The enquiry form has been broken on mobile for about six months. You noticed it, mentioned it to whoever manages the website, and then got busy with something else. Now someone has sent you a redesign quote and you are wondering whether the form is the only problem, or whether there is a longer list.
Good question to ask. The redesign quote will not tell you.
Before you commission a website redesign, there are 20 checks worth running yourself. They take an afternoon. They will tell you what is actually broken, what is cosmetic, and whether you need a full rebuild or just a handful of targeted fixes. If you arrive at a design agency with that information, you will get a better outcome at a lower cost. If you arrive without it, you are paying someone else to work that out.
A UX audit is a structured review of how your website feels to use from a visitor's perspective. It identifies the points where people get confused, give up, or fail to find what they came for. It is different from an SEO audit, which looks at rankings and technical health, and different from a design audit, which looks at visual consistency. All three matter before a redesign. This one focuses on the experience of actually using the site.
What is a UX audit?
A UX audit is not a technical exercise. It is an honest look at whether your site is useful to someone who has never seen it before.
Most business owners know their site too well. They navigate it by memory. They know that "Our Approach" lives under the "About" menu, even though no first-time visitor would think to look there. A UX audit tries to recreate the experience of being a stranger. Where do people land? What do they look for? Where do they give up?
The best moment to run one is before you brief a redesign, not after. Once a design is underway, structural changes are expensive. Running these 20 checks first means your brief is grounded in real problems rather than aesthetic preferences. That distinction matters more than most people realise when the invoices arrive.
Navigation and structure: checks 1 to 4
Good navigation is invisible. Bad navigation is the thing visitors blame when they leave a site they cannot figure out.
Check 1: Can a first-time visitor find your main service pages within two clicks from the homepage?
Open an incognito browser window. That is your test instrument for this section. You are removing your own browsing history and site memory, so the navigation works as it would for a complete stranger.
Try to find your three most important service pages from the homepage, using only what is visible in the navigation. Count the clicks. If any of them take more than two, you have a structure problem worth including in the redesign brief.
Check 2: Do your navigation labels describe what visitors are looking for, or what you call things internally?
"Our Work" is not the same as "Case Studies." "Solutions" tells a visitor nothing at all. "Services" is adequate; "What We Do" is often clearer for audiences without industry context.
Test each label by asking: would someone who has never heard of your company understand what this section contains? If the answer requires any insider knowledge, the label is serving you rather than the visitor. This is one of those things that is completely invisible to whoever wrote the labels and completely obvious to every new arrival.
Check 3: Does the mobile menu work without horizontal scrolling, zooming, or tapping problems?
Do this on a real phone. Not a browser window resized to look like one.
Go through the full navigation on your handset. Look for links that are too close together to tap accurately, text that requires a zoom to read, or horizontal scrolling inside the menu. In most business sectors, mobile visits now account for more than half of total traffic. If your menu requires any of these workarounds, some proportion of those visitors will abandon it before they see a single page.
Check 4: Is it clear from every internal page how to get back to the homepage and how to contact you?
Navigation should never require the back button. From any page on the site, a visitor should be able to see the logo linking home, and a clear route to your contact page without scrolling.
Check this on three pages: the homepage, a service page, and a blog or content page. If the contact link disappears on any of them, or if the logo is present but not clickable, log it as a problem. For more on how internal page structure shapes the visitor's journey, the CT post on website structure covers this in detail.
Calls to action: checks 5 to 8
A call to action is not a button. It is a decision you are asking a visitor to make at the exact moment they could close the tab instead. Most businesses make that decision harder than it needs to be.
Check 5: Does every key page have one clear primary call to action?
Look at your homepage, your main service page, and your contact page. Count the number of different actions a visitor is being invited to take on each one.
If the answer is three or more, the page is working against itself. "Get a quote", "Book a call", "Download our brochure", and "Watch our video" are four asks pointing in four different directions. When visitors face multiple competing options, a significant proportion choose none of them.
One clear primary action, with everything else subordinate to it, converts better than a menu of choices.
Every time.
Check 6: Is the CTA specific about what happens next?
"Get in touch" is not a call to action. It describes an activity, not an outcome.
"Book a free 30-minute call to talk through your brief" tells the visitor exactly what they will get, at what cost (zero, and 30 minutes), and what happens when they click. The more specific the promise, the higher the conversion rate. Check each CTA on your key pages and ask: does this tell me what I will actually receive when I click?
Check 7: Is the primary CTA visible above the fold on mobile?
"Above the fold" means the part of the page visible without scrolling. On desktop, this is a reasonably generous area. On mobile, it is much shorter.
Check your homepage on your actual phone. Count how far you have to scroll before you see the primary call to action. If it takes more than two thumbs' worth of scrolling, most mobile visitors will never reach it. CTA placement is one of the most reliable conversion improvements available without rebuilding anything.
Check 8: Is there a lower-commitment option for visitors not yet ready to enquire?
