A 10-minute owner check

Is your website provider doing a good job?

You are busy running the business. Use these plain-English checks to see whether your website is being cared for, then get the evidence if something feels wrong.

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Written by Blake Mitchell from real website handovers and maintenance reviews. Reviewed .

Joey was focused on running his businesses, not inspecting the bottom of his website. That is the point.

He was paying someone else to look after the website so he could focus on customers, crews, and the daily work of running the company. The old WordPress site is still running. Its footer still says “© 2019 Lightning Bins.”

I look at the copyright year because it is simple, public, and easy to maintain. The old year does not prove the whole website is broken. It does expose a process problem. If the owner is paying for ongoing care, who checks the public site? How often? What standard has the business agreed to accept?

Footer from the old Lightning Bins WordPress site showing a 2019 copyright date
Captured from the still-running Lightning Bins WordPress site on September 18, 2026. Used with Joey’s permission. The public customer domain now serves the rebuilt website.
What this provesA site-wide public detail remained at 2019 on the WordPress site.
What it does not proveOne footer date cannot judge every piece of work the former provider completed.
What it should triggerA wider review of the maintenance scope, customer paths, content, ownership, and reporting.

My standard: a business owner should be focused on the business. Paying a provider is supposed to remove this burden. If the owner still has to find obvious neglect, the service is not meeting a reasonable standard.

Twelve checks you can do without being technical

Each check has three parts: what you can test, why it matters, and the standard I would expect.

01

Check the copyright year and business name

What to check
Scroll to the bottom of the website. Look for the legal business name and a copyright notice that includes 2026. A range such as “© 2019-2026” is normal.
Why it matters
The footer appears across the website. If an obvious recurring detail is wrong, routine review may not be happening.
Acceptable standard
The public business name is correct, the current year is included, and important footer links work.
02

Call the phone number and check the hours

What to check
Compare the website with the information customers actually use. Check the phone number, email address, location, service area, and business hours.
Why it matters
A polished website still fails if it sends a customer to the wrong number, an old address, or a closed location.
Acceptable standard
The website, Google Business Profile, and other important listings agree with the way the business operates today.
Plain-English definitions
03

Read the services, prices, and template content

What to check
Look for services you do not provide, prices you no longer honour, expired promotions, old team members, filler text, bracketed placeholders, or language that describes a different kind of business.
Why it matters
Visitors cannot tell whether incorrect content is a harmless template mistake. They only see a business describing services, policies, or details that do not belong to it.
Acceptable standard
Every public page reflects the real business. Demo text and placeholders are removed before launch, and time-sensitive claims have an owner and an expiry date.
04

Click every important button

What to check
Try the main menu, phone buttons, booking links, quote buttons, social links, and the primary action on each important service page.
Why it matters
A broken button can quietly block the exact customer who was ready to contact you.
Acceptable standard
Every important action reaches the correct destination on both desktop and mobile.
05

Submit your own contact form

What to check
Use a real test message. Confirm the form shows a useful success message and that the enquiry reaches the right inbox. Check the spam folder too.
Why it matters
A form can look successful while the email never arrives. That is a lost opportunity with no obvious error on the page.
Acceptable standard
Your provider records a dated production test and knows who receives the submission.
Plain-English definitions
06

Use the website on your phone

What to check
Open the public website on a phone. Read the text, open the menu, tap the buttons, complete the form, and check that nothing overlaps or disappears.
Why it matters
A website that only works on the provider’s computer is not finished.
Acceptable standard
The main customer journey works at common phone sizes without zooming, guessing, or fighting the layout.
07

Notice how long the important pages take to load

What to check
Open the homepage and main service page using mobile data. Watch for blank screens, giant images, jumping layouts, or controls that appear late.
Why it matters
Slow pages can make people leave before they understand the offer or reach the form. They can also make crawling and rendering less efficient.
Acceptable standard
Important text appears without waiting on heavy scripts. The main content loads in about 2.5 seconds or less for most visits, and real traffic data is reviewed before speed is blamed for falling leads.
Plain-English definitions
08

Look for browser security warnings

What to check
Confirm the address starts with HTTPS and the browser does not show a certificate or unsafe-site warning. Then type the HTTP version of the address and confirm it sends you back to HTTPS. Try both the homepage and a form page.
Why it matters
HTTP pages can still be indexed. The problem is that Google prefers HTTPS when equivalent versions exist, and an insecure connection can trigger warnings or expose form information to interception. That can cost trust and enquiries.
Acceptable standard
Every public HTTP page redirects to HTTPS. The certificate is valid and renews automatically, pages have no mixed-content warnings, and forms never send information over HTTP.
Plain-English definitions
09

Check what happens when you search for the business

What to check
Search the business name. Read the page title, description, phone number, hours, and links that appear. Look for old pages or information that conflicts with the website.
Why it matters
Many customers meet the business in a search result or map listing before they reach the website.
Acceptable standard
The search result describes the current business and sends people to a useful live page.
Plain-English definitions
10

Read the privacy and cookie information

What to check
Open the privacy page. Check whether it names the analytics, advertising, form, and session tools that are actually in use.
Why it matters
Installing tracking is not the same as explaining it. A default or copied privacy page can omit tools that are active or describe tracking that was never implemented.
Acceptable standard
The notice is checked against the live website and measurement setup. It names the tools and data paths actually in use, with a clear review date and owner.
Plain-English definitions
11

Ask who owns the accounts

What to check
Ask who owns the domain, hosting, analytics, advertising, source code, and recovery methods. Do not settle for “we manage it.”
Why it matters
The business can pay for years of work and still lose access to its history or website when the relationship ends.
Acceptable standard
The business owns the core accounts. The provider has the access required to work without becoming the only person who can recover them.
Plain-English definitions
12

Ask for one page of proof

What to check
Request a short report showing what changed, what was tested, how many real enquiries were verified, what remains at risk, and what decision comes next.
Why it matters
An invoice proves that you were billed. It does not prove that the customer journey works.
Acceptable standard
The report connects completed work to live evidence and explains missing data honestly.

