There’s no single right number of website enquiries for every firm. Your number comes from a simple sum: the new clients you want each month, times how many enquiries it usually takes you to win one. If you want 4 clients and 1 in 5 enquiries becomes a client, you need about 20 good-fit enquiries a month.
You look at your website enquiries each month and wonder if the number is any good. Five feels low. Twenty sounds better. But better than what?
How many enquiries should your website get? And how would you know if it’s doing its job, or if you’re paying for something that isn’t pulling its weight?
It’s a fair question, and a common one. A practice that takes on four large cases a month needs very different numbers from one that handles forty small jobs.
By the end of this article, you’ll be able to work out your own target. It’s based on the clients you want. It takes about half an hour with your own records.
Key takeaways
- There’s no fair industry average for website enquiries. Your target comes from your own goals and records.
- Start with how many new clients you want each month, then work backwards.
- Your own enquiry-to-client rate is the most useful number you can know.
- Only count enquiries that fit the work you want. Spam and poor-fit enquiries don’t help.
- Check you can handle the number you’re aiming for before you try to grow it.
In this article
- Averages won’t tell you what your website should do
- Start with the clients you want each month
- Find out how many enquiries become clients for you
- Work out your monthly enquiry target
- Count only the enquiries that fit your work
- Check your target against what you can handle
- Questions people ask about enquiry numbers
Averages won’t tell you what your website should do
It’s tempting to search for an average and compare yourself to it. The trouble is, averages mix together firms that have little in common. A family law practice, a planning consultancy and a firm of accountants all get enquiries. But the size of each piece of work, the number of people searching and the time it takes to decide are all different.
Some figures you’ll find online also count every form fill as an enquiry. That includes spam, job applications and sales pitches. So even a well-sourced figure may not be counting the same thing you are.
There’s a better question to ask. How many enquiries do you need to win the clients you want? That number is yours, and you can work it out.
Start with the clients you want each month
Begin with the end. How many new clients do you want to take on each month?
Base this on your plans for the year ahead. Think about who you want to hire, the income you’re aiming for and the work you’d like more of.
If you’re not sure, look at what a typical new client is worth to you. Divide the extra income you want by that figure. Our guide to what a new client is worth to your business walks you through it step by step.
Be specific about the type of client, too. “Two more commercial property clients a month” is far more useful than “more clients”. It shapes which enquiries you count later.
H2: Find out how many enquiries become clients for you
In our experience, many firms don’t know this number. It’s the most useful one you can have.
Look back over the last three to six months. Count every genuine enquiry, from your website, phone and email. Then count how many became paying clients.
Divide clients by enquiries. If 30 genuine enquiries turned into 6 clients, your rate is 6 out of 30, or 1 in 5.
Use your own records for this, even if they’re rough. A notebook, your inbox or a client system will do. If you don’t track enquiries yet, start a simple log today, with one line per enquiry.
Two things to watch for. First, some clients take months to decide, so leave recent enquiries out or mark them “still deciding”. Second, your rate may differ by service. If it does, work out a rate for the service you most want to grow.
Work out your monthly enquiry target
Now you can do the sum. Divide the clients you want by your enquiry-to-client rate. Here’s a worked example with made-up numbers. A firm wants four new clients a month. From its records, about 1 in 5 genuine enquiries becomes a client.
- Clients wanted each month: 4
- Enquiry-to-client rate: 1 in 5
- Enquiries needed each month: 4 × 5 = 20
So this firm needs around 20 genuine, good-fit enquiries a month from all sources combined. Then check how many come through the website.
If referrals bring in 8 good-fit enquiries a month, the website and other marketing need to bring in the other 12. That’s the website’s target, and it’s specific to this firm.
Write your own numbers into the same three lines. You now have a target you can measure every month.
If you’ve used our ROI calculator, our article on what your result means can help you read it alongside this target.
Count only the enquiries that fit your work
Twenty enquiries a month sounds good. Twenty enquiries for work you don’t do sounds a lot less good.
When you count, sort each enquiry into one of three groups:
- Good fit: the work you want, in an area you cover, at a size that makes sense.
- Poor fit: real people, but work you don’t do or can’t take on.
- Not real: spam, sales pitches, job applications and messages written by software.
Only the first group counts towards your target. If a large share of your enquiries are poor fit, more traffic won’t fix it. The usual fix is clearer wording on the website about who you help and what you do.
Be wary of reports that show “conversions” with no detail. A conversion can be a button click or a page view, depending on how it’s set up. Ask what’s being counted, and compare it with your own log.
For a sense of what’s possible, here’s one example. A UK business on our monthly marketing plan got 70+ website enquiries every month (between 63 and 92 a month, April to September 2026). That figure fits that business and its market. Your own target, worked out above, is the one to measure against.
Check your target against what you can handle
Before you push for more enquiries, check you can handle them well. Every enquiry needs a reply, and many need a call. Ask yourself three questions. Who replies to each new enquiry? How long does each one take? And is there room in the diary for the extra first calls?
If enquiries already wait days for a reply, more of them may not help. Some of the people waiting will go elsewhere. In that case, fixing how enquiries are handled can bring in more clients from the enquiries you already get.
It’s often the quickest win. In the example above, raising the rate from 1 in 5 to 1 in 4 means 16 enquiries would bring in four clients, instead of 20.
Once replies are quick and owned, growing the number makes sense. Then each new enquiry has a fair chance of becoming a client.
Your number, measured every month
Open your records this week and do the sum. Once you know your number, every report you get becomes easier to judge. You can see whether things are moving, and ask sharper questions when they’re not.
If you’d like help working out your own target, book a More Clients Call. It’s a free call, under 30 minutes, and we’ll go through your numbers with you.
Not ready for a call? Read what a new client is worth to your business
