Does your website actually work?
Most business owners can answer two questions about their website: does it exist, and does it look alright? But in 2026, a website that merely exists and looks decent is not doing enough. Search engines, AI platforms, and your customers all expect more.
We have put together a straightforward checklist. Go through each item, answer yes or no, and you will have a clear picture of where your site stands and what needs attention first.
The checklist
1. Does your site load in under 3 seconds?
Open your website on your phone using mobile data, not Wi-Fi. Count to three. If the page has not fully appeared, you are losing visitors. Google measures this precisely, and over half of mobile users leave a site that takes longer than 3 seconds. Speed also directly affects your search rankings. If your site is slow, nothing else on this list matters until you fix it.
2. Does your site work properly on mobile?
Not "does it technically display on a phone" - does it actually work well? Can you read the text without zooming? Can you tap buttons without hitting the wrong one? Can you fill in a form without fighting the layout? Over 60% of web traffic in South Africa is mobile. Google indexes the mobile version of your site first, so if the mobile experience is poor, your rankings suffer across all devices.
3. Does your site have HTTPS?
Look at your browser's address bar. There should be a padlock icon and the URL should start with https://. If it shows "Not secure" or just http://, your site is unencrypted. This means customer data (contact forms, passwords) travels in plain text. Google penalises non-HTTPS sites in search results, and browsers actively warn visitors away. There is no excuse for not having HTTPS in 2026 - most hosts provide it for free.
4. Does your contact form actually work?
Go to your website right now and submit a test enquiry through your contact form. Did you receive it? You would be surprised how often contact forms break silently - after a plugin update, a hosting change, or a security patch. Every day your form is broken is a day you are losing potential customers who tried to reach you and could not.
5. Do you have analytics installed?
You need Google Analytics, Fathom, Plausible, or similar tracking on your site. Without analytics, you are guessing. You do not know how many people visit, which pages they look at, where they come from, or where they leave. You cannot improve what you do not measure. If you have analytics but never check them, that is almost as bad - set a monthly reminder.
6. Do you have a Google Business Profile?
This is separate from your website, but it connects directly to it. A Google Business Profile is what shows up in Google Maps and the local pack when someone searches for businesses in your area. If you do not have one, you are invisible in local search. If you have one but the information is outdated (wrong hours, old phone number, no photos), you are making a poor first impression.
7. Does your site have Schema.org structured data?
This is the one item on the list that most business owners have never heard of. Structured data is code that tells search engines and AI platforms exactly what your business is - your name, address, phone number, opening hours, type of business, reviews, and more. Without it, Google and AI search engines have to guess. With it, you are more likely to appear in rich results and AI-generated answers. We cover this in detail in our article on technical SEO, GEO, and CRO.
8. Does every page have a proper meta title and description?
When your site appears in Google results, the title and description are what people see. If these are missing, duplicated, or auto-generated ("Home - My WordPress Site"), you are wasting the single best opportunity to convince someone to click through. Each page should have a unique, descriptive title under 60 characters and a description under 160 characters that tells people what they will find.
9. Does your site have an XML sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your site so search engines can find and index them efficiently. Most content management systems generate one automatically, but many sites either do not have one or have one that is broken or incomplete. Check by visiting yoursite.co.za/sitemap.xml. If nothing loads, search engines are working harder than they should to find your content.
10. Does your site have a robots.txt file?
This file tells search engines which parts of your site to crawl and which to skip. Check by visiting yoursite.co.za/robots.txt. If it does not exist, it is not a disaster, but having a properly configured one helps search engines crawl your site efficiently. If it exists but accidentally blocks important pages, that is a real problem.
11. Is your content less than 12 months old?
Look at the dates on your blog posts, the prices on your menus, the events listed on your homepage. If your most recent content is from 2024 or earlier, your site signals to both visitors and search engines that your business may not be active. Outdated pricing is particularly damaging - a customer who arrives expecting 2024 prices and finds 2026 prices feels misled. Freshness matters for trust and for search rankings.
12. Is your pricing visible (if applicable)?
If your business charges set prices - accommodation rates, tasting fees, menu prices - put them on your website. Hiding pricing does not make people call you. It makes them leave and find a competitor who is transparent. In an era where AI search engines pull pricing data into their answers, visible pricing also helps you get cited in AI-generated responses.
13. Does every page have a clear call to action?
Every page on your site should make it obvious what you want the visitor to do next. Book a table. Request a quote. Download a menu. Call us. If a visitor reaches the bottom of any page and does not know what to do next, your site is not converting as well as it could. This is not about being pushy - it is about being helpful.
14. Does your Lighthouse performance score exceed 60?
Open Chrome, press F12, go to the Lighthouse tab, and run a performance audit on mobile. If your score is below 60, your site has serious technical problems - usually a combination of bloated code, unoptimised images, and too many external scripts. We would like to see scores above 80, but 60 is the minimum before you start losing meaningful search visibility.
How did you score?
If you ticked all fourteen items, your website is in solid shape. Keep maintaining it.
If you missed a few, do not panic. Prioritise speed (item 1), mobile experience (item 2), and HTTPS (item 3) first. Those three have the biggest impact on both search visibility and customer trust.
If you missed most of them, your website is likely costing you business rather than generating it. A proper rebuild with these fundamentals built in from the start is more cost-effective than patching problems one by one.
We can help
We build every site with all fourteen items handled from day one. If you want an honest assessment of where your current site stands, have a look at our services or get in touch for a no-obligation conversation. We will tell you what matters and what does not for your specific business.