Twelve questions that find where a website leaks
Before Webfused quotes a dollar on any website, we ask the same twelve questions. None of them require opening the code. None of them need a marketing degree. They are the entire method behind the SalesLeaks scorecard, and we're publishing them because a method you have to hide isn't much of a method.
You can run all twelve on your own site right now. Answer honestly, from a phone, pretending you've never seen the site before. The honest answer is the only one that helps you.
Clarity: can a stranger tell what you sell?
- A stranger lands on your homepage. Within five seconds, would they know what you sell and who it's for?
- Does the site say why someone should pick you over the next tab they have open?
- Is there one obvious next step on every page, or do visitors have to figure out what to do?
Visitors can't buy what they don't understand, and they don't stay confused for long. They leave. Your homepage isn't competing with silence; it's competing with the other three tabs that person opened from the same search. If the first screen doesn't answer "what is this, and is it for me," the rest of the site never gets read.
The five-second test is the one owners fail most often, because you can't un-know your own business. Ask someone who has never heard of you to look at your homepage on their phone for five seconds, then tell you what you sell. Their answer is your answer to question one.
Trust: would a careful customer believe you?
- Do you show reviews or testimonials from real customers, with names?
- Can a visitor see real results, like numbers, before-and-afters or case studies?
- Would a visitor guess the site was updated this year?
A careful customer looks for proof before they call, because they've been burned before. "Quality work, fair prices" is a claim anyone can type. A named review from a real customer in their town is evidence. One before-and-after with real numbers does more for trust than any redesign.
Question six surprises people. Staleness reads as risk: if the copyright year is wrong and the last photo is from four phones ago, a visitor quietly wonders whether the business is still paying the same attention to its actual work. Unfair, maybe. Also how people shop.
Speed: does it work on the phone in their hand?
- On a phone, does your site load in about three seconds or less?
- Can someone do the main thing on your site from their phone without pinching and zooming?
- Does anything on the site feel broken or sluggish, like a form, an image or a button?
Most of your visitors are on a phone, often on a weak connection, often in a hurry. Every extra second of load time costs you some of them, and the ones in the biggest hurry are the ones ready to buy. Speed isn't a technical virtue. It's whether the customer is still there when the page shows up.
To check this one honestly: open your site on your own phone, on cellular data, not your office wifi. Then try to do the thing you most want a customer to do. If you pinch, zoom, or wait, so do they.
Path: how hard is it to become a customer?
- How many steps does it take to go from landing on the site to buying or inquiring?
- When someone's ready to buy or reach out, do you ask only for what you actually need?
- When someone calls or fills out your form, how fast does something happen automatically? A reply, a confirmation, a booking link.
Each extra step between landing and buying loses a slice of visitors. A nine-field form asks a stranger to do paperwork before you've done anything for them. Count the clicks from your homepage to a submitted inquiry; if you lose count, so does everyone else.
Question twelve is the quiet one, and it's about your business more than your website. A form that sits unread until Thursday is a leak no design can fix. The owner who answers in four minutes wins jobs from the owner who answers in four hours, with the same website and the same price.
Scoring yourself
Tally your answers: a clean yes, a "sort of," or an honest no. The pillar holding your most noes is where to start, and it's usually not the one you expected. Owners tend to assume the problem is design. In our questions, design barely appears; what appears is whether a stranger can understand you, believe you, reach you, and hear back.
If your answers came out mostly yes, your site is likely fine, and you should spend the money somewhere else.
If you'd rather have a number than a tally, the scorecard asks these same twelve questions and takes about three minutes. Your score shows on screen, no email needed.