Not everyone who lands on your site is ready to call. A visitor at the early stages of a decision needs somewhere to go that keeps them in contact with you without requiring a commitment.
A downloadable guide, a checklist, a newsletter, a free diagnostic tool. Something that captures their interest without the threshold of a direct enquiry. The posts on elements of a high-converting page and what a high-converting landing page looks like show what these should contain and how they should be structured.
Forms and enquiry journey: checks 9 to 12
The contact form is where the whole website either pays off or gives up. Most businesses have never filled in their own form on a mobile device from start to finish. Most have never checked what happens immediately after submission. This section will surface the most common conversion blockers on any business website.
Check 9: Count the fields in your main contact form
Write them down. Then apply a simple test to each one: does the answer to this field change what I do with the enquiry?
If it doesn't, you don't need it on the form. You can ask the question by email or during the first call. Name, email address, and a brief description of what they need will typically give you everything required to respond.
More than five fields starts to suppress submission rates. The analogy is a queue: the longer it looks, the more likely someone is to decide it is not worth their time.
Check 10: Are your form field labels shown above the input boxes, or only inside them as placeholder text?
This is one of the most widely documented form usability problems and one of the easiest to overlook when reviewing the site on desktop.
When a label appears inside the input box as placeholder text, it disappears the moment someone starts typing. On mobile, this causes a recognisable mid-form problem: the visitor cannot remember what the field was asking for, has to delete what they typed, reads the box again, and then either re-types or abandons the form entirely. Moving labels above the input boxes removes this friction entirely, with no design rebuild required.
Check 11: What happens immediately after the form is submitted?
Test this yourself. Fill in the form completely and submit it.
Does the page change visibly? Does a confirmation message appear on screen? Does a confirmation email arrive? If the page simply reloads with no clear signal that the submission was received, you are losing enquiries to doubt. Visitors who are not sure the form worked will either resubmit it (giving you a duplicate), call instead (adding friction for them), or assume it is broken and go to a competitor. The post-submission confirmation is not a nice-to-have. It is a requirement.
Check 12: Fill in the form on your phone, from start to finish
Not a simulation. Your actual phone.
Open the contact page, fill in every field, and submit it. Does the keyboard obscure the submit button when it opens? Do the labels stay visible as you type? Does the form scroll correctly, or does the page jump around mid-completion? Mobile form testing is the single check on this list that consistently surfaces the most problems, because it is the one almost never done. Whatever you find, those issues are almost certainly why some of your mobile visitors are not converting.
Content, trust, and clarity: checks 13 to 16
Most websites described as "cluttered" are actually unclear. The problem is rarely too much content. It is that no individual page has been given a single clear job. These four checks look at whether your pages are working or just present.
Check 13: The 5-second test for your homepage hero
Read the first two lines of your homepage hero copy aloud. Then ask: does that tell a stranger what you do, who you do it for, and roughly where?
If you need a third paragraph to get there, the hero is not doing its job. A new visitor should be able to answer "am I in the right place?" within five seconds of landing. If they cannot, they will not scroll to find out. This is not about having a clever strapline. It is about being specific enough that the right people recognise themselves immediately.
Check 14: Read a service page as a potential client
Open a service page and read it as if you are the person who might buy. Does it tell you what you will have at the end? Or does it describe what the agency does?
There is a meaningful difference. "We build bespoke digital experiences using modern technologies" describes an activity. "We build websites that load in under two seconds, rank in search, and are structured to convert visitors into enquiries" makes a measurable promise. Clients buy outcomes, not activities. If your service pages describe the work without describing the result, that is worth fixing before briefing anything new.
Check 15: Can a visitor see a real testimonial on the homepage without navigating away?
Social proof that requires clicking to find is social proof that most visitors never see.
A strong testimonial on the homepage, visible without scrolling past the fold, does more conversion work than a dedicated testimonials page buried in the footer. Check whether there is at least one specific, outcome-focused testimonial on the homepage and on each main service page. "Great service, highly recommend" does very little. "We went from four enquiries a month to twelve within six months" does a great deal more.
Check 16: Does the site give a qualified visitor enough to make a decision?
Some businesses withhold information to preserve flexibility or to avoid committing to a position. The thinking is: give them less and they will have to call.
The reality is different. Visitors who cannot find enough to self-qualify tend to leave rather than call. They go to a competitor whose site answers the questions they came with. The post on what makes a good website covers the minimum a serious business website needs to have in place. The standard is higher than most businesses assume.
Performance, mobile, and analytics: checks 17 to 20
These are treated as technical concerns. They are commercial ones. A slow mobile site loses visitors before they have read a single word. Untracked conversions mean a redesign has no measurable goal. Both are worth fixing before the brief is written, regardless of what else the checklist finds.
Check 17: Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights
Go to Google PageSpeed Insights and enter your homepage URL. Look at the mobile score specifically, not the desktop score.
