A website can look finished while leaving a customer stuck. The photographs are in place, the colours work and every page has something on it. Then someone presses “Book” and meets a list of appointment names they do not understand. Or they send an enquiry and nobody receives it.
Before signing off a new site, give it a few ordinary jobs. Use your own phone. Start from the address a customer will use, rather than a page already open in the designer’s preview. Keep a note of anything you have to explain out loud.
Choose a real enquiry
Pick the kind of work you want more of. For a plumber, that might be replacing a boiler rather than answering an emergency call. For an accountant, it might be a company director looking for accounts and a personal tax return together.
Read the page with that job in mind. Can you tell whether the business does it, where it works and what happens next? A long service list may contain the right answer without making it easy to find. Put the explanation beside the relevant enquiry route.
Follow the button all the way
Tap the main button. If it opens a booking system, check the service, location and appointment type on the other side. A button labelled “Book an initial assessment” should not leave a new patient choosing between unexplained abbreviations.
If it opens a form, send a clearly labelled test enquiry using an address you control. Check the actual receiving inbox and any confirmation email. Ask the person who handles enquiries to reply. A success message on the page proves much less than a message reaching the right person.
Where a test could reserve an appointment or trigger a payment, use the provider’s test facility or arrange it with the business first. Do not create a real booking just to see whether the button works.
Read the awkward details
Look for the information you normally give someone just before they agree to go ahead: what the starting fee includes, whether an appointment is confirmed, where to park, or which areas you travel to.
Write conditions beside the offer they qualify. If a quoted service excludes materials, say so beside the price. If the contact form requests a callback, label it “Request a callback”. Save the customer from having to discover the distinction afterwards.
Look at the actual photographs
Open the site on a phone and a larger screen. Give the images time to load, then look closely. Is a face cropped awkwardly? Is text baked into a picture too small to read? Does a photo become blurry when it stretches across the desktop?
A screenshot can conceal these problems. Check the page itself, including galleries and anything that opens when you tap. Use photographs that help someone understand the business: the entrance they need to find, the room they will visit, or the kind of work you do.
Try it without your usual shortcuts
Move through the page using the Tab key. You should be able to see which link or button has focus and operate the menu without a mouse. Zoom the text and check whether it remains readable without controls covering it.
On a narrow phone screen, open the menu, cookie controls and any expandable answers. Look for a banner covering the enquiry button, a heading running off the edge, or a sticky bar hiding the price. These checks are a useful start; they are not a complete accessibility audit.
Leave someone responsible for the next change
Before launch, agree who updates a departing team member, a broken booking link or revised opening hours. Keep a short record of the important destinations: the enquiry inbox, booking system and phone number. Repeat the enquiry check when one of them changes.
You do not need a long report to make this useful. Write down the task, what happened and what needs fixing. “The form says sent, but reception has no email” gives someone a clear problem to solve. “It feels a bit off” does not.
For examples of the questions different customers bring to a site, browse our business-specific website guides below.
Explore website guides for your business, or read more from the blog.