Why the website comes before any channel

The arithmetic

Suppose a Dublin plumber buys clicks at about one dollar eighty and one in twenty becomes an enquiry. That is thirty-six dollars an enquiry. Improve the page so one in ten converts and the same enquiry costs eighteen. Nothing about the channel changed, and the cost halved.

Now run it the other way. A roofer paying about thirteen dollars a click with a page that converts one in fifty is paying six hundred and fifty dollars for an enquiry, and no amount of campaign management fixes that.

The site is the multiplier, and it is the only part of the whole system that improves every channel at once.

The four checks

Does the first screen say what you do and where? A visitor should know within two seconds whether they are in the right place. Most business sites open with a slogan instead.

Is the phone number visible without scrolling, and is it tappable? In most local trades the enquiry is a call. A number buried in a footer is a conversion problem disguised as a design choice.

Does it load quickly on a phone on mobile data? Not on your office broadband. Most local searches happen on a phone, often outdoors.

Is there a page for each service? One page listing eight services answers none of the eight searches that bring people to it.

Four checks, roughly ten minutes, and they will explain most of the gap between traffic and enquiries.

What this has to do with search

More than it looks. A page that answers the search it was reached by is also the page search systems are trying to reward, so the work overlaps almost entirely with the unpaid side. Structured data, a clear service page per service and a fast mobile render serve the visitor and the engine at once.

The order this implies

Website, then the profile, then the channels that buy reach. The situations page has the exceptions, and there is one worth naming here: if the phone must ring this week, run ads while the site is being fixed, and accept that the first month will convert badly.

Who publishes this

A company that sells search services rather than web design, which is worth knowing when reading a page that tells you to spend on the site before spending with them.