Five Things Nigerian Business Websites Get Wrong

We look at a lot of Nigerian business websites, usually because somebody has asked us why theirs is not bringing in work. The same five things come up almost every time, and none of them are about taste.

1. The homepage does not say what the business does

Open your own homepage and read only the biggest line of text. Would a stranger know what you sell and who you sell it to?

Most of the time the biggest line says something like "Innovative solutions for a digital future", or "Excellence, delivered". That sentence would fit a bank, a logistics firm or a barber.

A visitor gives you a few seconds to answer one question: am I in the right place? Replace the slogan with a plain description of the work. "We install and maintain solar systems for homes and small businesses in Lagos" is not exciting, and it will outperform anything with the word innovative in it.

2. Nothing on the page says what it costs

Pricing is the most searched thing about any service, and the least published.

The fear is understandable. Publish a number and you might scare someone off, or a competitor sees it. What actually happens is that a visitor who cannot find a price assumes you are expensive, or assumes you are hiding something, and leaves to find someone who said.

You do not have to publish an exact figure. A starting price, a typical range, or even "most projects of this kind are between X and Y" does the job, because it lets someone qualify themselves. Our own pricing article is the most read thing we have published, and it exists purely because almost nobody else in this market will do it.

3. The phone number is an image

This is small and it is costing you calls.

If your phone number is inside a graphic, or written without a proper link, then on a phone it cannot be tapped. The visitor has to memorise it, leave your site, open the dialler and type it. A meaningful share of them will not.

Every phone number on the site should be a tappable link, and it should appear in the header, in the footer, and on the contact page. Same for WhatsApp, which in this market is frequently the channel people actually prefer.

4. There is no evidence anything is real

Most sites make claims. Very few offer proof, and proof is the entire job of a business website.

Things that count as proof:

• Named clients, ideally with a link to work you can open
• Photographs of your actual premises, staff, or finished jobs
• A registration number a visitor can verify
• Reviews with real names attached
• A physical address

Things that do not count as proof:

• Stock photographs of people who do not work for you
• "Trusted by hundreds of clients", with no names
• Badges and seals that link nowhere
• Testimonials from initials

That distinction matters more here than in many markets, because buyers have learned to be careful. We wrote a whole piece on how to check a company is real before paying them, and every item on that checklist is something your own site should make easy to satisfy.

5. It was designed on a laptop and never tested on a phone

Almost everyone arriving at your site is holding a phone, often on mobile data, often on a device a few years old.

Do this today. Take your own phone, leave the office wifi, and try to complete the single most important thing a customer does: find the price, or send an enquiry, or make a booking. Time it.

What usually surfaces:

• The page takes so long that you would have left
• Text too small to read without zooming, and zooming breaks the layout
• A menu that covers the screen and will not close
• A contact form with fields too narrow to type into
• A popup that appears immediately and cannot be dismissed with a thumb

Every one of these is invisible on a desktop, and every one of them is losing you enquiries right now.

The order to fix them

Start with the phone test, because it usually reveals problems that make the other four irrelevant. Then fix the headline, because it is a paragraph of work and changes who stays. Then the phone number, which takes minutes. Then publish a price. Then add proof.

None of this is a redesign. All five can be done on an existing site in about a week, and they will move more enquiries than a new look would.

If the site is slow as well as unclear, why your website is slow covers the causes in order.