This is the checklist we run on every free audit Umber sends out. Eleven questions, in order, written for a small-business owner who wants to know what we are actually looking at when we say a website is or is not doing its job.
You can run this on your own site right now. Or you can send us your URL and we will run it for you and send back a written report in five business days.
1. Is the phone number tappable on mobile, in the header, on every page
Open your site on a phone. Look at the header. Tap the number. Does it call you. If the answer to any of those is no, you are losing a percentage of every visitor who arrived ready to call.
The fix is half an hour. The lift in call volume is usually visible inside the first thirty days.
2. Does the homepage answer "what do you do, where, and how do I start" in the first viewport
Open your homepage on a phone. Without scrolling, can a visitor tell what your business does, where you serve, and what the next step is. If they have to scroll to find any of those, the hero is not doing its job.
This is the failure mode behind most "the site looks great but it is not converting" complaints. The hero is decoration when it should be a sales tool.
3. Is the form asking only for what you actually need
Most contact forms have ten fields when three would do. Name, phone, and a one-sentence description of the problem are all you need to dispatch a follow-up call for almost every service business. The other seven fields are friction.
Cut anything that is not strictly required. The conversion lift is real and measurable.
4. Does the site load under three seconds on a phone on 4G
Run your site through PageSpeed Insights on the mobile tab. Look at the Largest Contentful Paint score. If it is over 2.5 seconds, you are sending a "slow site" signal to both your customer and Google.
The fix is rarely a plugin. The fix is usually a real rebuild on a faster front-end framework. We have looked at sites that improved Core Web Vitals scores from 38 to 95 by replacing a 2019 WordPress theme with a small Next.js or Astro front end.
5. Are service areas plain text Google can read
Google reads HTML, not images and not maps. If your service-area information lives in an interactive map widget or a stylized graphic, it is invisible to search.
A plain-text list, alphabetized, on a dedicated page, ranks for "your-service in suburb-name" the way a fancy map never will.
6. Are pricing and cost expectations on the site
This is industry-dependent, but the trend is clear. Service businesses that publish at least a starting-from price (or a clear "most projects fall between X and Y") convert better than businesses that hide pricing entirely.
Hiding pricing does not raise your average ticket. It sends comparison shoppers to competitors who listed theirs.
7. Does the site have one page per real service, or one page that lists everything
A page that lists six services with two sentences each ranks for none of those services. Each service needs its own URL, with its own hero, its own three-paragraph explanation, and its own FAQ block.
This is the single most common SEO failure mode we see. A four-service site with four real pages outranks a one-page-with-list site every single time.
8. Is there a real CMS and is it actually used
Some businesses do not need a CMS. A six-page site that does not change is fine without one. Most service businesses do need one, because new project photos, new service areas, and new blog posts move the needle.
The real question is not "do you have a CMS." It is "is anyone actually adding content to it." A CMS that has not been touched in eighteen months is a cost without a return.
9. Is on-page SEO actually set up
The five things to check on each page:
- A real
<title>that matches the page topic, not "Home | Your Company." - A meta description that reads as a sentence, not a keyword string.
- One
<h1>per page. - Schema markup on at least the LocalBusiness and the FAQ if one exists.
- Internal links from this page to two or three related pages.
If any of these are missing, the page is leaving search visibility on the table.
10. Is the analytics actually answering the right question
Most small-business sites have Google Analytics installed and look at the wrong number. Total sessions does not pay your invoices. Calls and qualified leads do.
The right setup involves call tracking on the phone numbers, conversion tracking on the form submissions, and a quarterly report that ties traffic to actual revenue. Anything less is decoration.
11. Does the site say something honest
Last and rarely talked about. Read your homepage out loud. If it reads like every other small-business site (compassionate, dedicated, experienced, family-owned, 5-star reviewed), it is not actually saying anything specific to you.
The fix is harder than a CSS change. It is writing copy that says what you actually do, in plain language, with specific details that only your business can claim. This is the part of the audit that takes longest and pays back the most over time.
How the audit works
If you want this checklist run on your site, send us your URL. The audit is free, comes back in five business days, written, and is yours to keep regardless of whether you work with us.
For more on what changes when we rebuild, the process page covers the engagement, and the pricing page covers the cost.