A few months ago, our own homepage ran four testimonials attributed to a “Creative Director” who, as far as we can tell, does not exist. Three stat counters next to them were supposed to say how many countries we'd shipped to, and showed nothing at all, just empty boxes where a number should have been. Our analytics tag had quietly stopped firing, so for roughly two weeks in September we had no idea who was even looking at any of it.
We know this in detail because we're the agency that walks into a client's redesign kickoff and points out exactly these things on their site. So before we wrote another audit for a client, we ran it on ourselves.
Here's the ten-point checklist we use, in the order we check it, and what changed on redmonk.in once we pointed it at our own homepage.
Trust signals come before anything about design
Every testimonial needs a real name, a real title and a real company attached to it. “Creative Director” with no surname and no company is a template leftover, not social proof, and most visitors can tell the difference in about two seconds of scrolling. We swapped ours for a real quote from Sameer K., VP Product at Bizongo, about what it's actually like working with us day to day. One honest quote outperforms four invented ones, every time.
Media coverage and founder recognitions need to sit where a first-time visitor will actually see them, not three clicks deep on an About page nobody opens. We moved ours, a CEO Insights India feature and a “Most Influential Business Women” listing, onto the homepage itself, next to the client logos where it can do some work.
Numbers have to be real numbers
Stat counters show an actual figure or they don't ship at all. A blank counter reads as a broken page, which does more damage than skipping the stats section entirely. Ours now say 6 countries, 12 industries, 68+ projects and a 4.9/5 repeat rate, numbers we can back up on a call if anyone asks.
Can you prove any of this is working?
Open the page source and look for the analytics tag yourself. Don't trust the dashboard, because a dashboard that's receiving nothing can still load without complaint. Ours went dark for roughly two weeks in September with nobody noticing, because nothing was watching the watcher.
Every link that leaves your site for LinkedIn, a directory listing or an email newsletter should carry a UTM tag. Without one, a click shows up as unlabelled “direct” traffic three steps removed from the post that actually sent it, and you lose the ability to ever say which post earned you an enquiry.
Friction that quietly costs you enquiries
One primary call-to-action per page, repeated in the same words at the top and the bottom. Three different buttons saying “Learn more,” “Get in touch” and “Contact us” on one page is three small decisions a visitor didn't come there to make.
The contact form asks for a name, an email and a project brief. Nothing else. Every extra field is a small, specific reason for someone to close the tab instead of finishing it.
Case studies tell a before, a decision and an after, not just a logo and a thumbnail. A project tile with no story answers “what did you build” and stops there; a prospect evaluating you against three other agencies wants to know why it worked and what you'd do differently for them.
Every blog post ends with one internal link and one clear next step. A post that LinkedIn sent someone to, that then goes nowhere, wastes the one click you worked a whole week to earn.
Run it yourself, this week
The full list, in order:
- Every testimonial has a real name, title and company
- Media coverage and recognitions are visible on the homepage, not buried
- Every stat counter shows a real, specific number
- The analytics tag is actually firing, checked in the raw page source
- Every outbound social and newsletter link carries a UTM tag
- One primary CTA per page, same wording, top and bottom
- The contact form asks for name, email and project brief, nothing more
- Case studies show a before, a decision and an after
- Every nav link resolves, including the ones nobody's clicked since launch
- Every blog post ends with one internal link and one clear next step
None of this took a redesign. It took an afternoon with a notepad and the honesty to admit that a “Creative Director” named Alexander Harvard was never going to convince anyone to hire us. If it's been a while since someone looked at your site with a list like this in hand, it's worth the afternoon before you spend anything on a rebuild.
Once you know what needs fixing, the next question is usually how to brief whoever's going to fix it. We wrote about that here: How to Brief a Design Agency.
Working through a list like this for your own site? Start a project with us and we'll run the full audit together on the call.
