How Do You Know if Your Website Was Built Properly?

“How can I get more leads through my website?”

This is a question I get asked all the time. This question begs another question: how do you know if your website was built properly?

The answer is two part: if you put out the right website signals, and your website was implemented properly, you will get email signups and sales leads from it.

When I build a website for a client, we don’t start with the design, per se. We start with the business.

“Your website is built properly if it attracts visitors and produces inquiries from those visits.”

Obvious Errors

Certain problems are easier to spot than others.

For example, an image with a missing file is visible to the naked eye.

Google wants all websites to be secured by SSL and use HSTS. These technologies help to ensure that traffic sent back and forth between the website and the visitor is encrypted and can’t be intercepted.

Well, it can be intercepted, but, um, it’s harder now.

When a site is not secured, a little message pops up in the browser that can clearly be seen in the Chrome address bar:

While this error may not be obvious to everyone, at least it can be seen by the naked eye.

Mobile Optimization: Why It Matters and How to Do It Right

Mobile optimization has become central to digital success in our connected world. With over half of global web traffic coming from mobile devices in 2025, creating an exceptional mobile experience directly impacts your ability to connect with audiences.

The data tells a compelling story. Mobile visitors typically make judgments about your site within 3 seconds. If your pages load slowly or require excessive zooming and scrolling, they’ll bounce back to search results and find a competitor who delivers a better experience.

Practical Steps for Effective Mobile Optimization

Start with responsive design fundamentals. Implement fluid layouts with appropriate breakpoints that adapt gracefully to different screen sizes. Test your site on multiple real devices, not just browser simulations, to identify real-world usability issues.

Image optimization delivers outsized performance benefits. Compress all images without noticeably reducing quality, implement lazy loading to prioritize visible content, and use modern formats like WebP that provide better compression.

Speed matters tremendously. Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to identify specific improvements for your site. Each optimization compounds to create noticeable performance improvements that keep visitors engaged and improve your search rankings.

Less Obvious Errors

Some tools, like our website evaluator, can spot errors that can’t be seen on the surface.

Some of the most common errors I see are:

• The website is slow.
• The site misuses H-tags; for example, multiple H1 tags on a page.
• Incorrect or outmoded coding styles
• Misconfigured SSL certificates
• Missing meta descriptions or alt tags.
• No Analytics tools installed.
• Missing structured data to tie website to social properties.

These kinds of problems are typically found in websites that have been basically gathering dust since they were built.

“Good, the website is ‘done. Now we can get back to work!”

Except what “works” on the web and in digital marketing changes on a yearly, monthly, even weekly basis sometimes.

There are many tools that analyze the technical aspects of a website, and some of those tools produce these sorts of valuable insights.

The Role of SEO in Website Performance

SEO fundamentally shapes your online visibility and business growth. Modern search engines and LLMs evaluate hundreds of ranking factors, with content relevance and user experience becoming increasingly important signals. Beyond simply placing keywords, effective SEO requires understanding user intent and creating genuinely helpful content that addresses fundamental questions.

For immediate impact, conduct keyword research using free tools like the Google Ads Keyword Planner to identify specific terms your customers actually use. Then strategically incorporate these terms in your page titles, headings, and opening paragraphs where they carry the most ranking weight.

Technical SEO elements like title tags (most important!), meta descriptions and schema markup provide search engines with critical context about your content.

These seemingly small details significantly influence whether your site appears in featured snippets and other high-visibility positions that drive qualified traffic.

Updating Visual and User Interface Design

Website design directly impacts both user behavior and business outcomes. Studies show users form impressions within 50 milliseconds of landing on your site, making visual design a critical trust factor.

Beyond aesthetics, effective interface design creates intuitive pathways that guide visitors toward conversion points.

Focus on simplifying navigation menus, improving page load speeds, and implementing responsive layouts that perform flawlessly across devices. Rather than chasing design trends, prioritize usability improvements that reduce friction in the customer journey.

Regularly test design elements with actual users to identify pain points that analytics might miss.

Even small adjustments to button placement, form design, or content hierarchy can dramatically improve engagement metrics and conversion rates while building lasting credibility with your audience.

The Most Subtle Problems

The most subtle problems that I find are sort of also the biggest problems.

Failure hook your ideal prospects and make them your clients.

Who are your ideal prospects? What are they interested in? What do they need help with? What tone are they used to seeing in their industry? Where do they hang out on the internet?

It’s not always what you’d expect, but there are ways to uncover those hidden information nuggets when designing a website.

Presuming for the moment that your website was designed and implemented properly, you should see traffic increases over time as you consistently create content and share your blog posts, and post your video content.

Google, Bing and Yahoo all relish fresh content. You just need to let them know you have published something, and be sure they “like” your website.

The shortest answer to the question posed by this article is:

If your site produces no inquiries, something is wrong with the approach, the implementation or your marketing pitch.

Perhaps all three?

Your website was not built properly.

The 2020 stats show that 70% of the buying decision is made before a client ever contacts the business.

Maybe it’s time to take a second look at your business’s primary piece of web real estate.