Is your website still being looked after?
Most business websites are built once and then quietly forgotten. Ten things are worth checking — and almost every site we look at has three or four of them wrong.
Free 3-page checklist. Plain English. No technical knowledge needed.
The 10-Point Website Health Checklist
Ten things worth checking once a year — in plain English.
- 1 Is anyone actually updating it?
- 2 Could you restore your backup?
- 3 How fast is it on a phone?
- 4 Does your form reach your inbox?
+ 6 more · scoring · what to do next
Websites do not fail loudly
When a shop window breaks you know immediately. When a website breaks, usually nothing happens at all — no alert, no error, no phone call. It simply stops doing its job while everything looks completely normal from the outside.
You find out from a customer
The usual way owners discover a broken contact form is someone saying “I emailed you last week and never heard back.” By then you have lost the enquiry and the goodwill.
Fixing costs more than checking
An hour of maintenance prevents most of this. Recovering a hacked site, restoring lost content or rebuilding from no backup costs many times more — in money and in days.
It is your first impression
Most people look you up online before they ever call. A slow, outdated or insecure site quietly costs you the customers you never knew were looking.
If any of these sound like you, you are in good company
These are the things business owners actually say to us. None of them mean you did anything wrong — they mean nobody has been watching the site for a while.
“The person who built it stopped replying about two years ago.”
“I have no idea what the login is. My nephew set it all up.”
“A customer told me the contact form wasn’t working. I had no idea.”
“It still shows last year’s prices. I keep meaning to sort it out.”
“Someone said it looks broken on a phone, but it looks fine on my computer.”
“I am fairly sure there’s a backup somewhere. I have never had to use it.”
How a good website quietly goes wrong
Nobody decides to neglect their website. It happens gradually, and the pattern is almost always the same.
Everything works
The site is new, fast and correct. Whoever built it is still answering emails. Nothing needs doing.
The updates stop
The developer moves on or gets busy. Nobody logs in. Updates start stacking up quietly in the background.
Small things break
A form stops sending. A page loads slowly on phones. Prices go out of date. None of it announces itself.
Something goes badly wrong
The site is hacked, goes down, or has been losing enquiries for months. Now it is urgent, expensive, and happening at the worst possible time.
The checklist below is simply a way of finding out which year you are actually in — before year four arrives.
Half an hour now, or days later
Almost everything on the checklist is cheap and quick to fix while the site is still working. The same problems are expensive and urgent once they have caused damage.
About 30 minutes
- You go through ten questions yourself
- You find the two or three that are wrong
- They get fixed while nothing is on fire
- You know where you stand for a year
Days, and real money
- You discover it from a customer, or from Google
- The site is down while you find someone to help
- Recovery costs far more than prevention would have
- You never learn how many enquiries you lost
The ten questions
Each one takes a minute or two to answer yourself. The whole list takes about half an hour.
One rule before you start: if you do not know the answer, that counts as a no. Not knowing is itself the risk, because it means nobody is watching.
Is anyone actually updating it?
Skipped updates are the most common reason a working site suddenly breaks or gets hacked.
2 minCould you restore your backup?
Many backups have never been tested, or sit on the same server as the site itself.
5 minHow fast does it load on a phone?
Large photos are the usual cause. Most people leave rather than wait.
1 minDoes your form reach your inbox?
Forms fail quietly. The visitor sees a thank-you message and nobody is ever told.
3 minIs your security certificate current?
When it lapses, browsers show visitors a full-page “not secure” warning.
30 secIs the information still correct?
Old prices, staff who left, services you no longer offer, last year’s hours.
10 minCan Google actually find you?
Sites are sometimes launched with search engines switched off. It goes unnoticed for years.
1 minIs your business listing accurate?
Your Google listing is often seen more often than your actual website is.
2 minWho owns your domain name?
If a former developer registered it, you do not control your own web address.
5 minWho do you call when it breaks?
The usual answer is someone who stopped replying years ago.
1 minGet the free checklist
Three printable pages with all ten points explained, what happens if each one is a no, and a simple score at the end. Enter your email and it opens straight away.
No phone number needed. No sales call. We will send the checklist and occasional plain-English tips about looking after a business website. Unsubscribe any time.
Who is behind this?
We are Dotcom Craft. We look after WordPress websites for business owners who would rather not think about WordPress — updates, backups, security, speed and the everyday changes that need making. We work remotely with clients across the United States, bill in US dollars, and there is no long-term contract.
If you would rather we simply checked your site for you, we will do that free of charge. Send us your web address and we will go through all ten points and write back in plain English. If everything is fine, we will tell you that too.
Just send your URL — no call required. We reply within 2 business days.
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