Website Audit: 10 Things to Check This Week

The Quick Checks (About 5 Minutes Each)

Do these on your phone first, since that is how many local customers will see your site. Pretend you are a new customer who has never heard of you.

1. Load your homepage on your phone using mobile data, not your office wifi. Is the text readable without zooming? Do the buttons work with a thumb? Does anything spill off the side of the screen? Does it load in a few seconds, or do you find yourself waiting?
2. Tap your phone number. It should open your dialer with the number filled in. If it does not, it is probably plain text and needs to be turned into a click-to-call link. Then call it and make sure it rings through to someone or a working voicemail.
3. Check your hours everywhere they appear on the site: header, footer, contact page, and any popups. Make sure they match your real hours and your Google Business Profile, and remove any expired holiday or temporary closure notices.
4. Check your address against your Google Business Profile and your signage. The name, street, suite number, and ZIP code should all match. If you serve customers at their location, make sure the service area you list is current.
5. Tap every item in your main menu and footer, on both phone and computer. Note anything that leads to an error page, an empty page, or the wrong page.

The Deeper Checks

These take a bit longer, often 10 to 20 minutes each, but they catch problems that are easy to miss.

6. Search your business name on Google. Your website should appear near the top of the results. If it does not, search site:yourdomain.com (with your real domain) to see which pages Google has found. If almost nothing appears, your site may be blocked from search or have a technical problem worth raising with whoever built it.
7. Test your contact form. Fill it in as a customer would, submit it, and confirm the message actually arrives in the right inbox, including the spam folder. Do the same for any booking or quote request form. Forms can stop working silently after a plugin or email change.
8. Look at your homepage with fresh eyes, or better, show it to a friend for five seconds and then hide it. Can they tell you what you do, where you are, and how to contact you? If not, the top of the page needs a clearer headline and a visible phone number or button.
9. Run your homepage through PageSpeed Insights, a free Google tool at pagespeed.web.dev. Focus on the mobile results. Do not chase a perfect score. Look for the obvious and fixable problems it lists, such as oversized images, and compare the result after you make changes.
10. Check that your site loads with https and shows a padlock or similar secure indicator in the browser bar. If browsers show a "Not secure" warning, especially on pages with forms, ask your host or web person to install a security certificate. Many hosts include one free.

If you find more problems than you expected, do not worry. That is normal for a site that has not been checked in a while, and most of the fixes are small. Write each one down and move on to the next check rather than stopping to fix things halfway through, so you get a full picture before you decide where to spend your time.

Two Free Tools Worth Setting Up

If you do not already have them, two free Google tools make future audits much easier.

Google Search Console shows which searches bring people to your site, which pages Google has indexed, and whether Google has found errors. Setting it up means proving you own the site, usually by adding a small code or DNS record; your website builder may have a built-in option for this, or your web person can do it in a few minutes. Once it is set up, check it once a month for new errors or sudden drops in traffic.

Google Analytics, or the simpler built-in stats most website builders provide, shows how many people visit and which pages they look at. You do not need to become an analytics expert. A few basic questions answered once a month is enough: are visits going up or down, which pages get the most traffic, and are people reaching your contact page?

What to Fix First

Not every problem is equally urgent. Use this order to decide.

Fix today: anything that stops customers from reaching you. A phone number that does not dial, a contact form that does not deliver, wrong hours, or a wrong address are all costing you business right now, and most take minutes to fix in a website builder.

Fix this month: a site that is hard to use on a phone, a confusing homepage, broken links in the main menu, and a missing security certificate. These make people leave or lose trust. Some can be fixed with a template change or a few edits. Others may need help from a web professional.

Fix when you can: slow page speed caused by large images, missing page titles, and smaller broken links deep in the site. These matter, but they are rarely the reason someone does not call you this week.

A rule of thumb for deciding whether to fix it yourself: if the change is to text, hours, phone numbers, or images in a builder like Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress with a visual editor, try it yourself. If it involves forms that do not send, security certificates, domain settings, or anything where you are unsure what a setting does, hand it to someone who has done it before. A small job for a freelancer is often less expensive than an afternoon of trial and error.

Common Mistakes When Fixing Your Site

A few well-meant fixes cause new problems. Watch for these.

1. Updating hours or your phone number on the website but not on your Google Business Profile, Facebook page, and directory listings. Change all of them the same day.
2. Deleting or renaming pages without redirecting the old address to the new one. Old links and bookmarks break, and search engines lose track of the page. Most builders have a redirect setting.
3. Uploading photos straight from a phone at full size. Resize them first, or use your builder's built-in optimization, to keep pages fast.
4. Letting your domain name or hosting auto-renew fail because the card on file expired. If your domain lapses, your site and email can go down. Check the renewal dates and payment details once a year.
5. Skipping basic accessibility. Add short descriptions (alt text) to important images, keep text readable against its background, and make sure form fields have clear labels. This helps customers who use screen readers or simply have tired eyes.
6. Having no copy of your website or no access to the admin login. Make sure you, not only a former employee or designer, have the logins for your domain, hosting, and website builder.

Make It a Habit

The easiest way to keep your site in good shape is a short, regular check rather than a big rescue every few years. Put two recurring reminders in your calendar.

Monthly, about 15 minutes: check hours, phone, and contact form, glance at Search Console for new errors, and look at the homepage on your phone. Quarterly, about an hour: run through all ten checks in this guide, test every form, and review any seasonal content, offers, or staff pages that may be out of date.

Also check the site any time you change something important in the business, such as your hours, phone system, address, services, or prices. Those are exactly the moments when the website tends to fall out of step.

If You Only Do One Thing This Week

Open your website on your phone, tap your phone number, and submit your own contact form. Then wait for the call to ring and the email to arrive.

If both work, you have confirmed the two most important paths a customer uses to reach you. If either one fails, you have found the most valuable fix on your whole website, and it is worth sorting out before anything else on this list.