The ten-minute check before you share your website link
A practical pre-share check for a new website: read the first screen out loud, tap every link on your phone, and send the contact form to yourself.
The first people to see a new website are almost always people who already know the business. They open it on a phone, one thumb, half interested, between other things. That is a bad moment to discover the number on the page is one digit out, or that the form has been quietly sending nothing for a fortnight.
Ten minutes with your own phone, before you paste the link anywhere, finds nearly everything that matters. Not whether you like the shade of green, but whether the site works when a customer touches it.
Open it on your phone with wifi off
Turn wifi off and load the page over mobile data, the way someone standing outside your shop would. Read the first screen out loud. Can you say in one breath what the business does, roughly where it is and what to do next? If you run out of breath, a visitor has already given up.
Tap everything with a thumb
A mouse on a desktop is forgiving. A thumb is not. Tap every menu item, the button on the first screen, the phone number, the email address and the map. The number should open your dialler with the right digits in it. The email should open a message already addressed to you. The map should point at your actual door, not the middle of the road. Then tap back and try the next one.
Send the form to yourself
Fill in your own enquiry form as if you were a customer, from a different email address if you can, and press send. Then check it arrived somewhere you will actually look. A form that goes to an inbox nobody reads is worse than no form, because the visitor believes they have reached you and you never learn they did not. If nothing turns up, you have just found the most expensive fault on the list, and you found it today.
Read every fact against the real world
Opening hours, holiday closures, prices, the street name, the postcode, the area you cover, the cut-off for orders. Then open your Google listing in another tab and check it agrees. Two different closing times in two places is a phone call you did not need to take, and the details are worth comparing once, deliberately, rather than during a busy week.
Watch one person who does not know your business
Not a friend who will be kind. Someone who has never bought from you. Hand them the phone and ask two questions: what do we sell, and what would you do next if you needed it? If they say they would ring you when you wanted them to order online, the page is arguing with itself, and the fix is usually moving one button.
Look at the link before you send it
Paste your address into a message to yourself. The preview that appears should name the business and what it does. If it says "Home" or a line of code, that is what every customer will see in the group chat before they decide whether to tap.
Look at the photos again, small
On a phone screen, photos get cropped and squeezed. Check that the cake, the van, the sign or the face you meant to show is still visible, and that anyone recognisable is happy to be on the page. A quick line describing each photo helps people who cannot see it, and costs you nothing.
Decide who answers
Before you share the link, know who watches the inbox and how quickly. If that is you, say so on the page: "I reply within a day, and I answer the phone between nine and five." A promise you can keep beats a contact form that implies a call centre.
The order to do it in
- Laptop closed. Phone, wifi off, first screen read aloud.
- Tap every link, button, number and map pin with a thumb.
- Send the form from a different address and confirm it arrives.
- Compare hours, prices, address and postcode with your Google listing.
- Watch a stranger use it, and ask what you sell and what they would do next.
- Send yourself the link and look at the preview.
- Look at the photos on the small screen.
- Write down who answers, and how fast.
None of this needs any code, and all of it works on a site built any way at all, by anyone. It is the difference between a website that exists and one that is ready to be handed to a customer.
Sitewright is still being built, so there is nothing to sign up for yet; the waitlist on the home page is the only thing that is open. The check above is the part you can do today, on whatever you have. If you want the one email when there is something to try, you can join the waitlist.