Website health checks for small businesses

What it is

Many small business websites have problems their owners can’t see: pages that load slowly on mobile, images without alt text, low-contrast buttons, forms that don’t work with a keyboard, missing page titles and broken links. These issues cost enquiries and shut out disabled visitors, who make up a significant share of the population.

A website health check is a fixed-price report that finds these issues and explains them in plain English, ordered by what matters most. The agent runs the automated tests and assembles the findings. You add the human checks that tools miss and make sure the advice is right.

Who it suits

It suits people with some web experience, such as former developers, designers, digital marketers or anyone who has built a few sites. You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to understand the findings well enough to explain them and spot false alarms. Reports are self-contained projects, so they fit well around other work.

What you need

• An agent that can browse sites and run tools from the command line.
• Free testing tools. Lighthouse covers performance and many best practices; tools such as axe find common accessibility problems; a link checker finds broken links.
• A checklist covering the manual checks automated tools can’t do: keyboard navigation, focus visibility, meaningful link text, form labels and a quick screen reader pass.
• A report template with a short summary, a priority list and an appendix of technical details.

Setting it up with an agent

1. Define the scope. Decide how many pages a standard report covers, such as the home page, a key service page, the contact page and any booking or checkout flow.
2. Automate the tests. Ask the agent to run speed and accessibility tests on each page for both mobile and desktop and save the raw results. Also have it check page titles, meta descriptions, headings, image alt text and broken links.
3. Do the human checks. Work through your manual checklist yourself. Tab through every form. Try the site on a phone. Automated tools catch only some accessibility issues, so this step matters.
4. Prioritise. Have the agent group findings into “fix first”, “worth fixing” and “nice to have”, with a sentence on why each matters to customers. Review the grouping; tools often overstate minor issues and understate serious ones.
5. Write for the owner. The main report should be short and jargon-free. Put technical details in an appendix their web developer can use.
6. Present it. A short call to walk through the report adds a lot of value and naturally leads to questions about fixes.

Finding your first customers

Start locally. Pick businesses with sites that are clearly struggling on mobile and send a short note with one or two specific, polite observations and an offer of a full report. Web designers who don’t specialise in accessibility may refer clients to you, or buy reports to white-label. Local business groups, chambers of commerce and community organisations are also good routes, as are charities that want to be more inclusive.

Realistic pitfalls

• Overclaiming compliance. Never call a site “fully accessible” or “compliant” based on automated tools. Describe what you tested and what you found.
• Scary sales tactics. Threatening owners with legal action to win work is unpleasant and damages trust. Explain the benefits to customers instead.
• False positives. Automated tools flag things that aren’t problems in context. Verify before reporting.
• Reports gathering dust. Owners may not know how to act. Offer fixes, a referral, or a clear list their developer can follow.
• Testing without permission. Run only normal, light tests on public pages. Don’t load test, scan for security weaknesses or log in to anything without written agreement.

How to price it

A fixed fee per report is simplest, with tiers by number of pages or the inclusion of a checkout or booking flow. Follow-on fixes can be quoted separately once the owner has seen the report. A quarterly re-check at a lower price helps owners keep on top of changes and gives you recurring work. Make the scope clear on the order so there are no surprises.