Build small steps for your customers.

Behaviour changed, your competitors didn't

Before we talk about staircases, look at the ground. What makes this urgent isn't a question of method, it's a deep shift in how people decide.

Nobody calls any more

Fifteen years ago, picking up the phone was ordinary. You called to ask whether something was in stock, to check opening hours, to book a table, to ask a silly question. Nobody saw it as an effort.

Today that gesture has become expensive. Not because people got lazy, but because they've grown used to getting everything without speaking to anyone. Calling means choosing a moment, saying your request out loud, accepting a conversation you hadn't planned for.

Take a pizzeria. You want to order, you open their site: a phone number, no menu, no prices. You don't know what they make, you don't know what it costs. You'd have to call to find out.

Across the street, the other pizzeria shows its menu, its prices, and lets you order in three clicks. You're done for. And you're done for even if your pizzas are better, because the comparison never happened on the pizzas.

Your job is to adapt

Some people refuse this. They think customers ought to make the effort, that something is being lost, that human contact is degrading. They may well be right on the substance.

But that isn't your job. Wanting to change habits is lobbying. If that's what drives you, fine, but then you picked the wrong trade. A business owner isn't there to impose their view of the world, they're there to adapt to the one their customers live in.

Look at who is taking market share. Often small outfits, young brands, businesses with neither the history nor the means of the incumbents. Their advantage isn't budget, it's fluidity:

• a decision gets made within the day, not in committee;
• they launch, watch what happens, and adjust;
• no layer of hierarchy to convince before trying;
• so ten attempts while others prepare one.

A business that adapts quickly stays alive. It isn't a question of size, it's a question of weight.

The attention economy

Second shift, and this one costs even more because it's less visible.

A pastry chef posts their cakes. A restaurateur posts their dishes. The photos are beautiful, often paid for professionally, and the result is disappointing. They're puzzled: it's good, it's beautiful, why isn't it working?

Because nobody wants to see your finished plate. The perfect result is everywhere, it no longer surprises anyone, it tells no story. What people watch now is the craft, the preparation, the workshop at six in the morning, the hand that slips and starts again.

Cédric Grolet didn't build his following on posed photographs of his pastries. He built it by showing the work: the assembly, the glazing, the cut. The result is there, of course, but it arrives at the end of a story rather than instead of one.

And to understand what captures attention, stop looking at your competitors. They have exactly your reflexes and exactly your results. Look at the people genuinely winning that battle, the Léna Situations, Squeezie and Inoxtag of this world. You won't do what they do, that isn't the point. You'll understand what your customer is accustomed to when they open their phone.

And no, this isn't only for the young. It's the most comfortable and most inaccurate objection going: everyone consumes these formats now, including your fifty-year-old customers.

One clarification to avoid a misunderstanding, since I've written it before: videographers and polished video have their place. Just not for feeding a publishing rhythm, where volume is what counts.

Your customers don't have two sets of behaviour. Whoever orders in three clicks in the evening will judge your journey by the same standard the next morning.

A customer journey is a staircase

Here's why all of that matters. Once you accept that behaviour has changed, the question becomes very concrete: what exactly are you asking of someone who has just found you?

You climb one step at a time

Nobody has ever climbed a staircase five steps at a time. You lift a foot, you put it down, you repeat. It's slow, it's ordinary, and it's how everyone gets to the top.

A customer journey works exactly the same way. At the bottom, someone who doesn't know you. At the top, a client who trusts you with their important work. In between, a series of small successive commitments.

Except most companies don't build a staircase. They install one very tall step and wait for people to jump.

What a step that's too high costs you

Take the most common case: a site offering nothing but a phone number and an email address.

From the outside that seems reasonable. From the visitor's side, here is what you're asking:

• wait for a time when you answer;
• find somewhere they can speak;
• prepare what to say, without knowing whether it's even your trade;
• accept a conversation whose length and tone they don't control;
• and reckon they may have to say no at the end of it.

