A website checklist you can run yourself

Most website checklists are long because someone wants to sell you something at the end. This one has ten points, and each is a test you can run today yourself: with your phone, a test enquiry and a little honesty. Any point you cannot check yourself is already your first finding.

Check, don’t add

A website rarely gets bad because something is missing. It gets bad because things pile up: a plugin for the banner, one for the stats, a slider someone liked once. Each was a small decision, and none was ever looked at again.

So the points below are not a shopping list. Some you fix by adding something. More than you would expect, you fix by taking something away.

The ten checks

1. One sentence that says what you do

At the top of the home page: what you offer and for whom, in one sentence a stranger understands. Not “Welcome”, not “Your partner for …”. The test: show the page to someone for five seconds and ask what you sell. If they hesitate, so do your visitors.

2. Checked on a phone, not just at a desk

Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking. If it looks good on a large screen and merely squeezed on a phone, it is judged by the worse version. Walk through your site on your phone, one-handed, standing up. Anything you have to zoom for is a finding.

3. Fast, and measured

For the time until the largest visible element appears, Google calls 2.5 seconds “good”, reached on three out of four page loads. PageSpeed Insights measures it for free, for any address. A slow site is rarely one big problem. It is usually the plugin that loads “just one small thing”, ten times over.

4. A structure search engines can read

Every page has its own title, its own description, one main heading and a readable address. None of this is secret, which is exactly why it shows when it is missing. Open three pages and look at the browser tab. If it says the same thing three times, you know.

5. Content only you could have written

A paragraph that could sit unchanged on a competitor’s site says nothing about you. One real piece of work, with where it started and how it ended, says more than any self-description. The test: put a competitor’s name into your About text. If it still holds, it was never yours.

6. A contact route that actually arrives

Contact is one click away from every page. That is the easy part. The hard part is whether the message gets through. Forms send to addresses someone typed in years ago, into inboxes nobody opens any more. Send yourself an enquiry through your own form today, and see where it lands and how long it takes.

7. The legal pages, matching what the site does

If you do business in Germany, your site needs an Impressum under § 5 of the Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz: name, postal address, an email address. Wherever you are, a site that collects data, through a contact form for instance, has to say what happens to it. The privacy policy then describes the site you have, not the template.

Under German law (§ 25 TDDDG), consent is needed only for storing or reading something on the visitor’s device that is not strictly necessary for the service they asked for. The best cookie banner is the one you have no reason to show.

Two things shops tend to miss. Selling to German consumers, the order button has to say “zahlungspflichtig bestellen” (“order with obligation to pay”) or something equally unambiguous; “Continue” is not enough. And the link to the EU online dispute resolution platform that still sits in many footers leads nowhere: the platform was shut down on 20 July 2025.

8. Count without watching

First ask which question the numbers should answer. “How many visitors” is not one. “Do my enquiries come from the site or from referrals” is, and asking in the first call often answers it better than any dashboard.

If you do want to count: your server writes logs anyway, and they put nothing on your visitors’ devices. A tool that follows every visitor across pages buys you a banner and a longer privacy policy, for numbers you will probably never open.

9. Accessible, even where nobody makes you

Since 28 June 2025, Germany’s accessibility law (Barrierefreiheitsstärkungsgesetz) covers online shops selling to consumers. Micro-enterprises providing services are exempt: fewer than ten employees and no more than two million euros in annual turnover or balance sheet total. If you work alone and stay below that, it does not apply to you.

Do the basics anyway. They cost little and help everyone: text with at least 4.5:1 contrast against its background, images with descriptions, a page you can use with the keyboard alone. Press Tab a few times on your home page. If you cannot see where you are, nobody can.

10. Updates, and a backup that has been restored once

Any site with a CMS and extensions needs updates, and someone has to install them. Write down who and how often. If there is no name, the site has no maintenance. It just has not had an incident yet.

Same for the backup. One that has never been restored is a hope. Try it once, on a quiet day, not on the day you need it.

An hour and a phone

Go through the ten checks and write one line for each: fine, missing, or don’t know. The “don’t know” is the interesting part. It shows where you rely on something you have never seen.

Start with whatever you can fix by taking something away. It is the cheapest progress a website can make, and usually the biggest.