What we checked on your site
before we wrote to you
You did not ask us to look, so it is fair to tell you what we looked at. If our email pointed out something about your site, it came from the first part of this list. The second part is what we check while we rebuild the site. 43 checks: 14 before we wrote, 29 while we rebuild. Everything below is measurable and everything below is something you can verify yourself.
What people in your line of work look for
Every line of work has a few things people check before they ring. We read the text of your pages for the ones that apply to your business: we look for the words, we do not judge your photos. If our email said something was missing from your site, it came from this list.
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Can they see you are licensed and insured?
For a trade that means a licence number, an ABN and public liability cover. For a medical practice, AHPRA registration; for an agent, the agent licence; for a lawyer or accountant, the practising certificate, TPB or ASIC number.
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Can they see what it costs?
Whether quotes are free, your fees or bulk billing status, a price list, a nightly rate: whichever applies to your business.
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Can they see when and where you work?
Opening hours, after-hours or emergency availability, the suburbs you cover, the address and parking.
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Can they see your work?
For a trade, a gallery or a before-and-after section; for a salon, a page of your work; for a café, a menu written as text rather than a PDF; for an agent, current listings.
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Can they call or book from a phone?
A phone number that is easy to tap, online booking, a way to reserve a table.
Signs of its age, and of whether anyone looks after it
These are read from the page code, from the files every site publishes and from the address itself. None of them needs a login, and you can check each one yourself.
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Is the company that built it still around?
Many footers name the web company that built the site. We check whether that company’s own site still answers. When it has gone, there is usually nobody left looking after yours.
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Is the platform underneath still running?
Some site builders and hosts have been switched off, Adobe Business Catalyst in 2021 among them. We check whether your address still points at one.
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Does the address lead to a site of your own?
Some addresses lead only to a listing on a directory, or to a page on somebody else’s service. If that service closes or changes its terms, the page goes with it.
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Is it built for a phone at all?
We look for the one line in the page code that tells a phone to fit the page to its screen. Without it, a phone shows a shrunken desktop page that has to be pinched and dragged around.
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Does the padlock show?
Without a valid certificate Chrome writes “Not secure” next to your address, and Safari blocks the page behind a full-screen warning before anyone sees it. We also check whether the certificate has expired, because an expired one does the same thing overnight.
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How old is the software underneath?
Most small business sites run on WordPress, and the page code usually says which version and which theme. We check how old both are, and how old the scripts it loads are. A core that has not been updated in years often means nobody is looking after the site.
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Is the copyright year current?
A footer that says 2019 tells every visitor the business may not be trading. We only count a year three or more years old: many sites print the current year automatically, so on its own it proves nothing.
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Has anything changed lately?
Most sites publish a sitemap that records when each page was last edited. We read it to see how long ago anything on the site was changed.
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Is the visitor counter still counting?
Google switched off its old Universal Analytics in July 2023. A site that still carries only that code has counted nobody since, so nobody can tell what the site brings in.
What we check while we rebuild it
Part one is what we measured before we wrote. This part is the standard the rebuild is built and checked against: widths, text size, tap targets and contrast are measured on the rebuild before you see it, and the domain questions we go through with you before anything goes live.
Because that is where your customers are
People looking for a local business almost always do it on a phone: someone standing on a footpath with your competitor one tap away. If the site fails there, the desktop version never gets a look.
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Does it fit the screen?
We check every width down to 320 px. Sideways scrolling on a phone means someone has to drag the page around to read a sentence, and they will not.
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Is the text readable without pinching?
Text that needs zooming gets skipped. Every zoom is a moment they might leave instead.
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Can you hit the buttons?
Tap targets under 44 px get mis-tapped. A phone number nobody can tap is a phone call you never get.
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Do menus work by touch?
Menus built for a mouse hover open on desktop and do nothing on a phone. We open every one.
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Does anything cover the content?
Pop-ups and sticky bars that are fine on a laptop can swallow half a phone screen.
Every second of waiting costs you people
Google grades a page on its Core Web Vitals: the main content should appear within 2.5 seconds and the page should answer a tap within 200 milliseconds. Those are the two numbers we build the new site to.
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How long until something appears?
We look for under a second. Anything over three and most visitors have gone.
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How long until the main content loads?
The big image or heading at the top. Under 1.5 seconds is the target.
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Does the page jump while loading?
Content that shifts as images arrive makes people click the wrong thing.
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How heavy is the page?
