Why Hitchin High Street Businesses Need a Website That Works on Mobile

I watched someone walk past three shops on Hitchin High Street because their websites didn't load

Saturday morning. Standing outside The Half Moon with a coffee. Watched a woman stop outside a furniture shop, pull out her phone, tap the screen a few times, frown, and walk on. Same thing at the vintage clothing place two doors down. By the time she'd done it again at the homeware shop, I was curious enough to check their websites myself.

Two of them took over eight seconds to load on my phone. The third had text so small I had to pinch-zoom just to read the opening hours. And this was on 5G, standing right there on the high street.

She ended up in the Oxfam. They've got a proper mobile site.

Look, I run an AI agency. We do AEO stuff, help businesses show up in ChatGPT and Perplexity searches, all that. But before any of that matters, before we even talk about answer engines or voice search or whatever's coming next... your website has to actually work when someone pulls out their phone while standing outside your shop.

Most business owners have no idea what their website looks like on a phone

You probably designed your site on a laptop. Or your web designer did. Looked great on that 24-inch monitor. Nice big hero image. Menu spread across the top. Contact details in the footer where they belong.

Then someone tries to visit it on a phone and the whole thing falls apart.

The hero image is massive and pushes everything else down. The menu has collapsed into one of those hamburger icons that people either can't find or can't be bothered to tap. Your contact details are buried three scroll-lengths down. The phone number isn't clickable, so they have to write it down or remember it or copy-paste it. And by then they've given up and gone somewhere else.

I see this constantly around Stevenage and Letchworth. Good businesses, been around for years, proper expertise. Website that was fine in 2018 but hasn't been touched since. And now it's actively costing them customers.

The numbers are worse than you think

Here's what I'm seeing in 2026 for local businesses in North Hertfordshire. Not big cities. Not London. Right here.

Between 75% and 85% of website visits are on mobile. For some businesses it's higher. Coffee shops, restaurants, anything people search for while they're out and about... you're looking at 90%.

If your site doesn't work on mobile, you've basically just told three quarters of your potential customers to go away.

And "work" doesn't mean "technically loads eventually." It means:

• Loads in under three seconds
• Text is readable without zooming
• Buttons are big enough to tap without hitting the wrong thing
• Phone numbers are clickable
• Forms don't make people want to throw their phone in the bin

That last one. I filled out a contact form on a Baldock tradesman's website last month. Had to zoom in to read the field labels, zoom out to see where I was in the form, zoom back in to type. Got to the submit button and my thumb was covering half the screen. Pressed the wrong thing, lost everything I'd typed.

Didn't bother trying again. Found someone else.

AI search makes this ten times more important

Right, so this is where it gets interesting. And a bit annoying for businesses that haven't sorted their mobile stuff yet.

ChatGPT, Perplexy, Google's AI search, SearchGPT, whatever Meta's up to. All of these answer engines are pulling information from websites and showing it directly in the chat. That's what AEO is about. Getting your business to show up when someone asks "best independent bookshop near Hitchin" or "where can I get my watch fixed in Royston."

But here's the thing. These AI systems can't read your website if it's a broken mess on mobile. They're essentially accessing sites the same way a phone does. If your mobile site is slow, badly structured, or full of weird formatting issues... the AI just moves on to the next result.

Your competitor who sorted their mobile site out six months ago? They're the one showing up in the AI answer. With their address, their hours, a nice summary of what they do. Direct link to book or call.

You're nowhere.

This is already happening. I'm working with a cafe owner in Letchworth who was barely getting any ChatGPT traffic. We checked. Their mobile site was a disaster. Fixed that first, before we even touched the AEO stuff. Within two weeks they started appearing in AI answers. People started walking in saying "ChatGPT recommended you."

Mobile-first isn't optional anymore. It's the baseline for everything else that comes after.

What "works on mobile" actually means in 2026

OK so let's get specific. Because "mobile-friendly" is one of those phrases that means different things to different people.

Your website works on mobile if someone can do the main thing they came to do in under 30 seconds. That's it. That's the test.

For a restaurant: find your menu, see your hours, book a table or call you.

For a shop: see what you sell, find your location, check if you're open now.

For a tradesman: understand what you do, see some examples, get in touch.

If any of those things take longer than 30 seconds on a phone, you're losing people.

Some specific things that need to work:

Your contact details should be at the top. Not in the footer. Not on a separate Contact page. Right there where people can see them. Phone number that taps to call. Address that taps to open maps.

Images need to load fast and look right. Not massive files that take forever to download. Not weirdly cropped or stretched. Just... normal photos that load quickly and make sense.

Text size matters more than you think. If I have to zoom in to read your opening hours, your site doesn't work on mobile. Doesn't matter what your web designer says.

Forms should be short. Every extra field is another chance for someone to give up. Name, email, phone, message. That's it. You can ask them more questions later.

The thing nobody tells you about mobile sites

They're not about making everything smaller. That's what most people get wrong.

A mobile site isn't your desktop site squashed down. It's a different thing. Different priorities. Different layout. Different content sometimes.

On desktop, you've got space. You can have a big welcome message, an intro paragraph that sets the scene, a nice grid of services. Someone's sitting at a desk, they've got time.

On mobile, someone's standing in the rain trying to find out if you're open. Or sitting on a bus deciding where to eat lunch. Or walking past your shop wondering what you actually sell.

They need the information now. No intro paragraph. No welcome message. Just the actual useful stuff.

I see businesses agonising over their brand messaging, their mission statement, their story. Fine. Put that on the About page. But the first thing someone sees on mobile should be what you do and how to contact you. Everything else can come later.

Most web designers still don't get this

Had a client show me their new website last month. Lovely design. Won some award. Looked incredible on the designer's MacBook Pro.

On my phone it was bloody useless.

The designer had made it "responsive" which technically means it adapts to different screen sizes. But they'd clearly designed it on a big screen and then just let the responsive framework squash everything down. The mobile version was an afterthought.

That's still how most websites get built. Desktop first. Mobile as an adaptation.

Should be the other way round. Design for mobile. Make sure that works perfectly. Then expand it for desktop. That way you're forced to prioritise. You can't fit everything on a phone screen, so you have to decide what actually matters.

Which is a useful exercise anyway. Even for the desktop version.

What to actually do about this

Check your website on your phone. Right now. Don't wait until you've finished reading this. Pull it up, time how long it takes to load, try to do the main thing a customer would want to do.

If it's slow, if it's hard to use, if anything feels annoying... that's what every potential customer is experiencing. And most of them won't tell you. They'll just leave.

Get someone else to check it too. Someone who doesn't know your website. Watch them try to use it. Don't help. Just watch. The bits where they hesitate or get confused or give up... those are the bits that need fixing.

And here's the thing. This doesn't have to be expensive or complicated. Sometimes it's just making the text bigger. Making the contact details more obvious. Compressing some images. Basic stuff.

Sometimes you need to rebuild the whole thing. But at least you'll know.

Look, if your site's broken on mobile, none of the clever AEO stuff matters. None of the AI search optimisation matters. You're just sending potential customers to a dead end.

Sort that first. Then we can talk about getting you showing up when people ask ChatGPT where to find what you do.

If you want someone to actually look at what's going on with your mobile site and tell you straight, book a call. Or if you're interested in the whole AEO thing once you've got the basics sorted, we do AEO work across North Hertfordshire. Up to you. Just... check your site on your phone first.