Your website gets about 10 seconds. That’s how long a visitor gives you before deciding whether your business looks alive and trustworthy — or whether to hit back and try the next one.
The good news: most of the leaks are visible without touching code. You don’t need an audit to spot them. You need 10 minutes, your phone, and the willingness to look at your own site like a stranger would.
Here are the five signs I see most often on small-business sites:
1. Stale signals
A footer that still says © 2016. A browser tab that still reads a template placeholder like “City, NJ.” A blog whose latest post is a launch announcement from years ago.
None of these break the site. All of them say the same thing: nobody’s home. A visitor doesn’t think “they’re probably just busy.” They think “is this business still open?”
2. The main button leads nowhere useful
Every site has one job for a new visitor: Tour, Book, Contact, Buy. Click yours. Does it do what it promises — or does it land on a login wall, a dead page, or a form that goes nowhere?
I’ve seen a “Schedule a Tour” button lead to a password-protected portal instead of a booking form. The business didn’t mean to block prospective parents. But intent doesn’t matter — the visitor just leaves.
3. No clear next step
Open your homepage. In 10 seconds, can a stranger tell what to do next? Is there a visible phone number, email, or booking button — or is contact buried three clicks deep?
If a visitor has to hunt for how to reach you, most won’t. They’ll reach your competitor instead, because your competitor’s number was right there.
4. Mobile friction
More than half your visitors are on their phones. So check your site on yours, not your laptop.
Can you tap the buttons without zooming? Does the text need pinching? Does the menu — or the search — trap you somewhere you can’t get out of? If your own site annoys you on your phone, it’s annoying your customers too.
5. No proof
A visitor who has never heard of you is asking one question: can I trust these people? If the page shows no real work, no reviews, no outcomes — nothing they can point to and say “this is real” — they have nothing to decide on but your design. And design alone doesn’t close.
One real example with a real outcome beats a page of adjectives every time.
The 10-minute self-check
Set a timer. On your phone: open your site, click the main button, check the footer date, look for one clear next step, look for one piece of proof. Write down everything that made you hesitate. That’s your fix list.
That first 10 minutes is also the first 10 minutes of a Codebase Health Audit — the full version adds the prioritized fix list, the conversion leaks ranked by impact, and what to fix first, so you’re not guessing at the order.
If you ran the check and found two or more of these, the good news is the fixes are usually small. Finding them in the right order is the hard part — and that’s the part I help with
The Codebase Health Audit (from $5,000) is the full version of this check — prioritized fix list in 2 weeks. Details on the consulting page.