A website can look perfectly healthy on the surface and still have small problems that lose you customers. Broken links, slow-loading pages and issues on mobile can all create unnecessary friction between someone finding your business and taking action.
The good news is that you don’t always need a complete redesign to make a meaningful difference. Before your next busy period, take some time to check these three areas. They’re quick to review, relatively straightforward to fix and worth building into your regular website maintenance.
01. Fix broken links
As a business grows, pages move, services change and old content gets removed. Links can break along the way, leaving visitors lost in trying to find information that’s no longer there.
These broken links also make it harder for search engines to discover and understand your content. But they’re often easy to find and fix, which is how you keep your website clear and easy to follow for both people and search engines.
Take action
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Check your website for broken pages.
Google Search Console can help identify pages that aren’t being found, while tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush can crawl your website and highlight broken links.
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Prioritise the pages that matter.
You don’t need to fix everything all at once. Start with the pages that generate enquiries, sales or valuable organic traffic.
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Redirect where there’s a genuine alternative.
If a page has moved or been replaced, use a relevant 301 redirect rather than leaving visitors at a dead end. A discontinued product, for example, might be redirected to its parent category or a closely related alternative. Avoid redirecting to a generic homepage.
If a page has genuinely been removed and there’s no suitable replacement, use a 404 or 410 response. You don’t need to redirect every deleted page.
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Make your 404/410 page useful.
A helpful error page can explain that the content is no longer available and give visitors a way to continue, with clear links to important pages or a search function.
02. Optimise your images
Large, poorly optimised images are a common cause of slow-loading websites. This matters because speed is part of the experience. If someone has to wait for a page to load before they can understand what you offer, you’ve introduced unnecessary friction before they’ve even started.
Google’s Core Web Vitals measure aspects of the real-world page experience, including loading performance, responsiveness and visual stability. We’ve created an in-depth guide on optimising website images, but there are a few simple checks you can make straight away.
Take action
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Start by measuring your key pages.
Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to test your homepage and the pages most important to your customers. Don’t worry about achieving a perfect score for its own sake. Look for issues that are having a meaningful effect on the actual experience.
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Find your biggest images.
Hero banners, photography and other large visual assets can add unnecessary page weight.
Compress them using a tool like TinyPNG, while keeping enough quality to maintain the intended experience.
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Resize images before uploading them.
There’s little benefit in uploading a 4,000px-wide image when the design only displays it at 800px. Resize images before uploading them and use appropriate formats where possible.
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Balance performance and presentation.
The aim isn’t to make every image as small as possible. Your website still needs to look good.
Instead, find the right balance between image quality and performance, so your visuals do their job without adding unnecessary load time.
03. Check the mobile experience
A website can work perfectly on a desktop and still be frustrating to use on a phone. Menus can be difficult to navigate, buttons too small, forms too awkward to complete and important contact details hard to find.
While we have a full guide to mobile-optimised web design, there are several simple things to check first.
Take action
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Test your key pages on a real phone.
Open your homepage, key service or product pages and your main contact or purchase journey on a mobile device. Don’t just check whether everything fits on the screen. Try using the website as a customer would.
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Check the things people need to use.
Look at navigation, buttons, links, forms, phone numbers and any pop-ups or banners. Can everything be tapped easily? Does anything cover important content? Are forms straightforward to complete?
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Follow the important journeys.
Test the actions that matter most to your website. Can someone find the information they need? Can they get in touch or complete a purchase without running into an obvious problem?
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Check more than one device.
Your own phone isn’t necessarily representative of every visitor. Test across different screen sizes and browsers where possible, particularly if mobile traffic is important to your business.
The aim isn’t to make every page perfect. It’s to make sure there are no simple problems getting in the way of using the website.
A few small fixes can make a real difference
Your website doesn’t need to be perfect to perform well. But the basics do need to work.
Can people find the right pages, do those pages load quickly and are they optimised for mobile?
These checks won’t solve every website problem, but they can uncover some of the simplest sources of friction. And they’re worth repeating as your business, content and customer journeys evolve.
Remember, your website is where your brand, marketing and customer experience come together. It’s where the attention you’ve worked to generate through ads and campaigns either moves towards action or gets lost. And by making sure the fundamentals work properly, you give more of that investment a chance to do its job.
Need to go further?
These checks are a useful starting point. But if the website is technically sound and still struggling to convert, the issue may be deeper.
That’s where it’s worth looking at the wider customer journey, from what your website says and how it’s structured to brand messaging and how easily people can understand, trust and choose your business. If you think you need a new website, it might be your brand.
