Six steps you can go through with a phone and a stopwatch, to see where visitors get stuck before you invest in any kind of audit.
Most website owners don't know what a visitor actually sees when they open the page. Not because it's hard to find out, but because you know your own site too well. So here is a short list you can go through in half an hour, phone in hand and without any special knowledge.
This is not a UX audit. An audit goes deeper and needs a specialist. This is a quick look that catches the most common and most expensive mistakes, the ones that make visitors leave before they even see what you offer. If you're wondering about the difference, I explained it in the article about the website UX audit.
Before you start
Prepare three things, it takes a minute or two:
- One goal for the site. What do you want a visitor to do: call you, send an inquiry, book, or buy? If you have several goals, pick the most important one. You'll judge everything else against it.
- A phone and a computer. You'll open the site on both.
- A stopwatch and a notepad. Write down what stops you, not how it should be fixed. Fixes come later.
If you can, open the site in an incognito window. That way you won't see what your browser remembers, but what a new visitor sees.
Step 1: the first-screen test (5 minutes)
Open the home page, look at it for five seconds, then close the tab. Now write down three things on paper: what the company does, who it's for, and what you're supposed to do next.
If you can't answer all three questions, the first screen isn't doing its job, and a visitor won't spend a single second more to find out. The most common problem is a headline that sounds nice but says nothing. You can read more in the article on why your website isn't bringing in customers.
Step 2: the path to your goal (5 minutes)
Start from the home page and try to do what you set as the goal: find the contact, book, or order. Count the clicks and note where you hesitated.
Ask yourself:
- Is the main button visible without scrolling?
- Is it clear which button is the main one, or are several competing for attention?
- Does the menu have too many items, so that you have to search?
If you have to search, the visitor will give up before you do.
Step 3: your phone (5 minutes)
Open the site on a real phone, not on a shrunken computer window. Hold it in one hand and use only your thumb, the way you would on a bus or in a queue.
Check whether the text is readable without zooming, whether buttons and links can be tapped on the first try, whether the menu opens and closes easily, and whether the form is usable with a keyboard covering half the screen. I wrote about what most often goes wrong on mobile in the article on mobile experience and sales.
Step 4: speed and stability (5 minutes)
Open the site on your phone over mobile data, not your home Wi-Fi. Watch three things: how long you wait for the main content to appear, whether the page responds the moment you tap a button, and whether the content jumps around while loading so that you tap the wrong thing.
Google measures these three things as Core Web Vitals. According to the explanation on web.dev, it's considered good when the main content loads within 2.5 seconds, the response to input is 200 milliseconds or less, and layout shift stays at 0.1 or below. For exact measurements, enter the address into PageSpeed Insights. You don't have to understand every number, it's enough to see what the tool marks as a problem.
Step 5: copy and trust (5 minutes)
Read the home page as if you were a new customer. Does the text talk about your problem or only about the company? Is there anything that proves the company is real: references, client names, projects, reviews, a phone number, an address? Can you see who is behind the site?
People don't buy what they can't judge, and a website is often the only thing they see. I write more about this in the article on trust on a website.
Step 6: the contact form (5 minutes)
Send yourself an inquiry through the form as if you were a client. Write down how many fields you have to fill in, whether you get a message after sending that the inquiry arrived, whether an email reaches you, and how fast.
A form that stays silent after sending quietly loses inquiries: the visitor thinks it didn't go through, so they send it again or give up, and you never find out they tried.
How to read your notes
When you're done, sort what you wrote down into three groups:
- Blocks the goal. The visitor can't do what you want them to do.
- Gets in the way. It slows down, confuses, or wastes patience.
- Cosmetic. Not pretty, but not harmful.
Fix them in that order. A contact button you can't see matters more than a shade of blue. If you already have analytics, compare your notes with the data. How to read it and turn it into decisions, I explained in the article on data and analytics in UX.
What you can't see yourself
The limit of this list is simple: you know your own site by heart. You know where the contact is because you put it there, and you know what every term in the menu means. That's why the first test often goes better than it should, while a real visitor still gets stuck.
Real research with users goes a step further, and I wrote about why it matters in the article on UX research. If you want a deeper list, look at Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics, which UX specialists use to evaluate interfaces.
If you'd like someone else to look at the site, that's me. The free basic check goes page by page and briefly tells you what's wrong. A complete audit is a paid service and takes longer, because it goes deeper into UX, SEO, and technical recommendations.
An example from work: when navigation changes, not functionality
When I redesigned the vPay application, the functionality had to stay the same, because the application already had approval from the regulators. My job was to improve navigation and usability, which are exactly the things this list checks. See the vPay project.
If you want the broader picture, I explained the basics of UX in the article what UX design is and why it is crucial for a website's success.
What next
When you've gone through the list, send me the address of your site and the three things you wrote down. I'll look at them and tell you what I would fix first, with no obligation. You can read more about how I work on the UX consulting and audit page, and you can send me a message through the contact page.