Photographs straight off a camera are the usual culprit: a 4,000 pixel wide photo shown in a 400 pixel box still downloads at full size. We check the format (WebP or AVIF instead of JPEG) and whether each image is sent at the size it is actually displayed.
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Does the page arrive ready?
A site that rebuilds every page for every visitor is slow. Good hosting keeps a ready copy, so it arrives at once.
What a visitor sees before they read a word
People decide whether a business is real in the first few seconds, and browsers help them decide. Some of these will be costing you enquiries right now without anybody telling you.
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Does the padlock stay on every page?
One insecure image breaks it. You would never notice; the browser does, and says so.
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Do the links still go anywhere?
Dead links to suppliers, socials or your own pages read as neglect.
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Are the contact details right?
Every phone number, address and opening hour on the rebuild comes from your own pages; nothing is made up. You check them before anything goes live.
What Google and AI assistants can actually read
Someone who searches for a business near them usually acts on it the same day. Whether you show up at all depends on things you cannot see on the page.
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Does each page have its own title?
Sites built cheaply often carry one title across every page. Google then has nothing to tell them apart.
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Is there structured data?
The machine-readable description of your business: what you do, where, when you are open. Without it you are guessed at rather than read.
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Is there a sitemap and a robots file?
The two files that tell a crawler what exists and what to ignore.
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Does your Google Business Profile match the site?
For a local business the profile often matters more than the website. If the name, address and hours disagree, both suffer.
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Can an AI assistant read it?
Some people now ask ChatGPT or Perplexity to find a tradesperson. We check whether your site gives them anything to quote.
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Does Bing see you as well as Google?
Bing is a separate index with its own crawler, and it feeds Copilot as well as Bing itself. A site indexed by one and not the other misses whatever share of your market uses it.
The legal risk almost nobody mentions
Under section 24 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, a site people with disability cannot use can amount to discrimination. The benchmark is WCAG 2.1 AA. Most small business sites fail it, and almost no web company mentions it.
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Is there enough contrast?
Grey text on a white background is the most common failure. We measure it as a ratio, not by eye. 4.5:1 is the threshold.
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Do images have descriptions?
Someone using a screen reader hears “image” and nothing else. It also costs you in search.
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Can you use it with a keyboard?
Not everyone uses a mouse. If the menu cannot be reached by tabbing, part of your audience cannot use the site at all.
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Are form fields labelled?
A field with placeholder text but no label is unusable with assistive software and confusing for everyone once they start typing.
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Does anything move without asking?
Auto-playing carousels and video cause real problems for some people, and irritate everybody else.
Who actually controls your address
This one catches people out badly, and it is specific to Australia. We go through it with you before the new site goes live on your domain, because if the domain is not yours, nothing else matters.
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Whose name is the domain in?
If your web company registered it in their name, you do not own your own address. Moving away then means losing it or paying to get it back.
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Is your ABN still valid?
A .com.au requires an Australian presence, usually a current ABN or ACN. If yours lapses and auDA investigates, the domain can be deleted 14 days after you are notified.
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Is anyone sub-licensing it to you?
auDA rules prohibit licensing, renting or leasing a .com.au to a third party. An arrangement where an agency “lets you use” a domain it holds is not one you want to be in.
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When does it expire?
A .com.au domain sits in a 30-day grace period after expiry, then goes to auction. Buyers watch those lists for names with a trading history, so this is not a deadline you want to discover late.
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Do you hold the .au as well?
Direct .au registration has existed since 2022. If someone else has taken the .au version of your name, that is worth knowing.
What this check does not tell you
It is not an accessibility audit
On the rebuild we measure contrast, tap targets and text size, and check that every link has a name. A full WCAG 2.1 AA conformance review is a separate piece of work by a specialist, and if you are in a regulated sector you should get one.
It does not predict your ranking
We can tell you whether Google can read your site properly. We cannot tell you where you will land for “plumber Sydney”. That depends on competitors, links and years of work nobody can shortcut.
It is not a legal opinion
We flag the Disability Discrimination Act and the auDA domain rules because they are real and rarely mentioned. We are not lawyers and this is not advice about your situation.
Sometimes the answer is “leave it”
If your site clears those thresholds, works on a phone and brings you work, we will tell you that and you will not hear from us again. A rebuild that changes nothing is money you should keep.
Want us to run this on your site?
Send us the address. We run this check, rebuild the site, and send you the finished result with what we found. It costs you nothing and there is no follow-up if you do not reply.