Somebody arrives on your website having never heard of you. They give it a few seconds. Then they either go further or go back.
This checklist is a way of finding out which one happens, and why. It is ten questions, each phrased the way a stranger would ask it in their own head, and each one exists because of something that goes visibly wrong when the answer is missing.
What this is, and who it is for
This is for the person who runs a small business, made the site themselves or paid someone to do it years ago, and cannot understand why enquiries are thin when the work is good. It is a diagnosis, not a work programme. You are trying to find out what a person who owes you nothing can and cannot work out from your first screen.
Two things this is not.
It contains no ranking, keyword or search-engine advice. That is a separate craft, done properly by people who do only that, and this site does not cover it. What we can speak to is what a human stranger needs on the page, which is the part that usually breaks first and costs nothing to fix.
It also has no bearing on whether we would list a business. Running this changes nothing about that. Inclusion depends only on clearing our entry bar, and the rule that nothing you do or buy affects consideration is written into the bar itself so it cannot quietly erode. This exists because it is useful.
The list is also published as a working document at the free checklist. It is ungated. No email, no form, no account, no partial version.
How to run it: open your site in a private window and start a timer
The reason your own site looks fine to you is that you cannot see it cold. You know what you sell. You supply the missing half of every sentence without noticing. This is ordinary and it happens to everybody who has ever built anything.
So set the conditions up to work against you.
- Open a private or incognito window. Log out of everything. You want no autofill, no session, no personalisation.
- Use a phone if you have one to hand. Hold it in one hand. Do not rotate it.
- Go to your homepage. Start a ten-second timer. When it goes off, look away.
- Write down what you could answer from what you saw.
Better still, do not run it on yourself at all. Hand the phone to somebody who has never heard of your business, ask them to look for ten seconds, and then ask them what you sell. Do not help. Do not explain. Do not say "well, if you scroll". Whatever they say back is what your site says.
Then work through the ten questions below. Score each one yes or no. There is no partial credit, because a stranger does not award any.
1. Can they tell what you sell?
The stranger's question: what is this, and what would I be buying?
The observable failure: the first screen carries a phrase that could belong to any business in any industry. Someone reads it for ten seconds and, asked what you sell, describes a feeling rather than a product. "Something creative?" "Consulting, maybe?"
This is the failure that makes the other nine irrelevant, and it is the one we see most often. There is a whole post on the single most common failure, including the four things people write instead. The fix is usually one sentence in plain words, placed where the eye lands first.
2. Can they tell who it's for?
The stranger's question: is this meant for someone like me?
The observable failure: nothing on the page names a kind of customer. No sector, no size, no situation, no constraint. The reader cannot self-select, so they do the safe thing and leave.
Naming your customer feels like turning people away. In practice a stranger who cannot place themselves in your copy has already turned themselves away. One clause does it. Who you work with, or who you do not.
3. Can they tell where you are, or that location doesn't matter?
The stranger's question: can you actually serve me from where you are?
The observable failure: the page names no place, no country, no currency and no delivery area, and it does not say that location is irrelevant either. The reader has to guess, and guessing wrong wastes their time and yours.
If you are online-only, say so in as many words. If you are physical, a town and region is enough for this purpose. Never publish a residential address, including when your home is the registered business address. Real places, checked covers the physical side properly, and the contact-page rules are stricter still.
4. Can they tell whether you're open or taking work?
The stranger's question: are you actually available, or am I about to send an email into the void?
The observable failure: nothing on the site states current availability. The reader cannot distinguish a business with a two-month waiting list from one that quietly stopped trading in the spring. Both look identical from the outside, which is unfair to you if you are the busy one.
A sentence with a date attached settles it. "Taking bookings for autumn." "Books closed until further notice, enquiries still welcome." "Workshop closed for two weeks from the 3rd." The date is what does the work. A dated sentence is a commitment, so put it somewhere you will remember to update, and see signals that make you look closed for what happens when you do not.
5. Can they reach a human?
The stranger's question: if I have a question, or if this goes wrong, who do I talk to?
The observable failure: the only route is a form with no name attached and no indication that anyone reads it. Or there is an address that bounces. Or there is a phone number and nothing about when it is answered.
This one is worth more than it looks. A named person and a stated response window is a small thing that a stranger reads as evidence of a real operation. Test the route yourself from an address you own, on a phone, and check where the reply lands.
6. Is there any price signal at all?
The stranger's question: is this in my range, or am I wasting both our time?
The observable failure: the site contains no number of any kind. Not a price, not a range, not a starting figure, not a typical project size, not even a band. The reader has to make contact in order to find out whether contact was worth making, so most of them do not.
This is not a demand for a full price list, and there are businesses where a list would be dishonest because every job is different. A range, a floor, or a worked description of a typical engagement all count. Pricing pages for the terrified deals with the hard cases.
7. Is anything on the page dated?
The stranger's question: is any of this current?
The observable failure: the site carries no date anywhere that would let a reader judge freshness. No last-updated line, no dated post, no dated availability note. The copyright year in the footer is the only date, and it is three years old.
