What I check before telling someone they need a new website

If you send me an old dresser, I do not start by throwing the drawers in a bin. I open them. I check whether the frame is square. I look at the veneer, joints, hardware and damage. Sometimes ugly furniture is solid underneath. Sometimes a beautiful finish is hiding a structural problem.

I approach an existing website the same way.

A redesign is easy to recommend when you sell redesigns. I would rather establish what is actually failing first. That is the idea behind my free Website Second Look: I review the homepage and the main customer path, email five specific observations, and tell you the one thing I would fix first.

These are the broader questions behind that first look.

1. Can I tell what the business does immediately?

I start as a stranger. No context, no explanation from the owner, no benefit of knowing the company already.

What is the business? Who is the service for? Where does it operate? What is the main reason somebody came here? If the first screen gives me a logo, a photograph and a sentence about “excellence,” but never actually says what the company does, that is a clarity problem before it is a design problem.

2. Does the website make the business look as credible as it is?

A twenty-year-old business can accidentally look like a two-month-old operation online. Old staff photos, generic stock photography, tiny text, inconsistent colours and stale content all change the first impression.

I look for real evidence: years in business, qualifications, work examples, real photography, testimonials where appropriate, useful contact information and signs that somebody still pays attention to the site.

3. What happens on a phone?

I do not just ask whether the page technically shrinks. I look at whether it becomes easier or harder to use.

Can I tap the phone number? Can I read the type without pinching? Does the important information arrive before three decorative images? Is the contact form comfortable to complete with a thumb? Does a giant video download before I can see the business name?

A mobile layout has to make decisions, not simply become narrower.

4. Is the next step obvious?

A visitor can be genuinely interested and still leave because the site never makes the next action clear.

I look for the right next step for that business: call, request a quote, book, buy, visit, email or ask a question. Then I follow it. Buttons have to work. Forms have to submit. Booking links have to arrive at the right service. A beautiful call-to-action button connected to nothing is decoration.

5. Does the business information agree with itself?

Hours in the footer should match hours on the contact page. Phone numbers should be current. Services should have the same names throughout the site. Location and service-area information should not contradict the Google Business Profile.

Inconsistency creates doubt for customers and makes the business harder for search engines to understand cleanly.

6. Can search engines understand the pages?

I look at page titles, headings, URLs, internal links and whether important words are actually text that can be read instead of being baked into an image.

I also look for old pages that should have been removed or redirected, repeated content with no clear purpose, and page titles that still describe a previous version of the business.

This is not a full SEO audit. It is a check for obvious structural problems that can stop good content from doing its job.

7. Is the site carrying technical weight nobody needs?

A site can accumulate machinery the way a garage accumulates half-used cans of paint. A page builder, a theme framework, multiple analytics scripts, a slider plugin, three font families and a video nobody remembers adding can all be loading before the customer sees the useful part.

I look for unusually heavy pages, unnecessary third-party requests, oversized images and other things that make the site slower or more fragile than the job requires.

8. Are there signs of a security or spam problem?

Not every strange result means the site is hacked, and a first look is not a forensic security audit. But there are red flags worth noticing.

Unexpected pages in search, links to unrelated industries, strange titles, scripts loading from unfamiliar domains, redirects that should not exist, or page-builder code appearing where normal search text should be are reasons to stop and investigate before redesigning anything.

Putting fresh paint over a compromised site does not repair the underlying problem.

9. Can the owner actually maintain what matters?

A website can look perfectly good and still be a bad system for the business if nobody can update the hours, staff, services or articles without calling the original developer.

I want to know who controls the domain, hosting and third-party accounts. I also want to understand what the owner truly needs to edit. Some businesses need a full content editor. Some need a simple blog. Others change the site twice a year and do not need a complicated dashboard at all.

10. What is worth keeping?

This is the question that makes a rebuild different from demolition.

Good customer reviews are worth keeping. Useful copy may be worth keeping. Photography, branding, search history, familiar URLs and service explanations may all have value. Even a technically rough website can contain years of business knowledge.

I want to identify those things before anybody starts replacing pages.

The decision comes after the diagnosis: repair what is isolated, rebuild what is getting in the way, and leave alone what is already doing its job.

When do I think a full rebuild makes sense?

Usually when several problems are connected. The mobile layout is poor because the old theme cannot handle the new content. The copy is unclear because the business has outgrown its original four services. The plugins are difficult to maintain. Search pages are messy. Nobody wants to update anything because every change risks breaking the layout.

At that point, repairing one piece at a time can cost more attention than rebuilding the structure cleanly.

But if the site is fast, accurate, usable and structurally sound, I am happy to say that too. Maybe it needs stronger copy, a better homepage, new photographs or a local-search cleanup. A smaller job is still a useful job.

What the free Second Look is, and is not

The free Website Second Look is intentionally bounded. I review the homepage and main customer path and send five useful observations plus the first thing I would address.

I do not need a password. I do not change anything on the website. I am not conducting a full penetration test, accessibility certification or comprehensive SEO audit for free.

The point is simpler: give you a useful outside view before you decide whether the website deserves a repair, a refinish or a rebuild.