A website problem rarely announces itself. Nobody emails you to say your site took too long to load — they just leave, and call whoever came up next. Which means a leaky website looks exactly like a quiet month.
Here are the five leaks we see most often on Maritime small business sites, what each one actually costs, and how to check yours before lunch.
1. It loads slowly
More than half of mobile visitors give up on a page that takes over three seconds. On phone data — where most of your local customers are — bloated image files are usually the culprit.
Check it: run your site through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool. Under 3 seconds on mobile is the bar.
2. It doesn't work on a phone
Sixty percent or more of local business traffic is mobile. If visitors have to pinch and zoom to read your services, or the menu breaks, or buttons are too small to tap, the site is telling them you're behind — even if your work isn't.
Check it: open your site on your own phone and try to do the thing a customer would: find your services, your hours, and how to contact you. Time yourself.
3. There's no obvious next step
A visitor who's interested needs somewhere to go: a quote button, a booking link, a phone number that works when tapped. If your homepage is a wall of description with contact info buried on another page, interested people leave without acting — and interest without action is a lost customer.
Check it: can a first-time visitor spot how to hire you within five seconds of landing? Ask someone who's never seen the site.
4. The information is out of date
Old hours, discontinued services, a copyright year from three years ago — small things, but customers read them as a signal about how the business runs. Worse, AI tools now read your site to answer questions about your business, and they repeat whatever's there. Outdated pages mean confidently wrong answers, delivered to customers on your behalf.
Check it: read every page as if you were a stranger. Anything that's no longer true gets fixed this week.
5. You're invisible in local search
If searching your service plus your town doesn't surface your business on the first page — or your Google Business Profile is unclaimed or half-empty — customers who are actively looking for what you sell are finding someone else. This is the most expensive leak on the list, because these are the highest-intent customers there are.
Check it: search "[your service] [your town]" in a private browser window. If you're not there, that's the gap.
The honest next step
Sometimes these are quick fixes on an otherwise solid site. Sometimes they add up to a rebuild being cheaper than patching. The only way to know is an honest assessment — which is where every Plan-It web project starts. If you'd like one, get in touch and we'll tell you plainly which situation you're in.