A bad website rarely gets angry emails. People simply leave and buy from someone else. Grab your phone, open your own site, and check it against these five signs.
1. It takes more than three seconds to load
On a mobile connection, every extra second costs you visitors. Oversized images are the usual culprit, followed by too many plugins and pop-ups. A free speed test will tell you where you stand in under a minute.
2. It’s not obvious what you do
Show your homepage to a friend for five seconds, then hide it. Can they tell you what you sell and who it’s for? If not, your headline is working too hard to be clever and not hard enough to be clear.
3. There’s no clear next step
Every page should end with one obvious thing to do: book, call, buy, ask a question. If visitors have to hunt for your contact page, many won’t bother.
4. It looks out of date
Old copyright years, “news” from three years ago and stock photos everyone has seen before all whisper the same thing: is this business still trading? Freshness builds trust, even in small doses.
5. Nobody is looking after it
Broken links, an expired security certificate or a contact form that silently stopped sending are more common than you’d think. The fix is boring but effective: someone checks the site every month.
What to do next
If you spotted two or more of these, start with the quickest wins: compress your images, rewrite your homepage headline and add a clear call to action to every page. If you’d like a full list of what to fix and in what order, that’s exactly what a website audit is for.