Website audit checklist: what to fix before you spend on a redesign

If your website is not generating leads, a redesign can feel like the obvious next step. But the problem might be a vague offer, missing evidence, a confusing service page, or a contact form that never reaches the right inbox.

Before you commit to rebuilding, follow the path a potential client takes: arrive, understand, assess the work, and decide whether to get in touch. This website audit checklist helps you find where that path becomes difficult. If too few suitable visitors reach the site in the first place, review how people find your business as well.

Start with your homepage, one important service page, and your contact or booking page. Open them on your phone as well as your computer. For each check, record works, needs a fix, or unclear, then write down what you actually saw. You do not need a score out of 100. You need a short list of problems worth solving.

1. Can a new visitor explain what you do?

Read the first screen of your homepage. Can someone unfamiliar with your business say who you help, what you help them with, and which service you provide?

A headline such as “Helping you unlock your potential” leaves the visitor to fill in the details. A fictional leadership consultancy could be more specific: “Leadership coaching for managers stepping into their first team-lead role.” The next sentence can explain how the work happens.

Test: Ask someone who resembles your intended client to read the opening, then explain the offer in their own words. Listen for what they understood and what they had to guess.

First fix: Rewrite the opening around an identifiable audience and service. Keep your personality, but give the reader enough information to recognize whether they belong here.

An illustrative example. The clearer version identifies a service and audience; the rest of the page still needs to explain scope and proof.

2. Does each service page explain the actual work?

A list of service names is a useful index. A buyer also needs to understand what those names mean for their situation.

Choose your most important service page. Look for the problem it addresses, who it suits, what the engagement includes, and what happens next. Add any boundaries that would prevent a mistaken inquiry. A coaching engagement, for example, may need to distinguish individual sessions from a team program.

Test: Could a prospective client describe the service to a colleague without asking you to translate it first?

First fix: Add a short “Who this is for” paragraph and a clear description of the scope. Include the process or deliverables where those help someone make a decision. Use the language clients recognize rather than internal package shorthand.

3. Is relevant proof close to the claim?

“Experienced,” “trusted,” and “tailored” are easy to say. A visitor needs something concrete to assess.

Look for a relevant project, a named client comment, a work sample, or a clear account of your approach. Place that evidence near the service or claim it supports. A testimonial about a smooth collaboration supports your process; it does not automatically prove a revenue increase.

Test: For every important promise, identify the evidence a reader can actually inspect. If you cannot find any, mark the item as unclear.

First fix: Bring an existing work example into the service page and explain the challenge and decisions. Use verified results where you have them. When you do not, the work itself, the scope, and an attributed client perspective can still help someone assess fit.

4. Have you answered the questions that delay an inquiry?

Think about the questions a suitable prospect asks before they are comfortable contacting you. These may concern timing, location, scope, involvement, investment, or how the first conversation works.

You do not need an answer to every possible question. Start with the ones you can answer accurately and that regularly affect the buying decision. If you have emails or discovery notes, use those to identify the wording.

Test: Read the service page as someone considering the commitment. Write down the questions the page leaves unanswered.

First fix: Add a short process explanation or a few useful FAQs. If the price depends on scope, explain which factors affect it and how a quote is prepared. Give the reader a realistic expectation of the next step.

A real example: helping someone assess an unfamiliar consultancy

Our Aleada Consulting project shows how these checks connect. The published case describes a privacy consultancy built through referrals that needed a clearer presence for new audiences.

The work brings services, team expertise, client comments, FAQs, and consultation routes into the site structure. These give a visitor several ways to understand the firm and assess whether it fits their needs.

The useful lesson is to make the information behind a referral available to someone who arrives without an introduction. Here, the example shows how information is organized.

What to notice: the opening identifies privacy and data-protection work; named client comments have their own visible place; partner profiles make the practitioners part of the story.

Published Aleada portfolio work. The image is unchanged; the observations above are added for this article.

5. Is the next step clear and appropriate?

Read your primary button and the copy around it. Does the visitor know what they are being invited to do?

“Get started” can be enough when the surrounding page explains the action. Where it does not, a more specific label such as “Discuss your project” or “Book an introductory call” may be clearer. Choose wording that accurately matches the destination.

Test: Follow the main next step from the homepage and your selected service page. Does it lead to the action you expected? Does the destination explain what happens after you submit or book?

First fix: Give each page a main action suited to its purpose. Keep supporting links, such as a relevant case study, but make the main next step easy to identify.

