Most business owners know two things about their website: what it looks like and whether inquiries come in through it. What happens between someone opening the website and sending a message usually stays out of sight. Yet that is exactly where inquiries get lost: the page takes too long to load on a phone, the number cannot be tapped, Google shows a random piece of text instead of a description.
That is why we built Webcheck. It is a free website check that runs 37 checks in six areas on your homepage and sorts every finding by impact and effort. In this article we explain exactly what we check, why it matters and which findings you can fix without a developer.
How Webcheck works
The check has two sources. First, Webcheck downloads your homepage like a browser and reads its code, the server headers, the robots.txt file and the sitemap. That takes a few seconds. Second, speed and mobile use are measured by Google PageSpeed Insights, which opens the page in a real browser on a simulated mid-range phone. This part takes the longest.
The whole check usually takes 20 to 40 seconds. It is free, with no sign-up, and you see the full result with every finding and how to fix it right away.
We check the homepage because most visitors arrive there, and most settings, such as HTTPS, server headers or robots.txt, apply to the whole site. We go through the whole website in a free consultation.
How to read the result
Every check has one of four statuses: OK, Issue, Tip (could be better, but it is not serious) or Not measured, when the measurement failed, for example because Google could not open the page.
The findings appear on a map based on two questions: how big the impact is and how much work the fix takes. This produces a plan in three groups:
- First: quick wins. High or medium impact and at most 30 minutes of work.
- Next. High or medium impact, but more work.
- Can wait. Lower impact.
Every finding shows an effort estimate. The overall score is a weighted average: high-impact checks weigh three times as much as low-impact ones, and a tip counts as a partial pass. The score can differ by a few points when you check again, because speed depends on how busy the server is at that moment, and Google measures a little differently every time. The findings stay the same.
Now to the areas themselves.
1. Speed
Speed is the first thing a visitor experiences. Until the page appears, they cannot read your offer or write to you. This area has nine checks:
- Main content on mobile. How fast the largest element on the first screen appears, usually the main image or heading. The target is under 2.5 seconds.
- Layout stability. Whether content moves while the page loads. When a button shifts under someone’s finger, they tap something other than what they meant to. The target is a value under 0.1.
- Responsiveness while loading. How long heavy scripts block the phone. The target is under 200 milliseconds.
- Page weight. How many megabytes get downloaded. Every megabyte costs time on mobile data.
- Image formats and sizes. Whether images are larger than they need to be.
- Text compression. Whether the server sends HTML, CSS and JavaScript compressed.
- Server response. How long it takes for the server to send the first byte of the page. The target is under 600 milliseconds.
- Font files. Every font file is one more download before the text looks the way it should.
- Real visitors. If Google has enough data from Chrome users over the last 28 days, we show how it rates real visits. This check is for information only, and it improves when you fix the other speed findings.
What you can do yourself
The most common cause of a slow website is images. A photo straight from a phone is often several megabytes, even though on the website it is shown a few hundred pixels wide. Before you upload an image, resize it to the size it will be displayed at and save it as WebP or AVIF. If your CMS offers lazy loading for images further down the page, turn it on.
Compression (Brotli or Gzip) and page caching can usually be turned on in your hosting control panel, or you can ask your hosting support to do it. For fonts there is a simple rule: two font families and only the weights you really use.
If you want to go deeper, in the article How to get Lighthouse above 95 without compromises we describe how we approach speed.
2. SEO and AI search
This area has the most checks: twelve. They verify whether Google and AI assistants can find you at all and whether they understand what you offer.
Visibility and access. We check whether the page has a noindex tag, which tells search engines not to show it, and whether robots.txt blocks the whole site. Both happen more often than you might think: a developer blocks the site during the work and forgets to remove the block after launch. We also check the sitemap (sitemap.xml) and whether the address with and without www leads to one place. If both show the same website without a redirect, Google may see two copies and split their value.
Title and description. The title is the headline of your result in Google. We check whether it exists, whether it is generic like “Home” and whether it is too long, because Google cuts titles longer than about 60 characters. The description for Google should be roughly 140 to 160 characters. Without it, Google picks a random piece of text from the page.
Page content. A page should have exactly one main heading (H1). Images that carry information should have a short description (alt text), otherwise neither Google nor screen readers know what is in them. The page should have its language set.
Business data for Google and AI. We look for structured data of the Organization or LocalBusiness type, and for online shops also Product. This is information about your name, address, phone number or opening hours, written so that machines can read it reliably. We write more about it in the article Schema markup for service websites.
Share preview. When someone sends a link to your website via WhatsApp, Facebook or LinkedIn, an image and a title should appear. That is what the og:image and og:title tags are for.
Access for AI search. We check whether robots.txt blocks the crawlers of AI services, for example GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended. If they are blocked, AI assistants cannot read your website, so they cannot recommend it either. Whether you want to let them in is your decision. What matters is that it is a decision, not a mistake.
