A new year is the perfect time to take a proper look at your website. It’s easy to launch a site, tick it off the to-do list and then forget about it for years. But your website is often the very first impression a customer gets of your business, so it deserves a check-up just as much as your car or your boiler.
Here’s our simple New Year website health check. Grab a cuppa, open your site on your phone and your computer, and work through the list.
1. Is everything still accurate?
Start with the basics, because this is where we see the most problems:
- Are your phone number, email address and business address correct?
- Are your opening hours up to date, including any holiday changes?
- Are your prices, services and team members current?
- Does the copyright year in your footer still say 2021?
Out-of-date details make a business look like it’s closed or doesn’t care. Both cost you customers.
2. Does it load quickly?
Visitors are impatient, and so is Google. If your pages take more than a few seconds to appear, many people will give up before they’ve seen a thing. Try Google’s free PageSpeed Insights tool: type in your address and it will score your site and point out what’s slowing it down. Oversized images and too many plugins are the usual culprits.
3. How does it look on a phone?
Most people will visit your site on a mobile phone, so open it on yours and try to do the things a customer would do. Can you read the text without zooming? Can you tap the buttons easily? Can you find your phone number and call it with one tap? If anything is fiddly, it’s worth fixing.
4. Do all the links and forms work?
Click through your menu and test your contact form by sending yourself a message. Broken links and forms that quietly fail are surprisingly common, and you may be missing enquiries without realising.
5. Is it secure?
Check that your address starts with https and that your browser shows the padlock symbol. If you use WordPress, make sure WordPress itself, your theme and your plugins are all up to date, and delete any plugins you no longer use. Updates fix security holes, so skipping them leaves the door open.
6. Can people find you on Google?
Search for your business name and for the service you offer plus your town, for example “florist Wrexham”. Do you appear? Is your Google Business Profile claimed, with up-to-date photos, hours and reviews? Search is changing fast, with Google now showing AI-generated summaries at the top of many results, so clear, well-written pages that answer your customers’ questions matter more than ever.
7. Is it accessible?
Around one in four people in the UK has a disability, and many more have temporary or age-related difficulties with sight, hearing or movement. Good contrast between text and background, readable font sizes, descriptive text on images and a site you can navigate with a keyboard all make a big difference. It’s also the right thing to do, and increasingly a legal expectation.
8. Does it still look like you?
Finally, step back and ask whether your website still reflects your business. Has your branding changed? Have you added new services? Do the photos show your current premises and team? Design trends move on too: Pantone’s Colour of the Year for 2026, Cloud Dancer, is a soft, calm white, and it’s a good reminder that clean, uncluttered layouts never go out of style.
How did you score?
If you ticked everything off, well done: your website is in great shape for 2026. If the list threw up a few problems, don’t worry. Most are quick fixes, and a handful of small improvements can make a real difference to how many enquiries your site brings in.
Want a second pair of eyes? Get in touch with Wrexham Web Design for a friendly, no-obligation website review.