- Can you tell someone how to get to your site without having to spell anything?
- Are the URLs human-readable or are they full of special characters and dynamically-generated gobbledygook?
- Do you have an About page?
- Can visitors tell what your site is about without visiting your About page?
- Is your contact information readily available on every page – or at least from every page?
- If not, what are you hiding from? Your customers?
- Is your home page doing you any favors or is it merely an “Enter Site” gateway?
- Do you have an RSS Feed?
- Did you decorate for the holidays?
- When is the last time you added new content?
- Why has it been so long?
- Is your site ranking highly in search engines for relevant keywords?
- What about for your name? Or your business name?
- What are your relevant keywords, anyway?
- Is anyone linking to you these days?
- If not, what can you do to make this happen?
- Who are you linking to these days?
- How long does it take your site to load at your mother’s house?
- Do you need to download anything on her computer to even see your site?
- What is the single most important thing you want a visitor to do?
- Is that clear from looking at your site?
- Does your site look professional, or does it look like a teenager’s MySpace page?
- Do you link out to your other web presences (social network profiles, Twitter account, YouTube page, Flickr photostream)?
- Is it clear what content is protected by Copyright and what is free to take and re-use?
- What one thing can you do to your site today to increase visitors?
- Are you commenting on blogs and building relationships with other site-owners in your industry or niche?
- How does your site look on a mobile device?
- An iPhone?
- Blackberry?
- Cheapo-plastic-freebie phone?
- Amazon Kindle?
- Is your site usable with images turned off?
- On a computer with no Flash or Javascript?
- In every web browser?
- How many clicks does it take for a visitor to give you money?
- Is your site “fine for the moment” or is it flexible enough to be fine for the next 5 years?
- Are your ads annoying?
- How easy is it for a visitor to leave a comment or write a review?
- Can your site run without you?
- Is the entire site backed up?
- Is the important stuff backed up multiple times in multiple formats in multiple physical locations?
- How long would it take to turn your entire site navy blue with white text?
- Is this time measured in seconds (awesome), minutes (good), or hours (you’re doing things wrong)?
- Is your branding consistent between your site, your printed material, your storefront, and you as a person?
- Do your product descriptions sound like they were written by a person or by a mentally-ill robot?
- Do you care about your website?
- Is it important to you?
- Are your readers and customers important to you as people, not just as eyeballs with wallets?
- Would you be sad – actually sad – if your site disappeared tomorrow?
- What would you do if it did?
Steve Nezianya
Host Media