A business owner checks a tablet beside a coral-red sideboard in a sunlit furniture shop.

You know your website. You know where the phone number is, what the service names mean, and which button to press.

A new customer does not have that advantage.

Take five minutes for an initial look at your site as someone who has never met you. Contact delivery checks and follow-up investigation may take longer. This is a quick first pass, not a full technical inspection. You are looking for the places where a useful visit becomes a guessing game.

The Short Version

  • Open the site on your phone.
  • Find what the business does and where it works.
  • Choose one service and follow its contact path.
  • Write down the first thing that feels unclear or does not work.

You do not need to fix everything today. Start by finding one specific problem.

Minute One: Can You Understand the Business?

Open the public homepage on your phone while signed out of the website editor or administrator area. Use the address customers would visit, rather than an editing preview. Read the first heading and the next few lines without using the menu.

Can you answer these three questions?

  • What does this business help people do?
  • Who is the service for?
  • Where is it available?

Imagine a person looking for someone to repair a patio screen. “Quality Solutions for Your Lifestyle” gives them less to work with than a plain explanation of the service and service area.

Your wording does not need to be clever. It needs to help the right person recognize that they are in the right place. If you work remotely, say which services can be handled remotely rather than leaving visitors to guess.

Minute Two: Can You Read and Move Around?

Keep using the phone. Scroll down, open the menu, and choose a service page.

Look for text that requires pinching to read, words cut off at the edge, buttons crowded together, and a menu that hides the page or will not close. Check whether a banner covers something important.

If the main information is missing on mobile, record that separately from a visual problem. Google explains that it uses the mobile version of a site's content for indexing and ranking. That makes the mobile experience worth checking even when the desktop version looks good. Google's mobile-first indexing guidance explains the distinction.

Minute Three: Is the Next Step Clear?

Choose one real reason a customer might visit. For example: “I need to ask whether this business can help with my broken website.”

Follow that task from the homepage. Does the button explain what happens next? “Ask About a Website Repair” is more specific than “Learn More” when it leads to an inquiry form.

Meaningful link text also helps people using assistive technology understand where a link goes. Web.dev's guidance on labels and text alternatives describes why names matter for links, buttons, and forms.

You do not need a button in every paragraph. You need a clear path at the point where someone is ready to use it.

Minute Four: Does Contact Actually Work?

Tap the phone link and confirm that it opens the expected number. You can cancel before placing the call. Open the email link and check the address before sending anything. Those checks confirm the destination shown, not that a call connects or an email arrives. Arrange a genuine call or clearly labeled test email when you need to confirm delivery, using accounts and numbers you control.

If you own the site, submit one clearly labeled test inquiry using an address you control. Check both the on-screen result and the receiving inbox. A success message alone does not confirm delivery. You may need to check the inbox again after this first pass. Avoid submitting payment details, sensitive customer information, or repeated test messages.

If the form fails, note exactly what happened. “The form is broken” is harder to investigate than “On my phone, pressing Send leaves the button spinning and shows no confirmation.”

Minute Five: Write One Useful Repair Note

Use this simple format:

“On [page address], using [phone or computer and browser], I tried to [task]. Instead, [what happened]. I expected [result].”

For a hypothetical example: “On the contact page, using Safari on my phone, I sent one inquiry labeled Website Test at 2:15 p.m. The page showed Thank you. At 2:30 p.m., I had not found the message in the intended inbox or spam folder. I expected it in the business inbox.” Record your actual times, browser and result. No visible error is still a useful observation; it does not establish the cause.

Add a screenshot if it helps, with private information hidden. Never include passwords or sign-in codes.

Prioritize barriers to understanding the business, contacting it, reading the page or using navigation. A blocked contact path is urgent, but a visitor who cannot identify the service also needs help. Decorative changes can wait. If your notes suggest a larger problem, use the repair-or-rebuild guide to decide what evidence to gather next.

Repeat the check after a meaningful site update. If possible, ask someone unfamiliar with the site to try the same task without coaching. Where they hesitate is useful information, not a criticism of your business.

If you find a website problem and cannot tell what is causing it, you can send Friendly Tech Guide the page address and what happened. Your notes are useful whether you handle the repair yourself or ask for help.