You hired someone to build your website. Maybe it looked great in the demo. Maybe the invoice was painful. But is it actually built well? Most business owners have no way to tell — until a customer complains, sales dry up, or Google quietly buries them. You don’t need to read code to spot a bad build. Here are seven things anyone can check in under an hour. Whether you work with us or not, run this list.
Sign 1: Speed — under 2.5 seconds on mobile
Test: Go to PageSpeed Insights, paste your homepage URL, click Analyze, look at the Mobile tab.
Fail: Largest Contentful Paint above 2.5 seconds, or a Performance score in the red.
What it means: Slow sites lose roughly half their visitors before the page even appears. Google factors mobile speed into rankings. If you’re paying for ads, slow speed means you’re paying twice — once for the click, once for the bounce.
Sign 2: HTTPS — the lock icon
Test: Look at the address bar. You should see a lock icon and a URL that starts with https://.
Fail: “Not Secure” warning, broken lock, or a redirect to plain http://.
What it means: No SSL certificate in 2026 is malpractice. Browsers actively warn visitors away. Forms become legally questionable. Google won’t rank you against secure competitors. This is free to fix and there’s no excuse for missing it.
Sign 3: Tappable phone number
Test: Open your site on your phone. Tap your phone number wherever it appears — header, footer, contact page.
Fail: Nothing happens, or it selects text instead of opening the dialer.
What it means: A non-tappable phone number on a mobile site is a missed call you’ll never know about. The fix is a single line of code (tel: link). If your developer didn’t do this, what else did they skip?
Sign 4: Forms actually deliver
Test: Open an incognito window. Fill out your contact form with a real subject line you’ll recognize. Submit it. Check your inbox — and your spam folder.
Fail: Nothing arrives within five minutes, lands in spam, or the form throws an error.
What it means: Broken contact forms are the silent killer of small business websites. We’ve audited sites where leads hadn’t been received in eight months and the owner had no idea. Test yours today, then test again every quarter.
Sign 5: Mobile readability without pinch-zoom
Test: Open your site on a phone. Read a paragraph. Can you read it comfortably without zooming in?
Fail: Tiny text, content cut off the side of the screen, buttons too small to tap accurately, or a horizontal scrollbar.
What it means: Over 60% of B2B research happens on mobile. If your site forces visitors to pinch and zoom, they leave. Responsive design isn’t optional — it’s the baseline a competent build clears before launch.
Sign 6: No broken links in the nav
Test: Click every link in your main navigation and footer. One by one.
Fail: Any “404 Page Not Found” error, or a link that goes to the wrong page.
What it means: A 404 in your nav is the website equivalent of a locked front door during business hours. It signals neglect to visitors and Google alike. Internal links should be audited monthly — and definitely after any redesign or page rename.
Sign 7: You own your brand SERP
Test: Open an incognito window. Search Google for your exact business name.
Fail: A directory listing (Yelp, BBB, Yellow Pages), a competitor’s ad, or a Facebook page ranks above your actual website.
What it means: If you can’t out-rank a directory for your own name, your site has fundamental SEO problems — usually missing schema, weak title tags, or no Google Business Profile linkage. Brand search is the easiest ranking you’ll ever earn. Losing it is a five-alarm fire.
How AJD handles this
Every site we ship for Bergen County businesses clears all seven of these before launch — and we re-audit quarterly because websites drift. Speed budgets, HTTPS, tappable contact links, form delivery monitoring, mobile-first layouts, link health, and brand SERP ownership aren’t features we charge extra for. They’re the floor. If your current site fails three or more of these, it’s not a tune-up situation — it’s a rebuild conversation.
Ran the checklist and found problems? We offer a free 30-minute website audit for Bergen County B2B businesses. We’ll walk through your site, show you what’s broken, and tell you what to fix first — whether you hire us or not.