Below 50 means the site is actively pushing visitors away before they have read anything. Below 70 is worth including as a technical requirement in the redesign brief. Above 90 means performance is not currently a priority. You do not need to understand the underlying detail to use this tool. The score gives you a number to put in a brief and a benchmark to measure against once the redesign is complete.
Check 18: Check the page titles and meta descriptions across your five most important pages
Open each page in a browser and read the tab title. Then view the page source and search for meta name="description".
If the tab says "Home" and the description field is empty, your pages are appearing in search results with no title optimisation and no preview text. Anyone finding you via Google sees whatever the search engine decides to display, which is usually a fragment of body copy not written for that purpose. This is worth fixing as a standalone task, regardless of whether a full redesign is planned.
Check 19: Check that every key page loads over HTTPS with no browser warnings
Click through the site and look at the address bar on each main page. Every page should show a padlock and load fully over HTTPS.
Mixed-content warnings occur when a page loads over HTTPS but pulls in some resources over plain HTTP. Most visitors never encounter these because they are browsing normally, but some browsers will surface them as security alerts. They also indicate that the site has been built or maintained piecemeal without a full technical review. Note any affected pages in the brief. If you are in a sector where client trust is a primary concern, adding the WCAG 2.1 AA standard for accessibility as a specification while reviewing the brief costs nothing at the planning stage.
Check 20: Can you answer "where did our last ten enquiries come from?" right now?
Not roughly. Specifically.
If the answer is "probably Google" or "we get a few each month", the analytics are not working. The goal before a redesign is not beautiful reporting. The goal is a baseline: monthly enquiry volume, a source breakdown, a conversion rate by channel. Without this, a redesign has no success criterion. You cannot measure whether it worked.
If your analytics are untracked, or set up but never reviewed, fixing that is a higher priority than almost anything else on this list.
What to do with your findings
Once you have been through the 20 checks, you have a list of problems. Sort them into three categories.
Blockers are things that actively prevent enquiries from completing. A form that fails on mobile. No visible call to action on key pages. Navigation that does not resolve on a phone. If left unfixed, these mean some visitors cannot enquire no matter how much they want to.
Friction describes things that make enquiries harder or less likely without breaking the path entirely. Too many form fields. Vague CTA copy. No testimonials above the fold. These suppress conversion rates rather than blocking them outright.
Opportunities are improvements that could increase conversion but are not currently preventing anything. A more specific homepage strapline. A lower-commitment lead magnet. Better case study placement. Worth addressing, but not urgent.
Fix Blockers first. Before spending on design, fix the things that are actively losing you enquiries right now. A site with three Blockers is losing money every week those Blockers remain unfixed.
The decision rule for the redesign itself is relatively straightforward. Three or more Blockers usually points to a redesign brief as the right investment. Zero Blockers and mostly Friction often means targeted conversion work will deliver better results at lower cost than a full rebuild. The CT post on whether you need targeted fixes or a full rebuild works through exactly that decision.
The real value of this checklist is not the list. It is the brief it produces. A business owner who arrives at a web design agency with five specific problems, a conversion rate baseline, and a clear outcome in mind will get a better result than one who says "it just feels dated."
What could your site actually be attracting?
The checklist tells you what is wrong with the site you have. It doesn't tell you what a fixed version could deliver.
If you want a data-backed view of what your site could attract in search traffic once the structural problems are resolved, Creative Tweed offers a free Traffic Projection Report. It uses your current search footprint to estimate the addressable traffic by keyword and channel, before you commit to a brief or a budget.
Free resource: Traffic Projection Report
Find out what a properly structured version of your site could realistically be attracting from search.
Frequently asked questions about UX audits
What is a UX audit?
A UX audit is a structured review of how your website feels to use from a visitor's perspective. It identifies the points where people get confused, cannot find what they need, or give up before enquiring. It is different from an SEO audit, which focuses on search rankings, and different from a design audit, which focuses on visual consistency. A UX audit looks at the experience of actually using the site.
How long does a UX audit take?
A self-audit using a checklist like this one takes two to four hours for a typical five-to-ten page business website. That covers navigation, calls to action, forms, page speed, and analytics setup. A professional audit from an agency takes considerably longer because it includes session recordings, heatmap analysis, and structured user testing that a self-audit cannot replicate. For most business owners, the self-audit is the right starting point before investing in a professional review.
What is the difference between a UX audit and an SEO audit?
An SEO audit reviews how well your site ranks in search engines and what technical or content factors are limiting your visibility. A UX audit reviews what happens after a visitor arrives. They are complementary: a strong search ranking that leads to a poorly converting page is a missed opportunity twice over. Both are worth running before commissioning a redesign, ideally in parallel rather than in sequence.
Should I do a UX audit before or after commissioning a redesign?
Before. Running a UX audit first means your redesign brief is grounded in known problems rather than assumptions. It also helps you separate cosmetic issues, such as a dated visual style that does not affect conversion, from structural failures, such as a mobile form that is actively losing you enquiries. That distinction matters because they have different costs and different solutions. The audit is what tells you which category your problems fall into.
