When a company website feels dated or produces fewer useful enquiries, the instinct is often to replace it. That is not yet a diagnosis. A clearer offer, a shorter form or a repaired mobile journey may solve the problem. In other cases, a visual refresh would only conceal a platform that is hard to maintain, slow to change or unable to support the firm’s next services and languages.
A seven-day audit is not a beauty contest for the home page. It combines the commercial goal, visitor journeys, content, technical condition and ownership into a defensible decision. The output should be one of three paths—focused repair, redesign or rebuild—with scope, dependencies, risks and acceptance criteria.
Define the job before judging the design
Choose one primary outcome for the next six to twelve months: a qualified enquiry, booking, purchase, application or a credible explanation of a complex service. Then name the two or three journeys that matter most. Without that baseline you can measure traffic and speed, but not whether the site helps the business. In Search Console, review queries, entry pages, clicks and impressions, always in the context of seasonality and current campaigns.
First-pass evidence checklist
Check what you already have in place. Your answers stay on this page only.
If three or more answers are unknown, collect evidence before choosing the scale of the project.
Lighthouse can flag performance, accessibility and basic SEO issues, but one score is not a business goal. Google explicitly says that good Core Web Vitals do not by themselves guarantee top rankings. For accessibility, use the W3C preliminary checks—page title, headings, alternatives, contrast, resizing, keyboard focus and forms—as an early review, not as a complete conformance audit.
Repair, redesign or rebuild?
Three evidence-based choices
| Best fit | Typical scope | Main risk | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Focused repair | The offer and platform are sound; specific steps fail | Forms, navigation, copy, speed and measurement | An unprioritised list of small fixes |
| Redesign | Functions and core content fit; hierarchy and brand reduce trust | Information architecture, components, visual system and mobile layouts | New styling without a better customer journey |
| Rebuild | Technology, structure or ownership blocks change | New architecture, content, design, development and migration | Excessive scope or loss of valuable existing content |
No option is inherently more professional. Repair is usually best when the fault is isolated and the foundation is healthy. Redesign fits when the brand or way of explaining the offer has changed while the required functions remain. Rebuild is justified when architecture, technology or supplier dependency makes each future change costly, risky or slow.
Illustrative example: mobile enquiries disappear
Consider an illustrative service company. Traffic is stable, yet the owner senses fewer relevant enquiries. The audit finds that the mobile page hides the primary contact, the form asks for too much information and the opening copy describes the company rather than the customer’s problem. The business controls its domain and content, and its platform still permits template changes.
A full rebuild would be premature. The team can first clarify the offer, shorten the form, align calls to action and repair mobile navigation, then compare enquiry quality over a genuinely comparable period. If the template could not support the needed hierarchy, languages or safe maintenance, the same evidence would support a rebuild. This is a decision example, not a reported client result or performance promise.
Seven days to a decision
- Day 1: record the goal, primary audience, decision owner and one primary action.
- Day 2: inspect analytics and Search Console; mark landing pages, queries and suspicious gaps.
- Day 3: test two critical journeys on phone and desktop, including form errors.
- Day 4: review the offer, evidence, information order and consistency of calls to action.
- Day 5: run Lighthouse and W3C preliminary checks; record issues rather than scores alone.
- Day 6: draft three scope options with benefit, dependencies, risk and retained assets.
- Day 7: choose the path, owner, sequence and acceptance criteria before requesting estimates.
Protect the result after launch
Include domain ownership, access, backups, source content, analytics, update rules and approval responsibility in the decision. For a rebuild, list URLs to preserve or redirect and specify how forms, measurement and indexing will be checked. Basic SEO means clear structure, titles, metadata and a sitemap; it is not a promise of search position.
A useful seven-day audit ends with decisions about what not to do, what to repair now and what must wait for a new foundation. That protects budget and management attention. It also gives any future supplier enough evidence to estimate fairly, identify exclusions and agree what “finished” means.
Put these ideas to work in your business.
Tell us about your situation. Together, we can choose a sensible first step and agree the scope of support.