When leads are dropping

Do not guess. Separate traffic, conversion, and tracking.

AI is changing how people discover businesses. A website that is blocked, slow, vague, or difficult to crawl can miss opportunities. But “the site is not optimized for AI” is not a complete diagnosis.

  • Fewer people are finding the business. Check search visibility, map listings, ads, crawl access, and whether search and AI results still surface the right pages.
  • Traffic is steady, but enquiries are down. Test the offer, phone number, form, booking path, mobile experience, and page speed.
  • The reports cannot answer either question. Repair analytics and conversion tracking before deciding what failed.

About the millisecond claim: there is no published rule that an AI system abandons a website after a couple of milliseconds. Google measures useful page loading in seconds and says its AI search features use the same foundations as ordinary search. OpenAI emphasizes allowing its search crawler to access the site.

Sources: Google’s page-speed guidance, Google’s AI search guidance, and OpenAI’s publisher guidance.

One mistake is not the same as a bad system

Websites change. People make mistakes. A wrong date or broken link does not automatically mean you should fire the provider. The response tells you more than the mistake.

A good provider confirms the problem, explains the effect, fixes it, checks the live result, and tells you whether the same issue exists elsewhere. A weak provider becomes defensive, hides behind technical language, or closes the task without showing that the customer path works.

Small issue A typo or one stale date

Fix it and check similar content across the site.

Pattern of neglect Old offers, broken links, and conflicting details

Ask for a full content and customer-path review.

Serious risk Lost forms, unsafe pages, expired domains, or missing ownership

Protect the business first. Establish access, evidence, and a recovery plan.

The obvious problem is often the first clue

I learned this during the multi-site handover for Joey’s Lightning businesses. Joey did not start with a technical complaint. He started with frustration. He was paying substantial bills and still could not explain what was current, what was measured, or what he owned.

Once I looked deeper, the small signs connected to larger problems. There were stale offers, old tracking tags, enquiry forms that still copied a former provider, analytics history the business did not control, advertising that could not reliably prove leads, and a domain renewal risk without a clear owner.

The lesson was not that every provider mistake is malicious. It was that small visible errors can reveal missing ownership, missing review routines, or a scope nobody clearly defined.

That is why I would not accept “the site is online” as a maintenance report. Online is the starting point. The business needs to know that the information is current, the customer path works, the accounts are safe, and the data can support the next decision.

The minimum standard I would accept

  • The scope is written down. You know whether maintenance includes hosting, content, forms, SEO, analytics, advertising, security, and reporting.
  • The public site gets reviewed. The provider does not rely only on an admin dashboard or an automated uptime check.
  • Important customer paths get tested. Calls, forms, bookings, quote requests, and purchases are verified on the live site.
  • The business keeps ownership. Your company controls the domain, hosting, analytics, advertising, billing, and recovery methods.
  • Problems stay visible until they close. Open risks have an owner, a next action, and proof when the work is complete.
  • The report helps you decide. It explains what changed, what worked, what could not be measured, and what should happen next.

Use all three guides

Start with what you can see. Then ask for the proof you cannot.

This spot-check guide finds visible warning signs. The reporting guide explains what you should receive each month. The technical checklist covers the checks behind the scenes.

If a provider uses a term you do not understand, check the plain-English website glossary before agreeing to anything.

Read the reporting guide See the technical checklist
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Or download the one-page checklist

A second set of eyes

Not sure what your website provider is doing?

Put your address into the audit and you get the evidence on screen: what your site tells search engines, whether your email can be forged, what protection is missing, and how fast it actually loads. Every finding links to a plain-English explainer.

  • Customer paths that may block calls, bookings, or quote requests
  • Stale or conflicting information that can weaken trust
  • Obvious questions about ownership, tracking, and reporting

The audit reads the public version of your site and your public domain records. It is not a security test or a legal review, and nothing on your site changes.

Prefer to talk? Book a 15 minute call.

Get your website audited

Two short fields, CA$50, and the report is on screen in about a minute. I read it and email you afterwards.

See what the audit covers

Would rather just talk it through? Book a 15 minute call.

Common questions

Does an old copyright year mean the website provider is doing a bad job?

Not by itself. It is a warning sign. If you pay for ongoing maintenance and a simple site-wide detail remains wrong, ask what the provider reviews and how often. The answer matters more than the date alone.

What should a website copyright notice look like?

Many business websites use the first publication year and the current year, such as “© 2019-2026 Business Name.” Copyright requirements vary, so ask a qualified legal professional about the notice your business needs.

How often should I check my business website?

Check customer-critical paths such as phone numbers, forms, booking links, and major offers whenever they change and at regular intervals. Broader content, account, privacy, and performance reviews can follow an agreed monthly, quarterly, or annual schedule based on the business.

Should my provider fix everything on this list automatically?

Only if it is included in the agreement. The provider should clearly state what maintenance covers, what requires approval, and what remains the owner’s responsibility. An undefined scope is one of the biggest warning signs.