How to find UK businesses with a poor website
Plenty of small-business websites fail basic checks: no mobile layout, no HTTPS, a single page, a copyright line years out of date. For a web designer or agency, that is the product: a list of firms whose website is letting them down, each with an email we checked to pitch to. Here is how to set up an agent for that list in minutes.
The recipe, step by step
- 1
Pick the website-graded-poor reason
Ask the assistant for companies whose website is graded poor; the reason covers sites graded dated or poor. Leadistry opens every website it has checked is the company's own and grades the code itself: mobile layout, HTTPS, page count, copyright staleness, legacy builders. A poor grade means the site really fails basic checks. Nobody eyeballed a screenshot.
- 2
Pick trades where a website earns its keep
Tell the assistant the trades where customers actually shop online, and it matches them to 5-digit SIC codes. Trades (43220 plumbing, 43210 electrical), cafes and takeaways (56102, 56103), salons and cleaners. A shop-window business whose site fails on a phone is losing work it can measure.
- 3
Go local
Give the agent your town or city as its one area. 'Web designer in your town who noticed your site does not work on a phone' is a far stronger pitch than an anonymous national blast. Smaller lists also let you personalise.
- 4
Know who you are writing to
Every lead arrives with an email the company publishes on a domain we checked accepts mail, and the director's name when it is on the public record, so your greeting can name a person. A company we cannot finish is never delivered and never costs a lead.
- 5
Lead with proof, not pressure
Point to something real: their trade, their town, their rivals who do rank. The first line of each email is written from their site's grade and the date we checked it, and two follow-ups go on day 4 and day 9 by default, all from your own mailbox, free for your first 25 on the trial. Nothing sends until you approve it, or until you switch on Autopilot. Send each new lead to your CRM with a webhook on any plan, or download your Leads rows as a CSV on a paid one.
Frequently asked questions
How does Leadistry decide a website is poor?
We fetch the site's HTML and grade it against basic checks: a mobile layout, HTTPS, more than a single page, a copyright line that is not years stale, and legacy builder fingerprints. Sites come back modern, dated or poor. A site only matches while its grade is less than 90 days old.
Why not just target businesses with no website at all?
A firm with no web presence rarely has an email we can check. A list of them is mostly uncontactable, which is why bought no-website lists convert so badly. Leadistry only delivers companies it can check. So every poor-website lead comes with a working site to critique and an email we checked to send the critique to.
Is this list not full of dormant companies?
No. Agents deliver active companies only, and a site has to answer when we open it before it can be graded at all. You can also give the assistant specific kinds of business rather than catch-all SIC codes such as 82990, which keeps the list tight.
Run this recipe today
25 free leads from the Companies House public record. No card, no demo.
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