Guide

How to check if your website is any good (a non-technical guide)

By Nicholas Hartnell, StagHill Software — March 2026

You’ve got a website. Maybe someone built it for you a couple of years ago. Maybe you put it together yourself on Wix or Squarespace or WordPress one weekend. It looks alright. People can find your phone number on it. Job done, right?

Maybe. But “looks alright” and “actually works” are two very different things. Your website might be slow, invisible to Google, broken on phones, insecure, or quietly losing you customers every single day — and you’d never know unless you checked.

The good news is you don’t need to be technical to check. Everything I’m about to walk you through is free, takes about 10 minutes, and uses tools anyone can use. Grab a coffee, open your laptop, and let’s find out if your website is actually doing its job.

Test 1: The speed test

Go to pagespeed.web.dev (it’s Google’s own tool — completely free). Paste your website URL into the box and hit Analyse. Wait about 30 seconds. You’ll get a score out of 100 for both mobile and desktop.

Here’s what the scores actually mean:

• 90–100 (Green): Your site is fast. Well done. This puts you ahead of most of your competitors.
• 50–89 (Orange): It works, but it’s sluggish. There are things slowing it down that could be fixed. Your visitors are noticing, even if they’re not telling you.
• 0–49 (Red): Your website is actively costing you customers. People are clicking, waiting, getting bored, and hitting the back button before your page even loads.

That last point isn’t an exaggeration. Google’s own research found that 53% of mobile visitors leave a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Three seconds. That’s it. If your website takes 5 or 6 seconds — which is common — you’re losing more than half your visitors before they even see your homepage.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most small business websites I audit score somewhere between 30 and 60 on mobile. Desktop scores tend to be higher (because your computer is more powerful than your phone), but mobile is the score that matters most. More on that in a moment.

Common culprits for slow scores? Massive images that haven’t been compressed. Cheap hosting. WordPress plugins stacked on top of each other like a Jenga tower. That fancy slider on your homepage that nobody actually reads but takes 4 seconds to load.

Test 2: The Google test

This one catches people off guard. Open an incognito window (Ctrl+Shift+N in Chrome, or Ctrl+Shift+P in Firefox). The incognito bit is important — it stops Google from personalising your results based on your browsing history.

Now search for what your customers would actually search for. Not your business name. Your service, plus your location.

If you’re a plumber in Ipswich, search “plumber Ipswich” — not “Dave’s Plumbing Services.” If you’re an accountant in Norwich, search “accountant Norwich” — not your company name.

Why? Because your customers don’t know your name yet. That’s the whole point. They’re searching for what they need, not who you are. If you only show up when someone searches your exact business name, your website is basically a digital business card that only works if someone already has your details. That’s not a website doing its job — that’s an expensive vanity project.

Scroll through the first page of results. Are you there? If not, check the second page. If you’re not in the first 20 results, your website is essentially invisible. 75% of people never scroll past the first page of Google. And the top 3 results get roughly 55% of all clicks. If you’re on page two, you might as well not exist.

If you’re not showing up, the likely reasons are: no SEO work has been done, your pages don’t have proper titles and descriptions, you haven’t set up a Google Business Profile, or your website has so little content that Google doesn’t consider it relevant.

Test 3: The mobile test

Pull out your phone. Open your website. Actually use it for 60 seconds. Not a quick glance — properly use it. Try to do what a customer would do.

Ask yourself:

• Can you read all the text without pinching to zoom?
• Can you find the phone number in under 3 seconds?
• Does the menu open and close properly?
• Are the buttons big enough to tap with a thumb? (Not a stylus. A thumb.)
• Does anything overlap or look broken?
• Can you fill in the contact form without wanting to throw your phone?

Over 60% of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices. For some industries — restaurants, local services, trades — it’s closer to 75%. If your website doesn’t work properly on a phone, it doesn’t work properly for most of your visitors.

Now here’s the thing that trips people up. Your web designer probably told you the site is “responsive.” That means it technically rearranges itself to fit smaller screens. Great. But “responsive” and “good on mobile” are not the same thing. I see responsive websites every week with text so small you need reading glasses, buttons crammed so close together you hit the wrong one, and images that take forever to load on a 4G connection. Technically responsive. Practically awful.

Google has been using mobile-first indexing since 2019, which means it primarily looks at the mobile version of your site when deciding where to rank you. A site that’s brilliant on desktop but rubbish on mobile will get punished in the rankings.

Test 4: The security test

Look at your website URL in the browser bar. Does it start with https:// or http://? That “s” matters. It stands for “secure,” and it means data sent between your visitor’s browser and your website is encrypted.

If your site is still on http:// in 2026, that’s a genuine problem. Chrome and other browsers now show a “Not Secure” warning to visitors. It’s the digital equivalent of a sign on your shop door saying “we don’t have locks.” Around 85% of online shoppers avoid unsecured websites. Even if you’re not selling anything online, that warning destroys trust.

If you do have https, click the padlock icon (or the tune icon in newer Chrome versions). Check that the certificate is valid and hasn’t expired. An expired SSL certificate is worse than not having one — it actively scares people with a full-screen browser warning.