What you can do yourself
In most CMSs you can rewrite the title and description of your homepage in a few minutes, and it is one of the cheapest changes with a visible result. A good title says what you offer, where, and what your name is. The description says why someone should click on you in particular. You add image descriptions to each image in the media library.
The more technical things, such as noindex, robots.txt or the www redirect, are better left to whoever manages your website. You can send them the result as a link. You will also find a more detailed overview in the article Technical SEO for modern sites.
3. Mobile use
Here Webcheck checks two things, both on a phone in Google’s browser.
Mobile layout. Without the viewport tag, a phone shows a shrunken desktop page on which nothing can be read without zooming in. If the tag exists but blocks zooming in with two fingers, we show a tip: it gets in the way of anyone with poorer eyesight.
Buttons and links on a phone. Whether they are easy to hit with a finger. The tap target should be at least 24 × 24 pixels, ideally 44, with space between the buttons.
You can do the simplest test without any tool: open your website on your phone with one hand and try to get to the contact details. If you have to zoom in or you hit the wrong link, your customers experience the same.
4. Inquiries and sales
For a business owner, this is the most practical area. Five checks show whether the website makes it easy for a visitor to get in touch or buy.
- Text contrast. Whether texts and buttons can be read. Light gray text on a white background may look elegant, but on a phone outdoors in the sun it cannot be read. The recommended contrast is at least 4.5 : 1.
- Phone with one tap. Many people want to call before they buy or book. If the number is only plain text on the page, they cannot tap it on a phone. Turning it into a tel: link is enough.
- Contact form. If there is a form on the homepage, we count its fields. Every extra field means fewer inquiries sent. For a first contact, name, email or phone and a message are usually enough.
- Customer reviews. We look for reviews on the homepage, for example from Google or from an online shop rating service. For a new visitor they are the strongest sign of trust.
- Measurement. Whether the website measures traffic, for example with Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Microsoft Clarity or Matomo. Without measurement you do not know where people come from or what they do on the website.
What you can do yourself
A clickable phone number and a shorter form are typical quick wins. If your form asks for a company ID, address, budget and five more details before the first contact, require only what you need in order to reply. You will find out the rest when you reply. On our own contact form, only name, email and message are required.
5. Security
Four checks verify whether the connection to your website is encrypted and protected.
- Encrypted connection (HTTPS). Browsers mark a website without a certificate as not secure. On a form, that is a clear reason for the visitor not to send it.
- Redirect to HTTPS. Anyone who types the address without https should end up on the secure version, not on an unencrypted page.
- Content loaded securely. If some images or scripts load over http://, the browser may block them or show a warning.
- Security headers. HSTS, Content-Security-Policy, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options and Referrer-Policy. They protect visitors against some common attacks and are set at your hosting.
Most hosting providers offer the certificate and the redirect in their control panel. Security headers are a job for a technical person, but they are worth setting up once and properly.
6. Legal and trust
The last area covers what the law expects from a website and what customers expect. Webcheck does not replace a lawyer, but it shows where something is missing.
Measurement waits for consent. This is a high-impact check. We watch whether the website sends data to analytics tools, for example Google Analytics, Clarity or Meta Pixel, before the visitor has answered the cookie bar. Under GDPR, measurement with cookies needs consent first. If only cookieless signals go out before consent through Google Consent Mode, we show a tip, because whether that is enough depends on your setup.
Company details. We look for the company name, company ID number and registered address on the homepage or on a linked page, for example Contact or the terms and conditions. For websites with a .de, .at or .ch domain, we look for a link to the Impressum, which business websites there are required by law to have.
Privacy policy. Every website that collects personal data, for example through a form, needs a privacy policy and a link to it, usually in the footer.
Returns and complaints. Online shops only: whether the return and complaint rules can be reached from the homepage. People look for them before they buy.
Site icon. The favicon in the browser tab and in bookmarks. A small thing, but without it the website looks unfinished.
You can add links to the policies, terms and company details to the footer yourself. Cookie consent is more complicated, because you need to set which tools only start after consent. Here it is worth talking to whoever manages your website.
Comparison with competitors
After checking your own website, you can enter one or two competitor websites. We check them the same way and put all six areas side by side. This is often the fastest way to find out whether your problem is speed, content, or the fact that your competitors show reviews and you do not.
What to do with the result
Every result has its own link that works for 90 days. You can send it to a colleague or to whoever manages your website, and they will see exactly what you see, including how to fix each finding.
We store only the website address and what we measured. We do not ask for your name or email. To prevent abuse, we keep a one-way code derived from your IP address for one day.
We recommend following the plan: quick wins first, then the rest. After the fixes, run the check again and compare the result with the original link.
Try it on your own website
Enter your website address at alpinefy.com/webcheck. You will see the result in about 30 seconds, free and with no sign-up.
If you find things you do not want to fix yourself, we will go through the result together in a free 30-minute consultation. We will also look at the rest of the website, not just the homepage, and you get a fixed price for the fix up front.
