I can audit a website faster than ten minutes. That’s not a boast. It’s just what happens when you’ve done it as often as I have. You develop an eye. You notice the things most people walk straight past.

But most of my clients aren’t web designers, and they don’t need to be. So I’ve put together something gentler: a ten-minute audit you can do yourself, with a cup of coffee, no spreadsheets, no jargon, no stress. Just a handful of simple checks that will tell you whether your website is helping your business or quietly working against it.

Grab your coffee. Let’s go.

Minute 1-2: The Blink Test

Open your homepage. Don’t scroll yet. Just look at what’s above the fold, the bit people see before they touch their mouse or trackpad.

Ask yourself honestly:

Do I know what this site does within three seconds? Is there a clear next step, a button, a call to action, something to click? Does it look clean and modern, or does it look like it was built in 2015 and abandoned?

If you have to squint or guess, make a note. First impressions matter more than we like to admit. If you’re confused by your own site, your visitors are too.

Minute 3-4: The Phone Flip

Pick up your phone. That’s how most of your visitors are seeing you. Around 70% of them, in fact. Load your homepage and try to use it with your thumb.

Is it easy to navigate? Are the fonts readable, or are they tiny and awkward? Are the images behaving themselves, or spilling off the side of the screen?

Then tap a few buttons. If they take forever to load, or if they go nowhere, that’s your cue. Mobile is not a nice-to-have anymore. It’s where most of your business walks in the door.

Minute 5-6: The Scroll and Skim Test

Scroll through your main pages: home, about, services. Don’t read every word. Skim it like you’re bored on a train.

Look at the headings. Do they make sense on their own? Are your paragraphs short, or are they dense walls of text nobody will read? Is there a clear visual flow? Do your eyes get guided down the page, or do they get lost somewhere in the middle?

If you get bored or confused, your audience probably will too.

Minute 7-8: The Broken Bits Check

Now the boring bit, but the one that matters most. Click your main menu links. Try your buttons. Fill out your contact form, and I mean really fill it out. Send yourself a test message.

You’re looking for dead links. Forms that don’t send. Buttons that go nowhere. A copyright line at the bottom that still says 2019. That last one is small, but it tells every visitor that nobody’s paying attention.

And if your site is running on WordPress, there’s a whole other layer of things that can go wrong. Shortcodes appearing where content should be. Plugins that haven’t been updated in two years. Images so large they slow your whole site down. I won’t go into the technical detail here, but these are exactly the kinds of things a proper audit catches. Things you’d never notice, but which quietly cost you sales.

Minute 9-10: The Gut Check

Last question, and it’s the most important one.

Does your website feel like you? Is the tone friendly if you’re friendly? Calm if you’re calm? Confident if you’re confident?

A polished website is great. But a website that doesn’t sound like the person behind it, that’s a personality mismatch, and it’s what keeps people from picking up the phone. If your site sounds like a stranger wrote it, your copy probably needs a rewrite. Nothing drastic, just more of you in it.

The Point of All This

None of these checks takes long. None of them requires you to be a web designer. But together they catch the things you don’t notice, and which your visitors absolutely do.

A contact form that doesn’t work. A copyright line from three years ago. A phone number nobody answers. Images so heavy the page takes forever to load. These are small things. But small things add up, and they all say the same thing to a prospective client: this person isn’t paying attention.

And if you’re neglecting your website, that’s what people assume about your business. That your admin is sloppy. That the details don’t matter. That the service you offer is probably about as well looked after as the site you built to sell it.

That’s why I do this for my clients on a regular basis. Every site I maintain has a maintenance plan: updates, audits, content checks. Because that’s how you keep a website working for your business instead of against it. It’s not expensive. It’s not complicated. But it makes an enormous difference.

That’s what an audit is really about. Not perfection. Just paying attention.

So grab your coffee. Ten minutes. See what you find.

And if you’d rather have someone who does this every day take a look, you know where to find me.