For a deeper check, go to securityheaders.com and paste your URL. It’ll give you a grade from A+ down to F. If you get a D or F, your website has security problems that most visitors won’t see but hackers will. Missing security headers mean your site is vulnerable to things like clickjacking (someone overlaying invisible buttons on your page) and cross-site scripting (someone injecting malicious code). Sounds dramatic, but these are automated attacks — bots try them on every website, not just big ones.

Most small business websites I test score a D or F on security headers. It’s one of the most common problems and one of the easiest to fix — a developer can sort it in under an hour.

Test 5: The trust test

This one requires honesty. Open your website and pretend you’ve never heard of your business. You’re a stranger. You found this site on Google. Would you trust it enough to hand over your money or your phone number?

Check for these:

• Real address. Not just a city name — an actual address. If you work from home and don’t want to share it, at least list your town and county.
• Real phone number. Visible on every page, ideally in the header. Not buried in a contact form three clicks deep.
• Privacy policy. It’s a legal requirement if you collect any data at all (yes, a contact form counts). If you don’t have one, you’re technically breaking the law and it looks unprofessional.
• Professional images. Do your photos look like they were taken this decade? Or are they obviously stock photos of people in suits shaking hands in front of a whiteboard? 46% of consumers say a website’s design is their number one criteria for judging credibility, according to Stanford’s Web Credibility Research.
• Copyright year. Scroll to the bottom. What year does it say? If your footer reads © 2021 or © 2022, it tells visitors nobody is maintaining this site. It takes 10 seconds to update. If that hasn’t been done, what else hasn’t been done?
• Reviews or testimonials. Social proof matters. If you’ve got happy customers, show it. Google reviews, Trustpilot, or just quotes with real names.

I know this sounds like small stuff. But online trust is built from dozens of small signals. Get enough of them wrong and people leave. They won’t tell you why. They’ll just go to your competitor who got them right.

Test 6: The mobile phone number test

While you’ve still got your phone out, try tapping your phone number on the website. Does it actually call the number? Or is it just text?

This sounds obvious, but a surprising number of small business websites display the phone number as plain text or — worse — embedded in an image. On mobile, your phone number should be a clickable link. One tap to call. If someone has to memorise your number, switch to the phone app, and type it in manually, you’ve already lost a chunk of them.

Around 60% of mobile searches for local businesses result in a phone call within 24 hours. If your number isn’t tappable, you’re putting friction between a motivated customer and their wallet. Don’t do that.

Test 7: The hidden problems

The first six tests are things you can check yourself in about 10 minutes. This last one covers problems you probably can’t spot without help — but they’re worth knowing about.

• Who owns your domain? Go to who.is and type in your website address. You should be listed as the registrant. If your web designer registered the domain in their name, you don’t actually own your own web address. This is more common than you’d think, and it’s a nightmare if you ever want to move to a different provider.
• Are your WordPress plugins up to date? If you’re on WordPress (and about 43% of all websites are), outdated plugins are one of the most common ways sites get hacked. Sucuri’s annual report found that 56% of hacked CMS sites had outdated software at the point of infection. If nobody is maintaining your WordPress site, it’s a ticking clock.
• Is your contact form actually working? Send yourself a test message. Right now. You’d be amazed how often contact forms silently break. A hosting update, a plugin conflict, a full email inbox — and suddenly every enquiry from your website vanishes into thin air. I’ve audited sites where the contact form hadn’t worked for months and the owner had no idea.
• Are you GDPR compliant? If you have a contact form, a newsletter signup, analytics, or cookies (you almost certainly have cookies), you need to comply with GDPR. That means a privacy policy, a cookie consent banner, and a way for people to request deletion of their data. Fines can reach up to £17.5 million or 4% of turnover — though for small businesses, the ICO is more likely to issue a warning first.
• Are you paying for things you don’t need? I regularly see businesses paying for premium plugins they don’t use, hosting plans they’ve outgrown (or undergrown), SEO tools that nobody logs into, and maintenance contracts where nothing is being maintained. A quick audit of what you’re actually paying for can save hundreds of pounds a year.

Score your website

Give yourself one point for each test your website passes. Be honest — a “sort of” is a fail.

What to do if your website fails these tests

First: don’t panic. Most small business websites fail at least 3 of these tests. You’re not alone, and most of these problems are fixable.

You’ve got three options:

Fix it yourself. Some of this is genuinely easy. Updating your copyright year, making your phone number a clickable link, compressing your images, adding a privacy policy page — these are afternoon jobs, not weekend projects. Google “how to” any of them and you’ll find step-by-step guides.

Hire someone to fix it. For the technical stuff — speed optimisation, security headers, SEO, hosting migration — a freelance developer can usually sort it for a few hundred pounds. You don’t need a full rebuild for most of this. Targeted fixes are almost always cheaper and faster.

Get a professional audit first. If you’re not sure what’s worth fixing and what isn’t, an audit tells you exactly where you stand. It takes the guesswork out of it and stops you spending money on the wrong things.

The worst thing you can do is nothing. Every day your website underperforms is a day your competitors — the ones who bothered to get this right — are picking up the customers you’re losing.

StagHill Software offers free digital audits for UK small businesses at staghillsoftware.co.uk.