Website audit checklist: check your site in 30 minutes

How to use this checklist

Go through the seven blocks below and note every point where the answer is “no” or “I don't know”. Don't fix anything yet. When you're done, you'll have a short list, and the order of the blocks is roughly the order of priority: a broken form costs you more today than a missing alt text. Each block takes three to six minutes.

You'll need: your phone (on mobile data, not Wi-Fi), a laptop, access to Google Search Console if you have it, and a private browser window so your own history doesn't influence what you see.

1. Inquiries (5 minutes)

Send a test inquiry through every form on your site, from your phone. Did it arrive? Who received it? Did it land in spam?
Did you get an automatic confirmation that says when you'll reply?
Tap your phone number and email address on a phone. Do they start a call and open an email?
Is the main action (quote, booking, call) visible on the first screen and at the end of every service page?
Does every page give a visitor something to do next, or do some pages end in a dead end?

If the form fails, stop here and fix that first. Everything else on this list is about getting more inquiries; this one is about not throwing away the ones you already get. We cover the rest of the inquiry funnel in where the leads get lost.

2. Mobile (5 minutes)

Open the homepage on your phone. Within five seconds, can you tell what the company does, for whom and how to start?
Can you read all text without zooming? Is anything cut off or wider than the screen?
Are buttons and links big enough to tap without hitting the wrong one?
Does the menu open, close and show every important page?
Does a cookie banner or pop-up cover the content, and can you close it easily?
Fill in the contact form on the phone. Does the keyboard switch to numbers for the phone field and to the @ layout for email?

3. Speed (4 minutes)

Run your homepage and one service page through PageSpeed Insights. Do they pass the Core Web Vitals for real users on mobile?
Does the main content appear in under about 2.5 seconds on your phone over mobile data?
Does the page jump around while it loads?
Are there images on the page bigger than 300 kB? (PageSpeed Insights lists them under “Improve image delivery” or a similar heading.)

Only 48% of websites pass all three Core Web Vitals on mobile, according to the HTTP Archive's Web Almanac 2025, so failing here is common. What to do about it is in why is my website slow.

4. Google (6 minutes)

Search site:yourdomain.com. Do your important pages appear?
Search your company name. Do you come up first, with a sensible title and description?
Search for your main service and city the way a customer would. Where are you?
Do your page titles in the results describe the page, or do they all say “Home” or just the company name?
In Search Console, does the Pages report show your important pages as indexed? Is a sitemap submitted?
Do old addresses (for example from a previous version of the site) redirect to the new pages, or show a 404?
Is your Google Business Profile verified, with correct hours, categories and photos?

If the site doesn't show up at all, follow the steps in why isn't my website showing up on Google. For the map results, see the local SEO checklist.

5. Content and trust (4 minutes)

Is everything still true: services, prices, opening hours, team members, address, phone number?
Does each main service have its own page that answers what a customer would ask on the phone?
Can a visitor find real projects, reviews or references?
Can they find at least a price range or a starting price?
Are there company details: legal name, address, registration number?
Is the newest item in your blog or news section recent, or is it better to remove the section?
Does the copyright year in the footer show the current year?

6. Accessibility basics (3 minutes)

Put the mouse away and move through the homepage with the Tab key. Can you see where you are, and can you reach the menu and the form?
Is light grey text on white, or white text on a photo, hard to read?
Do form fields have visible labels, not just placeholder text that disappears when you type?
Do images that carry information have a text alternative?

This isn't a full accessibility audit, but these four catch the most common problems. The WebAIM Million 2026 report found low-contrast text on 83.9% of the top million home pages. If you sell to consumers in the EU or the US, read what the ADA and the European Accessibility Act mean for your website.

7. Security, ownership and tracking (3 minutes)

Does the site load on https:// with a padlock, and does the http:// version redirect to it?
Do www and non-www lead to the same address?
Is the CMS, theme and every plugin up to date, and do you know who updates them?
Do you (not only your former developer) have the logins for the domain, hosting, CMS, Analytics and Search Console?
Is there a recent backup, and has anyone ever tested restoring it?
Does Analytics record visits and form submissions? Can you say how many inquiries the site brought last month?
Is there a privacy policy, and does the cookie banner actually block tracking until the visitor agrees, where the law requires it?

What to do with your list

Sort what you found into three groups:

Fix this week: anything that loses inquiries (broken forms, wrong phone numbers), blocks Google (noindex, robots.txt), or is simply wrong (old prices, closed locations, a former employee as contact).
Fix this quarter: speed, mobile usability, missing service pages, titles, accessibility basics, tracking.
Consider a rebuild: if the list is long, the CMS is outdated, nobody can edit the site, or every fix depends on one person who's hard to reach. Our website redesign checklist helps you decide between a refresh, a redesign and a rebuild.

Repeat the check every few months, and always after changes to the site, the hosting or your email setup. The inquiry test from block 1 is worth doing every month.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes, we'll do this check for you. Send us your address through our free website check and you get the results in a short written list, sorted by what to fix first. It's done by a person from our team, not an automated report, and there's no obligation to work with us afterwards.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I audit my website?

Do a quick check like this every three to six months, and after any change to the site, hosting or email setup. Test your contact forms every month, because they can stop working without any visible sign.

Are free website audit tools enough?

Free tools such as PageSpeed Insights and Google Search Console are good at measuring speed and indexing. They can't tell you whether your offer is clear, whether visitors trust you or whether your form actually reaches the right person. That part needs a person looking at the site the way a customer would.

What should a website audit include?

At minimum: whether inquiries arrive, how the site works on a phone, loading speed, whether Google indexes and ranks the important pages, whether the content is current and convincing, accessibility basics, and security, ownership and tracking.