The Website That Killed Their Leads (And How We Brought It Back to Life)
I got the email late on a Friday afternoon.
"We launched our new website last month… and leads have completely dried up."
The sender was a small business owner who had recently paid for a full website redesign. The site looked slick. Beautiful branding, lots of movement, trendy fonts. But behind the aesthetics was a problem big enough to crater their lead flow—and fast.
What followed was a website audit that revealed the kind of nightmare I see way too often: a design-first, strategy-last approach that tanked their visibility and confused their visitors. In this post, I’ll break down what went wrong, how we fixed it, and what you can learn from their mistake.
What Looked Good… Wasn’t Working
On the surface, their new site seemed modern. It had bold visuals, minimal text, and smooth scrolling animations. But here’s what I found within five minutes:
No keywords anywhere on the homepage—not in headers, titles, or image alt text
The Services page was a single paragraph with no links, no CTAs, and no internal structure
The navigation was hidden behind an animated hamburger menu that didn’t work on mobile
Contact info was only accessible through a button buried halfway down the homepage
Google couldn’t index half the site because it was built with heavy JavaScript and no fallback content
In short, it was a conversion and SEO disaster wrapped in a pretty package.
The #1 Mistake: Prioritizing Design Over Strategy
Let me be clear: good design matters. But design without strategic content, clear structure, and user flow is just decoration.
What this client’s site lacked was clarity. A visitor couldn’t immediately tell:
What the business actually did
Who it was for
Where they were located
What to do next
Every second that passes without answers to those questions increases the chance of a bounce. And every bounce tells Google, "This site doesn’t help users"—which drags down your rankings.
The Hidden SEO Damage: What Search Engines Saw
From an SEO standpoint, the site was nearly invisible. Why?
The homepage had no H1 heading
Meta titles were missing or generic (“Home – My Website”)
Images were large and uncompressed, hurting page speed
There was no sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
No structured data to help identify business type, location, or offerings
Important service pages were missing entirely
Google had nothing to grab onto—no signals, no structure, no content. The site wasn’t even showing up for their own business name anymore.
How We Fixed It: The Redemption Phase
The redesign wasn’t hopeless. The bones were solid, and the branding had potential. But we had to rebuild the content and technical strategy from the ground up.
✅ Rewrote Every Page With SEO in Mind
Each core service got its own page, with keyword-rich headlines, clear calls-to-action, and internal links to related content. We researched high-intent search terms in their industry and optimized accordingly.
✅ Simplified the Navigation and Mobile Menu
We removed the buried hamburger menu and replaced it with a clear, sticky top nav that worked flawlessly on mobile and desktop.
✅ Added Trust-Building Content
We included testimonials, recognizable logos, and “As Seen In” media mentions to re-establish credibility with visitors—and Google.
✅ Fixed Technical SEO
We:
Created and submitted a sitemap
Installed schema markup for local SEO
Optimized images and reduced load time
Installed basic analytics and conversion tracking
Within weeks, their rankings started climbing again—and the leads returned.
The Takeaway for Business Owners: Don’t Sacrifice Strategy for Style
You only get one shot to make a first impression online. And if your site is focused on looking cool instead of communicating clearly, your visitors—and Google—will walk away.
Here’s what every small business website needs to do, regardless of industry:
Make what you do and who you serve obvious
Lead with keywords your audience is actually searching for
Prioritize fast load times and mobile usability
Guide users with clear, bold calls-to-action
Ensure Google can crawl and understand your content
Focus every page on helping, not just impressing
A Great Website Doesn’t Just Look Good—It Performs
The site in this story now ranks on page one for multiple service-related search terms. It converts visitors at 3x the rate of the old one. And most importantly, the owner is back to getting consistent inquiries—without running paid ads.
That’s the power of building your site with a strategy-first mindset.
If your site looks nice but isn’t bringing in business, don’t wait for things to get worse. It might be time to take a hard look at what’s really under the hood.
Need help figuring out what’s working and what’s hurting your results? That’s what I do. Let’s fix it—together.
