, then take the median. Do not estimate it. In our experience owners guess much faster times than they measure, because evenings and weekends count. Once you have the number, decide who owns replies outside office hours, since that is often where the delay hides.
What if a page has to serve two audiences?
Split it. A page that speaks to homeowners and commercial buyers in alternate paragraphs converts neither, because each reads half a page of the wrong message. Build one page per intent, each with its own headline and proof, and link them from a short chooser if you must keep a single entry point. Send the paid traffic straight to the matching page.
How do I score the checklist?
Score each item as pass, fail or not applicable, then count the fails by section rather than in total. A single fail in section one outweighs several in section five, because intent decides whether anything else gets read. Fix section one fails first, then reply speed, then the form. Rerun the audit a month later on the same page.
Can I run this on a paid landing page?
Yes, and the result is usually clearer, because you know exactly which ad sent the visitor. Read the ad, then read the page. If the ad promises a price, a location or a service the page does not name above the fold, that is your intent mismatch. Paid pages also expose form problems quickly, since every wasted click has a cost attached.
Do I need a heatmap or session recording tool?
Not to run this list. Every check on it can be done with a browser, a phone on mobile data and your own analytics. Recording tools help later, when you want to see where people stop on a long page. Start with the checklist, fix what it finds, then decide whether a tool would answer a question you still have.
What should happen after someone submits the form?
A confirmation that says what happens next and when: who will reply, roughly how soon, and what to do in the meantime. That is also the moment to offer something useful, such as a guide or a link to a relevant case study. Then check the email side. The confirmation and the internal notification should both arrive within a minute.
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