Guides · Updated 06 Aug 2026
Why your firm's website gets no enquiries
Five reasons, in order of how often we find them: the form is broken, nobody arrives, they arrive and can't tell what you do, they can tell but don't trust it, or they trust it and can't work out how to contact you. It is almost never the design.
Firms usually blame the design. It's the visible part, so it takes the blame.
But a site that looks dated and works properly will out-earn a beautiful site with a broken form every time. One is embarrassing. The other is silent.
Here are the five, ranked, and how to tell which is yours.
1. The form is broken
How often we find it: more than any other single fault.
A broken form doesn't announce itself. The visitor sees "thank you for your enquiry" and leaves happy. You see nothing, and put it down to a quiet month.
How to tell: submit it yourself, from a private browsing window, using your own name. Wait five minutes. Check spam. If it doesn't arrive, you've found your answer and everything below is academic.
Do this first. It takes five minutes and it's the only reason on this list that can be costing you every single enquiry.
→ How to tell whether your contact form is actually working
2. Nobody is arriving
The most common reason after a broken form.
Not a website problem — a findability problem. The site works perfectly and eleven people saw it last month.
How to tell:
- Search Google for your practice area and city, in a private window. Are you on the first page?
- Search
site:yourfirm.co.za. How many of your pages does Google actually know about? - Search your firm's name. Does your Google Business Profile appear, with current hours and a phone number?
- Ask ChatGPT or Gemini for an attorney in your city and practice area. Do you appear?
If your practice areas all sit on one page behind tabs, Google sees one page about everything rather than five pages about specific things. That single decision costs more visibility than most firms realise.
→ Your Google Business Profile matters more than your website
3. They arrive, and can't tell what you do
Someone lands on your homepage. Within about five seconds they decide whether you're relevant to their problem.
A person facing an eviction is not reading your firm history. They're scanning for the word "eviction."
How to tell: open your homepage on your phone. Without scrolling, can you see what kind of law you practise and where you are?
If the top of the page is a photograph, a mission statement, or the year the firm was founded, the answer is no.
Firms with eight practice areas have a harder version of this problem. The visitor has one problem, not eight, and a long list makes him work to find himself in it.
4. They can tell, but they don't trust it
Trust breaks on small things, and legal clients are unusually alert to them.
The signals that cost you:
- No photographs of actual attorneys
- No physical address
- A copyright notice ending in 2019
- A blog that stopped three years ago
- Typos in the navigation or footer
- A practice area page with two sentences on it
- No LPC details anywhere
None of these individually loses the client. Together they say this firm is not paying attention — which is precisely what someone about to hand over a matter is trying to rule out.
We reviewed a family law firm whose homepage said "Stay up to date with the latest news in personal injury law." Nine months after a professional rebuild. The counter meant to show cases won displayed 0.
Nothing was broken. It simply looked unattended, because it was.
5. They trust it, and can't work out what to do next
The last hurdle, and the easiest to fix.
How to tell, on your phone:
- Is your phone number tappable, or plain text he has to memorise?
- Is there a call to action on every practice area page, or only on the contact page?
- Is there a WhatsApp option?
- How many taps from a practice area page to sending you a message?
Someone reading about maintenance claims is at the peak of his intent right there. If the only way to act is to navigate to a contact page and fill in six fields, a share of those people leave instead.
Work through them in order
| Order | Check | Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Submit your own form | 5 min |
| 2 | Search your practice area and city | 5 min |
| 3 | Read your homepage on a phone, top screen only | 2 min |
| 4 | Look for the trust signals above | 5 min |
| 5 | Count taps from a practice area page to contact | 3 min |
Twenty minutes, in that order. Stop when you find something — the earlier reasons cost you more than the later ones.
What this doesn't cover
The five above are the reasons a working website still produces nothing. They assume the site loads, that it's indexed, and that it hasn't been quietly serving a certificate error to half its visitors for a month.
Those are the checks underneath, and they need tools rather than a phone.
Send us your URL and we'll run all sixty — the visible ones and the ones underneath — and email you what we find. Free, whether you hire us or not.
Related guides
Check your own law firm website in twenty minutes
Twelve checks from our sixty-check audit — the ones that need nothing but a phone. Most firms find three or four faults they didn't know about.
How to tell whether your contact form is actually working
Submit it yourself. Most firms never have. Here are the four ways a contact form fails without telling anybody.
Your Google Business Profile matters more than your website
For someone searching 'attorney near me', the profile decides. The website is the second click, and often there isn't one.