7 checks for a clear, usable website

Describe in one sentence what the page should enable: understand an offer, compare, book, buy or make contact. Its title and introduction should match that purpose without jargon or a promise the organisation cannot demonstrate.

The next action can vary by page. Its label should state the expected result, such as ‘Request a proposal’ or ‘Explore the services’, rather than forcing the same button everywhere.

Organise content with descriptive labels, a sound heading hierarchy and consistent navigation. Important information—offer, service area, conditions and contact—should be reachable through a logical path.

Ask someone unfamiliar with the project to find a specific answer and observe where they hesitate. This does not measure conversion, but it can expose ambiguous wording, a missing step or an unexpected structure.

Responsive design adapts the layout to the capabilities of the device. Check content and actions at several widths, with zoom, by keyboard and without relying only on mouse hover.

Keep text readable, controls identifiable and navigation order logical. Mobile need not be a reduced copy of desktop, but it should provide the same essential information and tasks.

Use Core Web Vitals to examine loading, responsiveness and visual stability, and separate field data from laboratory tests. One PageSpeed score proves neither search performance nor the ability to generate enquiries.

Identify the resource or interaction causing the issue before optimising. Compressing an image, removing a script or changing hosting does not have equal value on every page.

Offer an action when the visitor has enough context. It may be a phone number, email, booking route or form; every page does not need the same mechanism.

In a form, request the information needed to handle the enquiry. Use visible labels, identify required fields and expected formats, explain errors and confirm successful receipt.

Publish only genuine and authorised testimonials, logos, certifications, figures or case studies. Add context, date or method when a reader needs them to understand a claim correctly.

An independent prototype or concept can demonstrate a creative direction when it is clearly labelled. It must not be presented as a client commission, an adopted design or a commercial result.

Show the home page to someone who does not know the business for five seconds, then hide it and ask three questions: what does this business do, for whom, and what can you do on this site? If the person hesitates on any of the three, the area visible without scrolling is not doing its job, whatever the quality of the rest.

This test fails most often for three reasons: a heading that is a slogan rather than a description, a large image filling the whole screen with no text, and a business name that says nothing about the activity without a sentence to explain it. All three are fixed in an hour of writing.

Repeat it on the pages that receive traffic directly from search engines — service pages, articles, product pages. Each is an entrance and must introduce itself alone, without assuming the visitor came through the home page.

A main menu of five to seven entries, named with the words customers use rather than trade terms, is enough for most small-business sites. “Prices” rather than “Commercial offer”, “Book” rather than “Client area”. Three-level submenus, mega-menus and a “Home” entry are signs that a structure was not thought through.

The footer repeats the practical links — contact, hours, legal notice, privacy policy, sitemap — and can hold the address and phone number. That is where visitors go who did not find it in the menu, and it must be identical on every page.

On mobile, the collapsed menu must open with one tap, close just as easily, and leave the main action and the phone number permanently visible. A mobile visitor looking for a number should never have to open a menu to find it.

A good service page answers, in order, five questions: what the service consists of, who it is for, what it includes and does not include, what it costs or how the price is set, and how to request it. One paragraph per question, subheadings that echo the questions, a clear action at the end.

Add what proves it: photographs of real work, an example of how it unfolds, an answer to common objections, and the trust elements the business can verify. Avoid adjectives that say nothing — professional, quality, bespoke — and replace them with facts: the lead time, the guarantee, the area, the number of years in practice.

• Each service page has its own title, its own description and its own URL.
• Three services on one page, without distinct headings, are not found in search engines and cannot be shared.
• One page per service is the rule, even if it is short.

Ask for the minimum: a name, a way to reply and a message are enough for an enquiry. Every extra field loses part of the visitors; a form with ten required fields for a simple question is a wall. If more information is useful, ask for it at the second contact.

• Every field has a visible label above it, not only a grey hint inside that disappears on typing.
• Required fields are marked.
• Errors appear next to the field concerned, as text, explaining what is expected.
• After submission, a message confirms receipt and states the response time.

Test the form with a real submission, from a phone, and check that the message reaches a mailbox that is read, not spam or an abandoned address. A form that appears to work but sends nothing is the most expensive and quietest failure on a small-business site; check it once a month.

Take a sheet with this article’s seven checks as columns and the main pages as rows, and mark each cell: good, needs work, missing. Walk through the site on a phone first, then on a computer. An hour is enough for a twenty-page site.

The result is a list of concrete fixes sorted by page. Rank them by expected effect and by effort: a broken form is fixed before a button colour, a service page with no clear action before a gallery. Most fixes from a first audit are done in a few days, without a redesign.

Repeat the exercise every six months or after every significant change. A site degrades in small steps — a page added without a title, an oversized photo, a link broken after a move — and the grid catches what nobody notices day to day.

Define the action that matters—submitted form, confirmed booking or purchase—then configure and test the corresponding event. An analytics tool can examine an action only when it has actually been collected with an appropriate setup.

Record release dates and compare sufficiently similar contexts: traffic source, device, offer and season can all change results. A before-and-after difference suggests a lead for investigation; by itself, it does not prove that the redesign caused it.