10 Key Questions for Website Owners

If you own a website, you should be reviewing it regularly. Annually is OK, quarterly is better. The we say it all the time, the internet changes constantly. You may not need to make changes but its wise to check. Each time you do, ask yourself these 10 key questions? There may be more but these should keep your site relevant and keep it doing what you want it to do.

There may be a few answers to this but there should be one before all the others “sell shoes”, “raise inquiries” or “demonstrate legal compliance”.

Whatever the answer is, every other purpose should serve that end –

• “Display products beautifully so that users want to buy our shoes”
• “Showcase our completed projects so that users make an inquiry”
• “Demonstrate our certification so that legal compliance is clearly visible”

If you don’t know what your website is meant to do, you cannot tell whether it is doing it successfully or not. Of all the these key questions, if you cannot answer this one, you’re going to struggle.

Most professional website analysis software (e.g. SemRush or SeRanking.com) maintains a notional Site Health score. Googles own Core Web Vitals are a key indicator of site health and should be checked.

Expectations of site speed, security and usability change all the time. These checks should be completed at least annually. A Google Lighthouse report is a great place to start.

Your hosts should have access to server logs. It‘s worth asking them if there have been any major changes to server performance.

It’s a good question. But should be treated with caution. You may not be your own ideal client. So the answer may be “No’’. But in which case who would?

If the answer is “No”, you had better make sure that your ideal customer would.

Whether it’s delivery charges or official certification, if your target user cannot find it, they are likely to head elsewhere. Users’ attention spans are short and dislike of hidden charges intense. You’ve done the hard work, the user is on your site – make sure they can do what they want you to do. Fast.

Take a look at each page of your website and remind yourself why you put it there. Does it reflect that goal well? If the answer is no, you’ll want to look at re-writing some of your web content.

You may even wish to remove some content but make sure you use a redirect to make sure your clients don’t hit any nasty “Page not found” errors.

Is the navigation clear? Does the site flow?

People who surf the net are easily distracted – with thousands of websites battling for their attention. Make sure yours is the one they stick to by creating clear navigation and layout. Nav should normally appear along the top of the page.

Avoid using a burger menu until you need to. Users are happy to use them on a phone but not so much on a large screen.

It’s likely you or someone you know has replaced their phone recently – check your website on it.

Browsers update all the time, often without users knowing. Take some time and check your website across a range of internet browsers to make sure it works on all of them.

If you can, use third-party software like BrowserStack. It will allow you to see your site on a vast range of devices.

There are lot’s of free SEO checkers out there. You’ll probably have to trade your email address and suffer some spam but they’ll give you good advice.

If you haven’t already, set up Google search console. It will tell you if there is any issue preventing any of your pages being indexed. Older practices like keyword stuffing are now blacklisted by Google. It is possible that older pages violate newer guidelines and will need a rewrite before they can appear in search engines again.

Not every company is looking for leads off their website. But if you do, it’s a very good indicator that your website it working as it should.

If you aren’t getting any responses through your website, you will need to assess why. It could be that your online contact form is too long or too hard to find.

Test that your forms work and reliably deliver completed information to your inbox. If you can, set up tag manager to trigger a conversion event when someone clicks on your phone link.

If you cannot answer most of these key questions to your satisfaction, it may be time for a major rework. Fresh content is essential to maintaining a good website; it keeps people interested and can improve your Google ranking. As for design, if your website is more than a few years old you may want to look into bringing it up to date.

At Little Fire Digital, we love helping businesses improve their websites, whether it’s an SEO makeover, a blog or a redesign. If you’re interested to see how your website is doing, we’d love to offer you a free consultation. All you have to do is drop us an email or give us a call and we can arrange a visit!