Most business websites have problems the owner never sees. A slow page. A button that goes nowhere. A phone number that’s wrong on the contact page.
You don’t need a developer to find these. You need half an hour, your phone and a notepad.
This audit is built to be quick. Set a timer. Don’t fix anything as you go. Just write down what’s broken, then sort the list at the end. If you stop to fix things mid-audit, you’ll run out of time by step four and never finish.
1. Open your site like a stranger would (2 minutes)
Use a private or incognito window. This stops your browser showing you a saved version of the site, which can hide recent problems.
Type in your web address and look at the homepage for five seconds. Then ask:
• What does this business do?
• Who is it for?
• What am I meant to do next?
If you can’t answer all three in five seconds, a new visitor won’t either. Write it down. This is often the most useful note on the whole page, because it’s the one thing every later fix depends on.
2. Test the speed on your phone (3 minutes)
Most people will visit on a mobile, often on patchy reception. Load your site on your phone over mobile data, not wi-fi. Wi-fi hides how your site feels to a customer standing in a car park.
Count how long the main content takes to appear. If you’re waiting and thinking about the next thing you’ll do, so is everyone else.
You can also run your homepage through Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. It’s free and it lists what’s slowing the page down. Large images are the most common culprit, and the easiest fix. A photo straight off a camera can be ten times bigger than it needs to be.
3. Check the mobile layout (3 minutes)
Scroll the whole homepage on your phone. Look for:
• text that’s too small to read without pinching
• buttons that are too close together to tap
• images that spill off the screen
• pop-ups that cover the content and are hard to close
Then open two or three inner pages. Mobile problems often hide there, especially on pages that were added later by someone else. Pay attention to tables and forms. They break more often than anything else.
4. Click every link and button (5 minutes)
Work through the menu first. Then click the buttons on your homepage, the links in your footer and any links inside your text.
You’re looking for dead ends. A “page not found” message tells visitors you’ve stopped looking after the site. If you find one, note the page and the link that led there.
Also check forms. Submit your own contact form and see if the message arrives. A form that fails quietly costs you enquiries and you’ll never know. Do the same with any booking or quote tools. Use a real email address you can check.
5. Read the homepage out loud (3 minutes)
Reading aloud shows you what your eyes skip. You’ll hear the long sentences, the jargon and the vague claims.
Watch for lines like “we deliver quality solutions”. They say nothing. Replace them with something specific, such as what you do, for whom, and how fast.
Mark any sentence you stumble over. If you stumble, your reader will too. Mark anything you wouldn’t say to a customer across a counter. That’s usually a sign the copy was written to sound professional rather than to be clear.
6. Check titles and descriptions (4 minutes)
Every page has a title that shows in the browser tab and in Google’s results. It also has a short description that can appear under that title.
Search for your business name on Google. Look at how your pages appear. Ask whether you’d click on that result.
Common problems:
• the same title on every page
• titles cut off because they’re too long
• no description, so Google pulls a random line from the page
• a homepage title that says only “Home”
Fixing these takes minutes and costs nothing. Each title should say what the page is about in plain words, with your business name at the end.
7. Look at your contact details and calls to action (3 minutes)
Go to each main page and ask where the next step is. A phone number, a booking link, a quote form. It should be easy to find without scrolling for it.
Check that your:
• phone number is correct and tappable on mobile
• email address is current
• opening hours match what’s on your Google listing
• address is the same everywhere it appears
Small mismatches make a business look careless. They also confuse search engines about which details are right. If you moved premises or changed numbers in the last few years, this is where old details tend to linger.
8. Check Google Search Console (4 minutes)
Search Console is Google’s free tool for site owners. If your site isn’t set up in it, add that to your list. It’s one of the first things to do.
If it is set up, open the indexing or pages report. Look for pages Google can’t index and note the reasons it gives. Then open the performance report and see which searches bring people to your site.
You’re not trying to fix anything now. You’re finding out whether Google can see your site properly at all. If your most important service page isn’t in the index, nothing else on this list matters as much.
9. Confirm the basics (3 minutes)
Last, tick off the housekeeping:
• the address bar shows a padlock and your site loads over https
• you have a privacy policy if you collect any details
• the copyright year in the footer is this year
• your social links go to the right profiles
• you have a custom 404 page that points people back to something useful
Outdated footers are a small thing, but they signal an unattended site. So do broken social icons. Visitors judge a business in seconds, and these details feed into that judgement.
Sort your list into three piles
You’ll finish with a messy page of notes. Sort it:
• Fix today. Wrong phone numbers, dead links, missing titles.
• Fix this month. Slow images, vague copy, mobile layout problems.
• Needs a specialist. Technical errors, indexing problems, site structure.
Do the first pile straight away. It’s the fastest improvement you’ll make all year.
The third pile is where many owners stall. If the list is longer than your time allows, an SEO agency Melbourne businesses already work with can take the technical items off you and leave you with the first two piles.
Repeat the audit every three months. Put a reminder in your calendar now. It takes half an hour, and it’s the cheapest quality check your business will ever have.