We audited our own website: what we changed

We tell clients to look at their website the way a stranger would. So we did the same with ours. We reviewed every public page, on a laptop and on a phone, and asked one question: does this page make the next step obvious, or does it make the visitor work?

This is what we found, what we changed, and the checklist we now use. None of it needs a big budget. Most of it is removing things, not adding them.

What was already fine

The technical base was sound. Every page in the sitemap loaded, and each had its own title, description and canonical address. Search engines and the crawlers used by AI assistants received the full page, not an empty shell. Reduced-motion settings were respected.

That matters because it told us where not to spend time. A site that is technically healthy but feels busy has a design and content problem, not an engineering one.

What made it feel busy

The busy feeling came from one place: a newer section had been added on top of the older site instead of into it. The result was easy to see once we looked for it.

• Pages in the newer section showed two headers, two opening sections and two footers. One page showed its main heading twice.
• The homepage put a priced offer for the newer section before the work that proves we can deliver.
• The same section appeared twice in the top menu, and the menu had an extra item most visitors did not need.
• Some text was smaller than 12 pixels and some grey text was too light to read comfortably on a phone.
• Too many things moved at once: a rotating heading and more than one scrolling strip.

None of these is a disaster on its own. Together they made the site feel like two sites stitched together, and on a phone that feeling was strongest.

What we changed

We worked in two passes. The first removed the noise. The second made the structure easier to follow.

• One header, one opening section and one footer on every page, with a single main heading.
• The homepage now leads with services and work. The newer offer sits after them as one slim row with no prices.
• A shorter top menu, with dropdowns that open on hover and on keyboard focus.
• A minimum text size, a darker minimum grey, a still main heading and one scrolling strip instead of several.
• A clear type scale, so headings and body text step up in the same sizes on every page.
• Breadcrumbs on deeper pages, so visitors can see where they are and step back up.
• Two overlapping sections merged into one, with every old address sent to the matching new page in a single redirect.
• A helpful not-found page that lists the places most visitors are looking for, instead of a dead end.

What we got wrong at first

Two early findings did not survive a second look. One said AI crawlers were receiving cut-off pages. When we checked the raw responses, they were getting the full page. Another said the site ignored the reduced-motion setting. It did not: the rules were already there.

The lesson is simple. Check a finding against the live page before you act on it. A confident wrong diagnosis costs more than a slow right one, because it sends the work in the wrong direction.

Why removing things worked

Visitors decide quickly whether a page is for them. Every extra header, badge or moving element competes with the one thing you want them to do next. When we removed the duplicates, nothing important was lost, and the pages that matter most became easier to scan.

The order of the homepage mattered too. Proof before price is a better sequence for most service businesses: show what you do and what you have done, then talk about packages to people who are already interested.

If you would like a second pair of eyes on your own site, this is the same review we run for clients, and it starts with the same question: what should a visitor do next, and is anything getting in the way?