What to fix first when your website is bad
You probably can't rebuild everything at once. Here's the order that gets the most return for the least work.
Being told your website needs work isn't actionable. Everything needs work. The question is what to do on Tuesday afternoon with the time you actually have.
Here's the order, ranked by return per hour spent.
1. Make it possible to contact you
Before anything else, check that people can reach you and that messages arrive.
- Is the phone number tappable on mobile?
- Is it visible without scrolling?
- Does the contact form actually deliver? Submit it and confirm.
- Does the email address go somewhere someone reads?
We have found businesses whose form had been silently failing for months. Every fix below is worthless if this is broken.
Time: 30 minutes. Return: potentially enormous.
2. Fix the headline
The first thing visible should say what you do and who for.
If yours is "Welcome to our website" or a slogan, replace it with a plain statement of the service and the area. This is one sentence and it changes how every visitor experiences the page.
Time: an hour of thinking. Return: high.
3. Compress the images
Usually the entire cause of a slow site. Find anything over a megabyte, resize it to display dimensions, compress it.
A page going from eight seconds to three keeps visitors who currently leave before seeing anything.
Time: an afternoon. Return: high.
4. Make one call to action obvious
Most sites offer too many competing options. Decide the single action you want — usually call or request a quote — and make it visually dominant. Repeat it down the page.
Remove or demote everything competing with it.
Time: an hour. Return: high.
5. Split your services page
If you have one page listing everything you do, it won't rank for any of it, and it doesn't sell any of it well.
Give each significant service its own page with real content. Start with the most profitable one.
Time: a day per page. Return: compounds over months.
6. Sort out your Google Business Profile
Technically not your website, but if you serve a local area it may matter more. Complete every field, correct category, real photos, reply to reviews.
Time: two hours. Return: high for local businesses.
7. Add proof
Testimonials with real names. Photos of actual work. Review scores. Whatever you genuinely have.
Not invented — real. This is where most sites are weakest and it's often the difference between someone calling you or the next result.
Time: depends on what you have. Return: high.
8. Then consider a rebuild
Once you've done the above, you'll know whether the site is fundamentally sound or genuinely needs replacing. Often the answer is that it was fine and just poorly used.
If you do rebuild, you'll do it with much better information about what matters.
What not to start with
A redesign because it looks dated. Appearance matters less than clarity. An ugly page that says the right thing outperforms a beautiful one that doesn't.
A blog. Content is powerful and slow. It's the wrong first move when the basics are broken.
Social media. Sending people to a site that doesn't convert wastes the effort.
Ads. Amplifying a page that doesn't work just loses money faster.
The pattern: fix the thing that turns existing visitors into customers before you spend anything getting more visitors.
Want to know how your own site measures up?
Run a free audit. Our crawler checks your live pages for the technical and on-page issues covered in articles like this one, and tells you what to fix first. Takes about a minute.