Website Audit Checklist
You know something’s wrong with your site. You just don’t know where to start.
Forty-nine yes-or-no checks, six areas, and every one you can answer by looking at your own site. Nothing to buy, no call to book.
Forty-nine plain checks you run yourself, no developer needed to spot what’s wrong. Work through the list this afternoon and find out what’s actually costing you, ranked so you fix the expensive things first.
It’s free and self-serve. Or if you’d rather hand it over than run it yourself, text 562-726-2287. No pitch, no discovery call.
49 checks
Across six areas of your site
Yes or no
Every one, answered by looking
Free
Self-serve, no call to book
The short answer
Forty-nine checks, six areas, and every one is a yes-or-no question you can answer by looking at your own site.
This is a free checklist you run yourself. There’s nothing to buy, no form to fill in, and no call to book. You work down the list, mark what fails, and the things that actually cost you rise to the top.
It covers user experience, copy, design, tech, messaging, and trust, in that order, because a UX failure makes the other five irrelevant. Each check links to a short guide that shows what good looks like and how to tell. Nothing here needs a developer to assess. Some of it needs one to fix.
Sound familiar
Every “free audit” turned out to be a sales pitch.
You know something’s off. You just can’t tell what it is, or where you’d even start looking.
Every “free audit” you’ve clicked turned out to be a sales pitch with a call attached to it.
You’ve got a hundred small things wrong and no way to tell which ones actually matter.
You don’t want to book a call and sit through a pitch just to find out what’s broken.
You half-expect the answer is “you need a developer,” and you’re not sure that’s even true.
None of this means your site’s a disaster. It means nobody’s sat down and checked it, one plain question at a time. So here’s the list that does exactly that.
The version where you know
An honest checklist you run yourself this afternoon, and by the end you know exactly what to fix first.
No call, no pitch, nothing to buy. Just forty-nine plain yes-or-no questions across the six areas that decide whether your site works, in the order worth doing them. You mark what fails, and the things that actually cost you money rise to the top. Almost no site passes all forty-nine, so failing a good number isn’t a crisis, it’s the normal starting point. What you walk away with isn’t a vague feeling that something’s off. It’s a short, ranked list of the specific things to fix, and most of them you can fix yourself.
The checklist
The 49 checks, in the order worth doing them.
Work through it in order. UX is first because a UX failure makes the other five irrelevant, and tech is fourth rather than first because a fast site that nobody understands is still a site nobody understands. Each check links to a short guide on what good looks like and how to tell. Nothing here needs a developer to assess. Some of it needs one to fix.
| Area | Checks | What failing it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| User experience | 9 | People arrive, can’t work out what to do, and leave. The most expensive failures live here. |
| Copy | 12 | People understand what you sell and still aren’t persuaded to want it. |
| Design | 13 | People don’t trust the site enough to hand it anything, including their attention. |
| Tech | 6 | People never arrive, or arrive at a page too slow or too broken to matter. |
| Messaging | 4 | The right people arrive and think the site’s for somebody else. |
| Trust and plumbing | 5 | People try to reach you and it silently doesn’t work. |
Start here, it costs the most
1. User experience, 9 checks.
A UX failure makes the other five irrelevant, so this is the one to run first.
- Is there one main call to action per page? A page with three equally weighted asks is a page with no ask. Read the check
- Is the main CTA repeated appropriately down the page? Long pages that ask once, at the bottom, lose everyone who was convinced in the middle. Read the check
- Is the site free from competing CTAs for the same visitor? “Book a call” beside “download the guide” beside “start a trial” makes the visitor do the prioritising, and they won’t. Read the check
- Is the next action always clear? Every page should answer “and now what?” without the visitor going back to the menu to find out. Read the check
- Is the site free from distracting offramps? Social icons in the header, a blog link on a checkout, a chat widget over the CTA. Each one is a door out of the room. Read the check
- Does the structure support the journeys people actually take? Sites usually get organised the way the company is organised, which is rarely the way a stranger looks for things. Read the check
- Is navigation intuitive and simple to follow? If your menu needs a mental model of your business to use, it’s a diagram of your org chart. Read the check
- Are the header and footer clear and consistent? The footer is where people go when the page has failed them. An unmaintained one is a second failure. Read the check
- Does the page scroll normally? Scroll-jacking, horizontal sections and animation-gated content break the one interaction every visitor already knows how to do. Read the check
Then the words
2. Copy, 12 checks.
People understand what you sell and still aren’t persuaded to want it. That’s a copy problem.
- Are your headlines compelling? A headline that describes what the page is about, rather than what the reader gets, is a label. Read the check
- Do the subheadlines support them? A subheadline’s job is to make the next sentence unnecessary and the next section inviting. Most repeat the headline in longer words. Read the check
- Is your unique selling proposition compelling? If a competitor could put their logo on your homepage and nothing would look wrong, you don’t have one. Read the check
- Is your copy benefits-driven? Features are what it is. Benefits are what changes for the person reading. Most sites list the first and imply the second. Read the check
- Is it succinct and to the point? Length isn’t the problem. Sentences that carry no new information are. Read the check
- Is it written in active rather than passive voice? “Your project is managed by a dedicated team” hides who does what, which is exactly what the reader is trying to find out. Read the check
- Is the tone right for the audience segment? One tone across a site that serves three audiences means it’s wrong for at least two of them. Read the check
- Is it written as “you” rather than “our”? Count the first words of your paragraphs. If most of them are “we” or “our”, the site is about you and the reader can tell. Read the check
- Does formatting aid readability? Lists, subheadings and short paragraphs aren’t decoration; they’re how a scanner decides whether to become a reader. Read the check
- Are testimonials present wherever a decision gets made? Social proof filed on a testimonials page is social proof nobody sees. It belongs beside the ask. Read the check
- Are reviews present? A named review with a specific detail outperforms five anonymous five-star ratings, and most sites have neither. Read the check
- Is your SEO graceful rather than intrusive? If a page reads like it was written for a crawler, both the crawler and the human notice now. Read the check
How it looks
3. Design, 13 checks.
Design is what decides whether people trust the site enough to hand it anything, including their attention.
