If your website isn't bringing in the work you hoped for, the first step is figuring out what's actually wrong with it. You don't need to hire anybody or spend a dime to do a basic checkup. You just need to know what to look for and be honest with yourself about what you find.
This is a walkthrough you can do in about twenty minutes with your phone and a laptop. Go through each section, check your own site against it, and make a list of what needs fixing. By the end you'll have a clear picture of why your site is or isn't pulling its weight.
Grab your phone and pull up your website. Let's go through it.
Step 1: Can People Even Find You?
Start here, because this is the one that sinks most contractor sites. Open Google and search for your trade and your city, like "roofer in Manchester NH" or "deck builder near me." Look through the first two pages of results.
Do you show up anywhere? Be honest. If you can't find yourself in the first couple pages, that's your biggest problem, and no amount of fixing the site itself will matter until people can actually find it. A great site nobody sees brings in zero leads.
Check these: Does your business appear in the regular search results? Does it show up in the map pack at the top? Is your Google Business Profile claimed and filled out? If you're missing from all of these, your starting point is local SEO, not redesigning the site.
Step 2: How Fast Does It Load?
On your phone, on regular cell data instead of wifi, type in your website address and count the seconds until it's fully loaded and usable. If it takes more than three or four seconds, you're losing people. Homeowners are impatient, and a slow site sends them straight back to Google to call someone else.
You can also run your site through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool, which gives you a score and tells you what's slowing it down. Big unoptimized images and bloated page builders are the usual culprits.
Check this: Does it load fast on your phone on cell data? If it drags, that's costing you leads every day, and it's dragging down your Google ranking on top of it.
Step 3: Does It Work on a Phone?
Most of your visitors are on their phones, so this matters more than how it looks on your computer. Go through your whole site on your phone like a homeowner would.
Check these: Can you read everything without pinching and zooming? Are the buttons big enough to tap with your thumb? Does the layout look right, or is stuff overlapping and cut off? Is the phone number tappable so it dials when you press it? If using your own site on a phone is annoying, that's exactly what every potential customer is dealing with.
Step 4: Is It Obvious What You Do and Where?
Look at the top of your homepage, the part people see before they scroll. Pretend you've never seen it before. Within about two seconds, can you tell what the business does and what area it serves?
If the top of your site says something vague like "Quality You Can Trust" with no mention of your trade or your towns, that's a problem. A homeowner needs instant confirmation they're in the right place.
Check these: Does the headline state your trade and service area clearly? Is it obvious you serve their town? Could a stranger figure out what you do in two seconds? We covered exactly what belongs up there in our post on what to put on your homepage.
Step 5: How Easy Is It to Contact You?
This is where a lot of leads quietly leak away. A homeowner ready to reach out should never have to hunt for how to do it.
Check these: Is your phone number at the top of every page, not buried in the footer? Is there an obvious button to request a quote or estimate? If there's a contact form, is it short, just name, phone, and a quick note? Long forms with ten fields scare people off. Every bit of friction between a ready customer and reaching you costs you the job.
Step 6: Does It Make You Look Trustworthy?
Homeowners are cautious about hiring contractors. Your site has to earn trust before they'll call. Look at your site through the eyes of a nervous homeowner about to spend real money.
Check these: Are there Google reviews shown right on the site? Are there real photos of your actual completed jobs, not stock images? Does it mention you're licensed and insured? Does it show how long you've been in business or how many jobs you've done? A site with no reviews, no real photos, and no proof you're established gives a careful homeowner every reason to keep shopping.
Step 7: Does Each Service Have Its Own Page?
Look at how your services are laid out. If everything you do is crammed onto one page with a sentence each, you're leaving leads and rankings on the table.
Check these: Does each major service have its own dedicated page with real detail? Or is it all jammed onto a single services page? Google ranks individual pages, so separate service pages help you get found and convert for each specific thing you do. One crammed page can't compete with a competitor who has a full page for each service.
Step 8: Is It Current?
An outdated site makes people wonder if you're even still in business. Scan for anything stale.
Check these: Are the photos recent or are they years old? Are your hours and contact info correct? Does the footer show a current copyright year or one from a few years back? Is there any "booking for spring 2024" type text still hanging around? Stale details quietly tell homeowners and Google that nobody's minding the store.
Step 9: Is There a Clear Next Step on Every Page?
Walk through each page and ask what you're supposed to do next. A site that converts always points the visitor toward one clear action.
Check these: Does every page have an obvious call to action like "Get a Free Estimate"? Or do some pages just end with no direction? If a visitor reads a page and there's no clear next step, a lot of them just leave. We dug into this in our post on what makes a contractor website convert.
Tally Up What You Found
Now look at your list. How many of these came up short? One or two issues and you've got some quick fixes that could make a real difference. Five or more and your site probably needs a serious overhaul, or a rebuild.
The most common pattern we see is a site that fails on findability first, then on speed and mobile, then on trust signals. Those tend to stack up together. The good news is every single one of these is fixable, and fixing even the top few usually moves the needle on how many calls come in.
Want a Second Set of Eyes?
Doing your own audit is a great start, and you'll catch a lot. But it's hard to be fully objective about your own site, and some issues like technical SEO problems don't show up just by looking. That's where an outside audit helps.
We offer a free website audit where we go through all of this and more, then show you exactly what's working, what's costing you leads, and what to fix first. No cost, no pressure, just a clear rundown of where your site stands. Or if your audit turned up so many issues that a rebuild makes more sense, take a look at what we build for contractors.