We audit dozens of Medicine Hat small business websites every year. The same handful of mistakes show up again and again — and the good news is, almost every one of them is fixable in an afternoon. None of these are about being a bad business. They’re just about not knowing what your website is supposed to be doing.
Here are the seven we see most often, in roughly the order of how much business they’re costing you.
1. Hiding the phone number
This is the single most expensive mistake on this list. We regularly audit websites where the phone number is:
- In tiny grey text in the footer
- On the contact page only
- An image, so you can’t tap it on a phone
- Missing entirely
For most local businesses, the phone is still where deals close. If a customer has to hunt for it, you’ve already lost half of them. The phone number should be in the top right of every page on desktop, and tap-to-call on mobile, full stop.
2. Generic stock photography
Stock photos of impossibly cheerful “business people” shaking hands. A grinning model in a hard hat that nobody at your shop owns. Soft-focus pictures of “teamwork.” Visitors recognise stock photography instantly, and it quietly tells them: “this business doesn’t trust you with what they really look like.”
The fix is cheap. Spend a half-day with a local photographer (or even a friend with a decent phone) photographing your team, your space, your work, and your products. Real beats polished every single time.
3. Vague homepage headlines
Most Medicine Hat small business websites greet visitors with something like:
“Innovative Solutions for the Modern Era” “Your Trusted Partner in Excellence” “Quality You Can Count On”
None of those tell anyone what you do. Your homepage has roughly three seconds to answer two questions: what do you do, and is it for me? A working homepage headline looks more like:
“Furnace and AC repair in Medicine Hat. Same-day service, no after-hours fees.”
That’s not creative writing. It’s clarity. And clarity converts.
4. No prices anywhere
We get it — pricing is sensitive. But a website with zero pricing information puts a real cost on every visitor: the social cost of having to email a stranger to ask “how much?” Most won’t. They’ll go to the next site that gives them a number.
You don’t have to publish a full price list. You just have to give people a starting point:
- “Starter websites from $800 CAD”
- “Basic furnace tune-up: $149”
- “Family law consultations: $250 first hour”
Just a number. Even a range. The first business in a category to publish prices wins a surprising amount of work.
5. Buried or broken contact forms
Two failure modes here, both common:
- The form lives on a “Contact” page three clicks deep, with no shortcut from anywhere else.
- The form is technically present but quietly stopped emailing months ago. Nobody noticed because nobody tested it.
Fix one: a short contact form (or at minimum a “Book a call” button) on the homepage and on every service page. Fix two: actually submit your own form once a month and confirm the email arrives. We’ve found broken forms on a meaningful percentage of sites we audit. Sometimes for years.
6. Treating the site as a one-time project
A website is a tool, not a trophy. The mindset that costs Medicine Hat businesses real money is:
“Great, the website is done. Now I can stop thinking about it.”
Six months later, hours are wrong, services have changed, the team page shows people who left, the latest blog post is from 2024, and the phone has gone quiet. The site is alive. It needs ten minutes of care a week, not a year of neglect followed by a panic redesign.
The fix is a calendar reminder and either a basic maintenance plan or 30 minutes a week.
7. No clear next step on every page
Walk through your website page by page and ask one question of each: what do I want this person to do next? The answer should be obvious in two seconds — not buried, not optional, not “well it depends.” On a service page: book this service. On the about page: meet the team or get in touch. On the homepage: pick the most likely first step.
A site that doesn’t ask for the next step is a brochure. A site that asks confidently is a salesperson. The difference shows up in your bank account.
Bonus: ignoring mobile
Honourable mention because it underlies everything: more than half of small business website traffic in Canada now comes from mobile. If your site is even a little broken on a phone, every other fix on this list is doing half the work. Open your homepage on your phone right now. Be honest about what you see.
How to do a quick self-audit
You don’t need to hire anyone to find most of these. Take 20 minutes:
- Open your site on a phone, in landscape and portrait.
- Time the homepage load. Anything over 4 seconds is too slow.
- Find the phone number in 2 seconds or less. Tap it. Does it call?
- Submit your contact form. Did the email arrive?
- Read the homepage headline aloud. Does a stranger know what you do?
- Find pricing. Is there any?
- Pick a random page. What’s the next step?
Anywhere you stumble is a real opportunity.
Want a free outside opinion?
We do free 30-minute website audits for Medicine Hat businesses, based on the criteria in this article and our website checklist. You’ll get a written summary regardless of whether you decide to hire us — and we’ll give you the honest “you don’t need us” answer if that’s the truth.
Book your free audit — no pressure, no upsell.