- Does it look right on desktop? Not “does it load”. Does the layout hold at the widths your actual visitors use, including the very wide ones. Read the check
- Does it look right on tablet? The width nobody tests and a real share of visitors use. Read the check
- Does it look right on smartphones? Usually most of your traffic, and usually the version that was checked last. Read the check
- Is the layout clear and intuitive? A visitor should be able to tell what kind of page they’re on in under a second, before reading a word. Read the check
- Is the visual hierarchy right? The most important thing on the page should be the most visually prominent thing on the page. Squint at it. Read the check
- Is the CTA area clear and easy to read? Buttons lose to the background, to a hero image, or to their own low-contrast label more often than anyone expects. Read the check
- Is there enough spacing, but not too much? Cramped feels cheap. Sparse makes people scroll past the thing you needed them to see. Read the check
- Are there just enough typefaces? Two, usually. Sites accumulate a third and a fourth through plugins and embeds without anyone deciding to. Read the check
- Is there visual brand coherence? Pages built at different times by different people look like different companies, and visitors read that as instability. Read the check
- Do the visuals support the message? Stock photography of people laughing near a laptop supports no message. Read the check
- Are the visuals engaging rather than bland? Safe design isn’t neutral. It’s forgettable, which costs the same as bad. Read the check
- Are the visuals free from distraction? Autoplaying video, looping animation and busy backgrounds compete with the words for the same attention. Read the check
- Does contrast meet WCAG? This is the one check on the page with a number and a pass mark, and light grey body text fails it constantly. Read the check
Under the hood
4. Tech, 6 checks.
Fourth, not first, because a fast site that nobody understands is still a site nobody understands.
- Are load times fast? Slow is a conversion problem before it’s a ranking problem, and mobile is where it actually hurts. Read the check
- Are images optimally compressed? The single most common cause of a slow page, and the easiest to fix without touching anything else. Read the check
- Is code minified? Usually a setting rather than a project, and usually nobody has turned it on. Read the check
- Is SSL configured correctly? Not just present. Current, covering both www and non-www, with no mixed content. Read the check
- Is the SEO meta right? Titles and descriptions that are missing, duplicated or truncated are the cheapest fixable loss on most sites. Read the check
- Is tracking and analytics configured accurately? Worse than no data is data you trust that’s wrong, and duplicate tags are more common than missing ones. Read the check
Who it’s for
5. Messaging, 4 checks.
The right people arrive and think the site’s for somebody else.
- Do you understand and target a clear audience? A site written for everyone reads as written for nobody, and it’s usually a decision that was never made rather than one made badly. Read the check
- Is your messaging value-driven? What the visitor gets, in their terms, before what you do in yours. Read the check
- Is “what’s in it for me” answered? A stranger gives you one screen to answer it. Most sites spend that screen on a brand statement. Read the check
- Is there a clear user path? Not “is there a menu”. Is there a route from arrival to action that somebody designed on purpose. Read the check
The plumbing
6. Trust and plumbing, 5 checks.
People try to reach you and it silently doesn’t work.
- Do forms and APIs function seamlessly? A broken form doesn’t look broken. It looks like nobody’s interested in you, and it can run for months. Read the check
- Can users report issues easily? The visitors who tell you something is broken are doing free QA, and most sites make it hard enough that they don’t bother. Read the check
- Are cookie and privacy notices compliant and trustworthy? A banner that blocks the page and offers no real choice fails on both counts at once. Read the check
- Is supporting content used effectively through the journey? Blog posts that rank and then dead-end are the most common wasted asset on a business site. Read the check
- Is the site free from redundant pages? Two pages competing for the same query beat each other, and neither one wins. Read the check
Questions people ask
What people usually ask about the checklist.
Two to three hours to answer all forty-nine honestly on a small site, and longer if you read the guides as you go. Doing UX and copy alone, thirty checks, gets you most of the value in about an hour.
To assess, none of it. All forty-nine can be answered by looking. To fix, some of the tech checks need someone with access, and contrast and load time usually do too.
That’s normal, and it isn’t a crisis. Almost no site passes all forty-nine, and the ones that matter cluster together. Fix the UX failures first, then anything in trust and plumbing, then work down.
No. One check here covers contrast. A real accessibility audit covers keyboard navigation, screen readers, focus order and a lot more, and it’s separate work.
Yes. You run it yourself, and every check links to a free guide. There’s nothing to buy and no call to book. If you’d rather hand the whole thing over, that’s the paid audit.
If you’d rather not
Or hand the whole thing to us.
Running the list yourself is genuinely the cheapest way to find out what’s wrong, and most of what you find you can fix. If you’d rather have it done and ranked by what each failure is costing you, that’s a UX audit or a content audit. If you already know the one thing that’s broken, that’s a Quick Fix. If the site needs rebuilding rather than fixing, start here.
Keep the checklist and do it yourself, both are fine. Text 562-726-2287.