6. Can someone use the site comfortably on a phone?

Use your actual phone. Open the menu, read a service page, follow the main button, and reach the form. Notice anything that makes you zoom, scroll sideways, or hunt for a control.

Pay attention to long headings, text over images, intrusive banners, and graphics whose labels become too small to read. A layout can look tidy on a desktop while making these everyday tasks difficult on a smaller screen.

Test: Complete the same path you checked on your computer. Also use a keyboard on the desktop: move through links and controls with Tab and check that you can see which item is selected. These are useful starting checks, not a complete accessibility audit.

First fix: Address the specific obstruction. Shorten an oversized heading, increase contrast, simplify the menu, or adjust the form layout. Retest the task after the change.

7. Does the page load and respond without getting in the way?

Watch what happens before the page is ready to use. Does the headline appear promptly? Does a large image hold everything up? Does the layout move when you try to select a button?

Run the homepage and your main service page through Google PageSpeed Insights. Use its findings to investigate the experience you observed. Google’s Core Web Vitals guidance covers loading, responsiveness, and visual stability.

Test: Compare the mobile report with your phone experience. Where available, real-user data and a simulated lab test describe different conditions. A report without enough real-user data is not proof that the site is fast or slow for all visitors.

First fix: Ask your developer to investigate the relevant issues, such as oversized images, unnecessary scripts, or shifting content. Check the experience again. A performance score alone cannot explain whether people understand your offer or why they are not contacting you.

8. Does an inquiry reach the right person?

A form can look complete while failing after submission. The message may go to an old address, enter an unattended tool, or arrive without enough context for a reply.

Test: On your own website, submit a clearly labeled test inquiry with an email address you control. Check the confirmation, receiving inbox or customer-management tool, any promised acknowledgment, and the person responsible for follow-up. Stop before any test action that creates a paid booking or other real commitment.

First fix: Correct the routing and explain the outcome to the visitor. Keep fields relevant to the first conversation. The W3C forms tutorial is a useful reference for labels, instructions, validation, and feedback.

9. Can people reach the pages that matter?

Follow the links that lead to your main services, work, and contact page. Include a few older links you have shared in emails or profiles. Note any missing page, wrong destination, or path that depends on knowing where to look.

Then inspect the page titles shown in the browser tabs. Can you distinguish one service page from another? Does each describe what the page actually offers?

Test: Follow the important paths yourself. If you have Google Search Console, review indexing information for those pages. Being indexed does not guarantee a ranking, and one search result is not a full visibility audit.

First fix: Repair broken links, make important pages accessible through relevant navigation or body links, and replace generic titles with accurate descriptions. Google’s SEO Starter Guide explains these foundations. Keep URLs and redirects in scope if a rebuild becomes necessary.

10. Can your team keep the important information current?

Check the details that shape a buying decision: service scope, team information, availability, examples, and contact routes. Look for pages that contradict each other or describe an offer you no longer provide.

Test: Choose one ordinary update, such as changing a service description. Establish who can make it, where it needs to change, and how the team will review it. You do not need to edit the live site during the audit.

First fix: Assign an owner and a review routine. If a simple update repeatedly requires a workaround, record that as a structural issue to discuss when considering a redesign.

Keep this checklist beside your notes. Record what you can verify and leave uncertain items as questions to investigate.

Choose your first three fixes

Go through the evidence you recorded. Put a broken inquiry route or an unusable key page ahead of cosmetic preferences. Then look for information gaps that prevent a suitable visitor from understanding the offer or assessing the work.

For each chosen fix, record the problem, the evidence, the next action, and the person responsible. For example: “The contact form confirms submission, but the message does not reach our monitored inbox. Check its destination and retest delivery.” That is specific enough to act on and verify.

A focused update may be sufficient when the structure works and the problems are limited to copy, proof, links, or a few layout details. A redesign becomes more reasonable when the audience or offer has changed, the main pages need a different structure, or the platform makes essential tasks and updates difficult. Take those observations into the project brief.

After making changes, repeat the same checks. If you have usable analytics, note service-page engagement and completed inquiries alongside the quality of the conversations that follow. Changes in those numbers can have several causes; a button click alone is not a new client.

Need help deciding how much should change?

If you are considering a redesign, start with those three priorities. Explore True Space to see how we plan, write, design, and build websites around the business, its evidence, and the next step a visitor needs.