Six areas, checked every week, on every plan

Almost every enquiry arrives by phone, often in a hurry, often from someone with three competitors open in other tabs. The site has one job: make it obvious you cover their area and can be trusted to turn up.

• Whether your service area is written in the words customers use, or hidden behind a map and a postcode field.
• The individual services with no page of their own, so a specific search lands on a homepage that only talks around it.
• Whether the phone number is on screen without scrolling, and whether it actually dials from a phone.
• Photographs of genuine finished work, which are the strongest evidence you own and are usually the least used.
• Accreditation, insurance and guarantee details placed where the decision is made rather than in a footer.

People arrive anxious and are comparing you against several other practices. What they want is reassurance, visible credentials, and a plain answer to "what happens next".

• Whether a new patient can see fees, location and opening hours without hunting through the navigation.
• Practitioner credentials and registrations sitting where the booking decision happens rather than on an About page.
• How many clicks stand between a first enquiry and an actual appointment.
• Whether treatments are explained in the words a nervous patient would use, or in clinical shorthand.
• The questions patients ask before they are willing to book, and whether the site answers any of them.

Revenue sits in category and product pages, and in the gap between landing and paying. Most of the money lost is on the ordinary pages nobody has reviewed since launch.

• Category pages that list products without helping anyone decide, so the shopper goes back to search.
• Product pages missing the one detail that blocks an order — sizing, compatibility, delivery or returns.
• Filtering and sorting that forget where the shopper was, or fall apart on a small screen.
• Checkout steps that demand information before the purchase decision has settled.
• Products that attract plenty of visits but convert far below the rest of the range, which is where the leak is.

Your own site is judged harder than a client's, because everyone knows you made it. The test is whether it earns a serious enquiry, not whether it wins admiration.

• Whether the portfolio shows what changed for a client, or simply displays images with no explanation.
• The distance between the standard of your actual work and the words used to describe it to a buyer.
• How a serious enquiry starts, and how many steps you have put in front of it.
• Examples that set out the problem, what you decided and what followed, instead of a finished screenshot.
• Whether your own site would pass the same review you would hand a paying client.

Buyers are technical and sceptical, and they will find the gaps in your claims. The site has to get a competent person to a working understanding faster than the alternatives do.

• Whether the first screen states what the product does and who it is for, before any feature list begins.
• Documentation, pricing and limits that are findable, rather than buried behind a sales conversation.
• Whether the trial or demo can be understood and started without speaking to anyone.
• Feature claims a technical reader will not believe, and what they cost you in credibility.
• The distance in tone and quality between your marketing pages and your documentation.

Buyers are risking their time and their self-image, not only their money. The page has to show what they will be able to do afterwards, and whether they are capable of it.

• Whether outcomes are described as abilities — what a learner can do afterwards — rather than as modules.
• The sign-up route, and the number of decisions standing between interest and paying.
• Testimony from past learners, and whether it is concrete enough to carry weight.
• Whether the hours required, the starting level and any prerequisites are spelled out.
• How the page handles "is this for someone like me?" — the question that actually decides it.

Traffic is overwhelmingly mobile and often arrives minutes before a decision is made. Practical information and a fast route to booking outweigh everything else on the page.

• Whether hours, availability, location and parking are visible without hunting for them.
• Menu, pricing or package information, and what happens when a visitor cannot find it.
• The booking path on a phone, timed honestly against your closest competitors.
• Photography that shows the actual room, plate or venue rather than a brochure angle.
• How far a visitor must scroll before they can do anything useful.

The content is the product, so everything turns on whether readers arrive for the right pieces and whether they stay. Structure decides both, and structure is usually neglected.

• Which pieces attract traffic, and whether they lead anywhere useful once read.
• Topic areas with genuine interest but no page gathering them into something navigable.
• Whether a reader can find the second article, or whether every visit ends where it started.
• Archive pages that repeat each other and end up splitting one search between them.
• The subscribe or follow path, and how early in a visit it appears.

You serve members who already know you and prospects who do not yet see why belonging helps. Those two audiences need genuinely different routes through the same site.

• Whether the value of membership is stated concretely rather than as a mission statement.
• The two distinct paths — member services versus reasons to join — and whether they are separated.
• Subscription rates, who is eligible and how to apply, and whether any of it can be located.
• Whether member resources sit behind a login that nobody can preview.
• How a prospective member weighs you against the neighbouring organisations.

The buying committee is cautious and rarely acts on a first visit. The real test is whether the site survives being shown to a sceptical colleague a week later.

• Whether the site says which sectors and what size of client the firm works with.
• Proof in the form of named engagements, sectors served or accreditations, rather than adjectives.
• Whether a technical or regulated service is explained well enough for a non-specialist to justify it internally.
• Whether a visitor who is not ready to enquire has anything worth keeping — a guide, a checklist, a worked example.
• The gap between how the firm describes itself and how its clients describe it.

Most businesses resist a category. Tell us what you sell and to whom, and the inspection starts from your actual pages rather than from a template.

• What the site is genuinely trying to achieve, stated as an aim rather than a wish.
• The pages carrying the most commercial weight, and whether they are pulling their share.
• Whether a visitor can tell what you do within the first few seconds.
• The route from arrival to enquiry, and every avoidable step in it.
• The searches you currently turn up for, including several you would not have guessed.