Website Check in One Hour: What You Can Check Yourself

Before you start thinking about a relaunch, it’s worth spending an hour on a diagnostic analysis. Not because you’ll know everything afterward, but because you’ll then have something concrete to discuss. The difference between “the site isn’t good anymore” and “our most important page loads in 6.2 seconds” is the difference between a hunch and a finding.

You don’t need developers or a budget for the following seven checks. Grab a notepad, jot down a number or a sentence for each point, and by the end you’ll have a solid assessment.

1. Pace

Open PageSpeed Insights and enter your homepage. Then run the same test for your most important performance page and for a typical subpage. What’s important isn’t the colorful overall score, but the mobile score and the time to the largest visible element.

Anything under 2.5 seconds is good; anything over 4 seconds is a problem. Between these values lies the range where visitors still stay but are already starting to get impatient. Write down these three numbers. They’re the most hard-hitting data you can get in an hour, and they’re the starting point for any performance optimization.

2. The Smartphone

Take your own phone and try submitting a request—from start to finish, just as a prospective customer would.

Keep four things in mind: Can you find the contact page without having to search for it? Can you tap the buttons with your thumb? Can you fill out the form without having to zoom in? And does a confirmation message appear at the end that says more than just “Thank you”?

This exercise takes three minutes and is the most honest test there is. More than half of your visitors access your site from a smartphone, but the site was almost certainly built and tested on a large screen. This is exactly where it’s determined whether UX/UI design holds up in everyday use.

3. Discoverability

Enter `site:your-domain.de` into Google. The number of results shows how many of your pages are actually in the index. If it’s significantly lower than the number of pages you actually have, part of your website isn’t being found.

Search for your company name and see what Google displays as the title and description. Is it a meaningful sentence or a truncated snippet of text? Do the same for your three most important services, this time without including your company name. Do you appear on the first page, the third page, or not at all?

If the number of hits is unexpectedly low, the problem usually lies not with the text but with the technology behind it. That is the realm of technical SEO.

4. The Process of Making an Inquiry

Count how many clicks it takes a visitor to go from the home page to submitting a request. More than three is too many.

Then take a look at your forms and count the required fields. Any more than five will noticeably reduce the number of completed forms. For each one, ask yourself whether you really need that information for the initial contact or if it will come up later in the conversation anyway. The fax number is the most well-known example, but it’s rarely the only one.

Finally, check to see if there’s a way to get in touch on every service page. Many pages end with the last paragraph and leave the reader on their own, even though that’s exactly the moment when they’re most likely to be ready to take action. This is one of the easiest ways to optimize conversion rates.

5. Contents

Open your main services page and read the first paragraph aloud. If it describes how great your company is instead of explaining what problem you solve, you’ve found the most common writing mistake among small and medium-sized businesses.

Also check the date. When was the content on this page last updated? Are there still services listed that you no longer offer, or are the ones that now drive your business missing? For many websites, the list of services is a snapshot of the company from five years ago. If you never update your content, you’ll eventually end up advertising a company that no longer exists in that form.

6. Trust

Look for evidence on your website. We’re not talking about self-promotional statements, but rather things that a stranger can verify: project examples with names, customer testimonials that include the person’s and company’s names, specific figures, and certificates.

Count how many of them appear on your most important page. For most websites, the answer is zero. That’s remarkable because no one would fail to mention references during a sales pitch.

7. Maintenance

Finally, here are two technical checks you can do on your own. Make sure your URL starts with https and that the browser displays a padlock icon. Then click through any five subpages and watch for error messages or blank pages.

Next, ask around the company to find out when the CMS was last updated. If no one can answer that question, you already have your answer. A neglected website isn’t just an aesthetic issue—it’s a security risk—and regular website maintenance is cheaper than dealing with the first incident.

What you have left after that

Seven notes, three or four of which probably have a number after them. That’s enough to decide whether your website needs a few tweaks here and there or a complete overhaul.

The rule of thumb is simple. If speed, mobile compatibility, and forms are the issues, they can usually be resolved on the existing site. If, on the other hand, the structure no longer fits the company and the CMS turns every change into a negotiation, you’re working against the foundation.

Conclusion: An hour well spent

This check is no substitute for a professional audit. It identifies obvious problems, not hidden ones, and it tells you nothing about accessibility, data protection, or the quality of your source code.