A website can look great and still have problems.

That's one of the slightly frustrating things about websites. You can spend weeks getting the design right, launch it, look at it on your phone and think:

Yep. Looks good.

But that doesn't necessarily mean it's doing its job.

Your website has to do quite a lot more than look nice. It needs to load properly, work on different devices, be understandable to search engines, give people a reason to click, and increasingly, make sense to AI-powered search tools too.

The good news is that you don't need to be a developer to get a basic idea of how healthy your website is.

Here are seven things we'd check.

1. Is your website secure?

Start with the obvious one.

Your website should be using HTTPS, rather than sending visitors to an unsecured HTTP connection.

You'll normally see a padlock or other security indicator in your browser's address bar when a site is using HTTPS.

This isn't just about making visitors feel comfortable. A secure connection is a basic expectation for modern websites, particularly if you're asking people to fill in forms, create accounts or provide any personal information.

If your site isn't securely served over HTTPS, that's worth fixing before worrying about anything more complicated.

2. Does your page title actually describe the page?

Every important page on your website should have a useful page title.

It's one of those small things that's easy to overlook because you don't normally see it sitting prominently on the page itself.

You do see it in places such as search results and browser tabs, though.

A page titled:

Home

doesn't tell Google or a potential customer very much.

Something like:

Web Design & IT Support in Ipswich | WJCD

gives considerably more context.

Your page title should describe what the page is actually about, using natural language rather than trying to cram in every keyword you can think of.

3. Have you written a useful meta description?

The meta description is another small piece of information that can make a surprisingly big difference to how your pages appear in search.

Think of it as the short introduction underneath your page title in a search result.

It should give someone a reason to click.

Not:

Welcome to our website. We provide a range of services.

But something that actually explains what they'll find on the page and why it might be useful to them.

There is no magic formula for writing the perfect meta description.

The important thing is that it accurately represents the page and gives a potential visitor enough information to decide whether it's worth clicking.

4. Does your website work properly on a phone?

This sounds obvious.

It isn't always.

Your website might technically "work" on a phone while still being frustrating to use.

Check the things a real customer would do:

Can you read the text without zooming?
Are buttons easy to tap?
Does the navigation make sense?
Do forms work?
Do images fit the screen?
Can you actually find the information you're looking for?

And don't just check the homepage.

Try the pages where a customer is most likely to take action.

A beautiful desktop website doesn't help much if somebody visiting from their phone gives up before they find your contact details.

5. Is Google actually finding your website?

This is where things become a little more interesting.

A website being online doesn't automatically mean that every page is appearing in Google's index.

Google needs to be able to discover and crawl your pages, understand what they're about and decide whether they're useful enough to show for relevant searches.

Google Search Console is one of the best places to start looking at what's actually happening.

It can show you things such as:

How often your pages appeared in search
How many people clicked
Which searches generated impressions
Which pages are receiving visibility
Some of the positions your pages are appearing for

And there's an important distinction here.

Impressions aren't clicks.

If your website appeared in search 1,000 times but only received five clicks, you're technically being seen, but something isn't convincing many people to visit.

That might be the search itself, your position, your page title, your description or simply the fact that the search wasn't particularly relevant to your business.

The numbers are useful, but they need interpreting.

6. Is your website ready for AI search?

This is one of the areas we're increasingly interested in at WJCD.

People are changing the way they search for information.

Instead of always typing a few keywords into Google, people are increasingly asking questions in tools such as ChatGPT and other AI-powered search experiences.

That creates a new question for businesses:

Can these systems actually understand my website?

There's no magic switch you can turn on to make an AI recommend your business.

And it's important not to believe anyone who tells you there is.

The fundamentals still matter: useful content, a technically sound website, clear information and making your pages understandable to search engines.

But there's another distinction worth understanding.

A website can be technically accessible to AI systems without actually being mentioned when someone asks a relevant question.

Those are two different things.

That's an area we're spending a lot of time exploring ourselves, because we think it's going to become an increasingly important part of how businesses think about their websites.

7. Compare yourself with the businesses you're actually competing against

Your website doesn't exist in isolation.

You might be ranking reasonably well until you look at the businesses competing for the same customers.

For example, suppose you run a web design business in Suffolk.

Knowing that you're appearing at position 20 for one search is useful.

Knowing that your main competitor is appearing at position 3 for the search that actually generates enquiries is much more useful.

That's why we'd always encourage businesses to think beyond:

"Where do I rank?"

and start asking:

"Where do I rank compared with the businesses I actually compete with?"

The same principle applies to AI search.

It's not enough to know whether you're being mentioned.

It's useful to know who is being mentioned instead.

So, is your website actually working?

The interesting thing about all seven of these checks is that none of them is particularly complicated.

The difficult part is that they're spread across different tools, reports and systems, and knowing what the numbers actually mean isn't always straightforward.

That's something we've been thinking about a lot at WJCD.

Because ultimately, most business owners don't want another dashboard to manage.

They want to know:

Is my website healthy?

Can people find me?

Is it giving them a reason to get in touch?

And increasingly:

When someone asks an AI tool for a business like mine, am I even in the conversation?

Those are much better questions than:

"What's my website score?"

A website isn't healthy because it has a nice-looking dashboard.

It's healthy when it works for the people and businesses that depend on it.

And that's the standard we'd suggest using.

Want us to take a look?

If you're not sure how your website is performing, WJCD can help.

We build and support websites for businesses across Ipswich, Suffolk and beyond, covering everything from web design and development to ongoing support, hosting, SEO and the technical side of keeping a website working properly.

Talk to WJCD about your website →

This article was written by William James Creative Digital and will be updated as the way people search continues to evolve.

Is Your Website Actually Working? 7 Things Every Business Should Check