We take dates seriously here because the whole register runs on them, and why we date everything explains what a stale one means to us. On your own site the principle is smaller and the same: an undated claim is a claim with no expiry, and a sceptical reader treats it as an old one.
Do not automate a date stamp that updates itself while the content underneath it sits still. That makes the page look fresh without being fresh, which is worse than an honest old date.
8. Does anything contradict anything else?
The stranger's question: which of these two things is true?
The observable failure: the footer says one set of hours and the contact page says another. The homepage lists four services and the navigation lists six. An old announcement says you have moved and the address underneath it is the previous one.
Contradictions are common, they are nobody's fault, and they do specific damage. A stranger who catches one stops trusting everything else on the page, including the things that are correct. Read your own site end to end once, with a notebook, purely hunting for two statements that cannot both be true.
9. Does it work on a phone, in one hand?
The stranger's question: can I use this right now, standing up, with one thumb?
The observable failure: a cookie banner covers the content and its dismiss control is off-screen. The menu is a price list in a PDF. Text needs pinching. A button sits under a fixed header. The phone number is not tappable.
You do not need a redesign to catch these. You need to open the site on an actual phone, not a narrowed browser window, and try to do the one thing a customer would want to do. If you cannot get through it in one hand, neither can they.
10. Would a stranger believe a real person runs this?
The stranger's question: is anyone actually behind this?
The observable failure: the site could have been generated wholesale. Nothing on it is specific to a particular person, place or trade. There is no name, no photograph of actual work, no detail that a copy-paste operation would not have bothered to include.
Specificity is what does this, and specificity is free. What you make and what you do not. How long you have been doing it, if you know. The equipment, the process, the constraint you work within. The fact sheet that answers most of this collects the raw material once so you can stop retyping it, and an about page a stranger will believe turns it into prose.
Do not invent any of it. An invented team, an invented founding story or an invented award is exactly the kind of detail a sceptical reader goes looking to verify, and it fails badly when they do.
What to fix first if you failed several
Most people fail four or five of these. That is normal, and it is not a sign of a badly run business. It is a sign that you have been busy running it.
Fix in this order.
| Priority | Fix | Why it comes first |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Question 1: what you sell | Every other item is decoration if the reader cannot name the product. Nothing else you fix will be read. |
| 2 | Question 5: reaching a human | The people who are already convinced need a working route out. A broken route wastes the interest you have. |
| 3 | Question 4: whether you're open | Cheapest sentence on the list, and it settles the question a stranger is most likely to get wrong about you. |
| 4 | Question 8: contradictions | Removing a false statement is faster than writing a true one, and it stops the bleed of trust. |
| 5 | Questions 2, 3, 6 | Legibility items. A sentence each. Do them in one sitting. |
| 6 | Questions 7, 9, 10 | Ongoing work. Real, but they reward a site that already passes the first five. |
Two rules of thumb worth keeping.
Fix one thing, then re-run the test on a different person. The list is a diagnosis. Working through all ten in an afternoon usually produces a site that is longer rather than clearer.
Prefer deleting to writing. Several of these failures are caused by extra material rather than missing material. A first screen with one clear sentence beats a first screen with a slogan, a mission and a carousel.
If you want the structural version of this rather than the diagnostic one, the seven-item shopfront floor sets out what a small business site needs page by page, and shopfront basics is the whole section.
In Plain English
A stranger will not work to understand you. In the first few seconds they are trying to answer four questions: what is this, is it for me, is it still going, and who do I talk to. If your site answers those four, you have cleared the bar that most small sites fall at.
Everything else on this list is a way of finding out whether you have answered them without noticing that you have not. You cannot check that by reading your own site, because you already know the answers. You check it by handing the phone to someone else and keeping quiet.
None of this is about search engines and none of it is about us. It is about whether the page makes sense to a person who arrived by accident.
Questions people ask about the checklist
What if I fail nearly all of it?
Then you have found ten things to do and a clear order to do them in, which is more than most people have on a Monday. Fix the first one. Almost every site we look at fails several, including sites belonging to businesses that are doing perfectly well.
Does passing this get me listed in your register?
No. Listing depends only on the entry bar and nothing else. This checklist is not a pre-qualification, an application, or a signal to us. We publish it because the failures it catches are the ones we see constantly, and describing them is more useful than keeping them to ourselves. The refusal file is the same information from the other direction.
Is there really no email wall on the template?
No wall. No form, no account, no download gate. Gating a checklist behind an email address on a site whose argument is that listings should not be transactional would be hard to defend, so we do not do it.
Should I hire someone to fix these?
Most of them are sentences you can write yourself in an evening, and you know your own business better than anyone you would hire. The phone and layout items are the ones where paid help genuinely earns its keep. Being findable with no budget sorts the free work from the work that costs money.
Get the free checklist. It is ungated, it stays free, and using it has no effect on whether we would list your business. If you want the rest of the section, start at being findable.