Most websites are judged in about three seconds, on a phone, by someone who is half distracted. These five decisions do more for enquiries than anything else on the page.

1. Say what you do, where, in the first line

The single most common mistake I see is a home page that opens with "Welcome to our website" or a slogan nobody can decode. A visitor who cannot tell within a few seconds what you sell and whether you work in their area will simply go back to the search results.

Put it plainly: the service, the place, and what to do next. "Commercial kitchen equipment and refrigeration, supplied across Gauteng. Call for a quote." Nobody was ever put off by clarity.

2. Make the phone number a link, and keep it in reach

A number typed as plain text is useless on a phone. It should open the dialler with one tap, and it should be visible without hunting. The same applies to WhatsApp, which in South Africa converts better than any contact form.

When I change nothing else on an old site but this, calls go up. It is that basic, and that often missed.

3. One action per screen

A page offering five equal choices gets none of them taken. Every screen should have one obvious next step, repeated as the visitor scrolls: call, WhatsApp, or request a quote. Secondary links can exist, but they should look secondary.

4. Show the work, not stock photos

A photograph of a real job, taken on your phone, beats a polished stock image of strangers in a boardroom every time. People are trying to work out whether you are real and whether you are any good. Stock photos answer neither question.

The same goes for reviews. Three sentences from a customer in their own words do more than a paragraph you wrote about yourself.

5. Load fast, or none of the above matters

Most South African visitors arrive on mobile data, often on a patchy signal. A page that takes six seconds loses a good share of them before your headline appears. Compressed images, few plugins and local hosting fix most of it, and I have written about why sites are slow and what the delay costs you.

What this looks like in practice

• Headline naming the service and the area
• Tap-to-call and WhatsApp buttons on every screen
• Photos of actual jobs, with short captions
• Reviews with names, not "Client, Johannesburg"
• A short form asking only what you genuinely need
• Pages that load in under three seconds on mobile data

None of this is fashion. It is the same five things, over and over, on the sites that bring in work.