Most business owners know their website probably isn’t doing as much for them as it could be. The problem is knowing where to look – and what you’re even looking for.
The good news is that you don’t need to be technical to spot the things that quietly hold most websites back. Here are five checks you can do today, in about thirty minutes, that will give you a much better picture of how your business looks to the outside world.
Check your website
- How does your website actually come across?
Start with the most important check, and the hardest one to do honestly.
Open your website on your phone, as if you’d just found it through Google. Try to imagine you’ve never been there before. What’s the first impression?
Does it look professional, or does it look like it was built fifteen years ago? Does the design speak to who your customer actually is? Does the content tell visitors what outcomes you can create for them, or does it just list what you do?This is where most small business websites quietly fall down. There’s been no real thought given to what a potential customer is actually searching for, what they want to know when they land on the page, or how the site is meant to build trust with them. The website exists but it isn’t doing any of the work it should be doing.
The hard part is that the people who run the business know it too well to see it clearly. You need an outside view. - How fast does your site load?
This one is easy to check, and it has a much bigger impact than most people realise.
Go to Google Page Speed Insights, type in your website address, and wait for the results. You’ll get a score and a breakdown of what Google calls “Core Web Vitals” – essentially, how the page performs for a real visitor.
If your site takes more than three seconds to load on mobile, you’re losing visitors before they’ve even seen what you do. Google also uses these scores as a ranking factor, so a slow site quietly damages your search visibility on top of frustrating your customers.
Green scores across the board don’t mean you’re finished – they mean you’ve reached the bare minimum that Google expects. But they’re a good place to start, and the issues that come up are often surprisingly straightforward to fix. - Are you using social media properly or just being present?
Social media is one of the biggest discovery channels for businesses. But most businesses use it badly, in two specific ways.
The first is posting purely about what they do. Everyone knows plumbers exist. Another Facebook account telling people that yet another plumber exists isn’t doing anything useful. Before you post, ask yourself: is this shareable? Is this interesting to someone scrolling past? If the answer is no, it’s unlikely to lead to followers, visibility, or enquiries.
The second is inconsistency. A handful of posts from three years ago, then one from last year, then nothing – this looks worse than not posting at all. It signals a business that started something and didn’t follow through. The rule of thumb is simple: either commit to posting regularly, or hold the account name and leave it dormant. The half-effort version actively damages perception. - What do your reviews look like and are you responding to them?
Reviews are one of the strongest forms of social proof you have. Other people saying good things about your business is always more powerful than anything you can say about yourself.
A reasonable target for a small local business is around 30 reviews on the platforms that matter most for you. For most businesses that means Google. Google reviews help with both search discoverability and showing up on Maps. If most of your customers come through social media, Facebook reviews matter too.
Not having reviews isn’t necessarily damaging on its own. But not responding to negative ones is. A professional, calm response to a negative review often does more for your reputation than the negative review itself does to harm it – it shows future customers how you actually handle problems. - Is your website actually a resource or just a brochure?
This is the one that surprises people most.
Most small business websites are static. The home page is the same as it was when the site went live. There’s no blog, no guides, nothing being added. From Google’s point of view, the site looks dormant – and it ranks accordingly.
Regularly publishing useful content does two things at once. It tells Google your site is active and worth ranking. And it turns your website into something genuinely useful – a place people return to, share, and trust.
There’s a common worry that comes up here: if I write a guide explaining how to do what I do, won’t people just do it themselves instead of paying me? In practice, almost the opposite happens. When someone reads a clear, honest guide on a topic, they usually come away thinking “this is more involved than I thought – I’d rather pay someone who knows what they’re doing.” You’ve demonstrated expertise, they’ve understood the value, and they’re more likely to come to you when they need help.
The honest reality
You can do all five of these checks yourself, in less time than it takes to drink a coffee. What’s harder is being honest about what you find. Most business owners are too close to their own business to see it clearly. They know what their site means to them, so they can’t see how it looks to someone discovering it for the first time.That’s exactly what a Digital Presence Assessment is designed to do. It looks at your business the way a potential customer would – covering your website, your visibility, your reviews, your social presence, and the things you might not even know to check. The assessment is free, and it gives you an outside view of how your business is genuinely perceived online.
Request your free Digital Presence Assessment