Five steps. While the competitor next door asks for three clicks to book a slot.

And to be clear, this isn't about removing the phone. Once the appointment is booked, you call, the person picks up, and you get your conversation. They brought it about themselves. The phone isn't the problem, being the only door is.

The same reasoning applies everywhere: quote requests, bookings, appointments, payment. Every time the question is identical: how many steps, and how high.

Lower the first step, don't remove the staircase

There's a misreading to avoid here, and it's a common one.

Lowering the first step isn't discounting, it isn't giving up on choosing your clients, it isn't saying yes to everyone. It's spreading the effort instead of concentrating it at the worst moment, when the person doesn't know you yet.

You still qualify, you simply do it afterwards. Someone books a slot, you call them, you ask your questions, and if it doesn't fit your business you cancel. You've lost nothing, and you've picked up everyone who would never have dialled your number.

That's exactly the gap I described between two heating engineers with the same skills: one waits to be called, the other has people book a slot and qualifies afterwards.

A step that's too high doesn't filter out bad customers. It filters out the ones who had a choice.

Check every step, one by one

Once the staircase is built, you have to climb it yourself. That's the part nobody does, because you know your own site too well to see it.

Benchmark against platforms, not your neighbour

Your direct competitor probably has the same flaws you do. Comparing yourself to them is reassuring and teaches you nothing.

The real reference points are the platforms your customers use every day. Airbnb, Uber Eats, Amazon. They set the expected standard, including for a corner shop, and they spent money on it you'll never have.

Open them and count. How many steps before confirming. When they ask for your details and when they do without. What they don't ask for, especially.

An obsolete system costs you your profitability

This isn't a supplier's talking point, it's an observation.

A dated, slow booking module that fails one time in ten doesn't lose you browsers. It loses you decided people, at the most expensive stage of the whole journey, the one where they were ready to pay. It's the most costly loss there is, and it's entirely invisible in your figures unless you look at them.

A tool that doesn't fit your business never will. You'll spend your time working around its limits, and your customers will pay the difference.

On a phone, there is no room

All of these steps get climbed on a six-inch screen, one-handed, sometimes while walking.

That changes everything. A badly placed button becomes unfindable. Two columns become unreadable. A dropdown becomes an obstacle. A form that's fine on a desktop becomes an ordeal.

And here's the worst of it: whoever gives up won't come back. They'll tell you nothing, they won't give you the chance to fix it, they won't make the effort a second time. You won't even know they came.

The content of the page is a step too

One last point, and it holds for everyone.

Someone opening a restaurant's website wants the menu, the dishes, the prices. Immediately. Not your story, not your passion for seasonal produce, not your commitment to local suppliers.

It isn't that those have no value. It's that they arrive at the wrong moment. Whoever wants to dig will dig, and they'll find that page precisely because your menu is simple and easy to navigate.

Every paragraph delaying the expected information is a step you've added without noticing. It's the same rule as for the content of a page: filler isn't neutral, it costs.

You can't judge your own staircase. You climb it every day, you've stopped feeling the steps.

Where to start

None of this needs budget or a rebuild. It needs an hour and a bit of honesty.

The step test

Take your phone, open your site as if you were a stranger, and go all the way through an enquiry, timing yourself. Then note:

• how many actions separate arrival from submission;
• which one felt most tedious, and why;
• what you ask for before having given anything;
• what you could ask for later, on the phone, losing nothing;
• the lightest possible action you could offer instead.

That last line is the heart of it. In most trades the answer is one word: a slot.

What comes after the first step

Once the person is in, the staircase continues, and that's where your real work begins. The qualifying call, the quote, the first job, then the relationship that settles in.

But none of those steps matters while the first one is too high. You can have the best follow-up on the market: if nobody climbs, nobody will see it.

A customer almost never turns down your offer. They give up before knowing it, because the first step was too high.

If you'd like to check the height of yours, write to me. We'll count the steps together, and I'll tell you which ones can go straight away.