A structured checklist that helps you evaluate where your digital presence stands and identify what to focus on next. Work through each section to build a clear picture of your strengths, gaps, and priorities.
What This Checklist Covers
This is not a generic “is your website good?” assessment. It covers the five areas that most directly affect whether a business can grow its digital presence effectively:
Website Foundations — is the technical base sound enough to support growth, or will you hit a ceiling?
Content Coverage — does your site answer the questions your potential customers are asking, or are there gaps that send them elsewhere?
Technical Health — are performance, security, and search engine accessibility at the level they need to be?
Operational Readiness — do you have the processes, tools, and team capacity to sustain growth once it starts?
Measurement — are you tracking the right things to know whether your efforts are working?
Website Foundations
- Mobile responsiveness — does every page work properly on mobile devices, not just the homepage?
- Page speed — do pages load in under three seconds on a standard mobile connection?
- SSL certificate — is the entire site served over HTTPS with a valid certificate?
- Structured URLs — are URLs clean, descriptive, and logically organised?
- Sitemap — is an XML sitemap submitted and being crawled by search engines?
- Analytics — is tracking set up correctly with goals or events defined for key actions?
Content Coverage
- Core services — does every service you offer have its own page with unique, detailed content?
- Common questions — does your site answer the questions prospects ask before making contact?
- Trust signals — are case studies, testimonials, or proof points visible and specific?
- Calls to action — does every important page have a clear next step for the visitor?
- Content freshness — has the site been updated with new content in the last three months?
- Meta descriptions — does every page have a unique, compelling meta description?
Technical Health
- Core Web Vitals — do Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift pass Google’s thresholds?
- Broken links — are there internal or external links returning 404 errors?
- Image optimisation — are images appropriately sized and served in modern formats?
- Caching — is browser caching configured for static assets?
- Security headers — are basic security headers in place (Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options)?
- Redirect chains — are there chains of redirects that slow page loading?
Operational Readiness
- Content production — can you create and publish new content without a developer?
- Response time — are enquiries responded to within one business day?
- Process documentation — are key processes documented so they do not depend on one person?
- Tool stack — are your tools connected, or do you rely on manual data transfer between systems?
- Team capacity — does your team have the bandwidth to act on growth opportunities when they appear?
Measurement
- Traffic trends — do you know whether traffic is increasing, flat, or declining?
- Conversion tracking — can you measure how many visitors take the action you want?
- Source attribution — do you know where your best leads come from?
- Revenue connection — can you connect marketing activity to actual revenue?
How to Use This
Work through each section and mark items as pass, fail, or unknown. Unknown items are as important as failures — they indicate blind spots.
Focus on failures in the Website Foundations section first. These are structural issues that limit everything else. Then address Content Coverage gaps, which directly affect whether potential customers find and trust you. Technical Health and Operational Readiness items support sustained growth once the foundations are right.
For an automated version of much of this assessment, install the WP Beacon Plugin (WordPress sites) or get in touch for a manual review.
