A website teardown checklist is a fixed set of checks that scores a site the same way every time, so the result is evidence rather than taste. Ours runs more than 25 checks across six areas: speed, mobile, search, trust, conversion and security. This post walks through the checklist in plain words, explains what each area is really testing, and shows how the score turns into the three fixes worth doing first. You can run the same checks on your own site free with our teardown tool.
What Is a Website Teardown Checklist?
A website teardown checklist is a fixed list of yes or no checks that scores a website the same way every time, so the result is evidence rather than opinion. Ours runs more than 25 checks across six areas: speed, mobile, search, trust, conversion and security. Each check asks a question a stranger could answer on a phone in under a minute, and the score shows which fixes are worth the most before anyone mentions a redesign.
What our website teardown checklist covers across six areas
Every check on the list exists to answer one commercial question: can a stranger with money and a problem become your customer on this website, on a phone, in under a minute. The six areas split that question into parts that can each pass or fail on their own.
Speed asks whether the page loads before the visitor gives up. Mobile asks whether the site works where most local searches happen, on a small screen, often one handed and in a hurry. Search asks whether the pages exist and are labeled for the jobs people actually type. Trust asks whether the page proves the business is real, current and accountable. Conversion asks whether the next step is obvious, short and confirmed. Security asks whether the basics are clean, because an insecure site fails visitors and search engines quietly.
A site can pass five areas and fail the sixth, and the failed area is the one costing money. That is why the score is per area, not one vague overall feeling.
Speed, mobile and security checks
The speed checks are the least glamorous and the most honest. Does the homepage load fast on a phone, not just on office fiber. Are images compressed instead of multi megabyte hero files. Does heavy content load only when it is needed. A slow page does not announce itself; it just bleeds visitors who never appear in any report.
The mobile checks matter because most local service searches happen on a phone. Is the phone number visible without opening a menu, and does tapping it start a call. Does the page work without pinch zooming. Is the text readable and are the buttons big enough for a thumb. The single most expensive mobile failure we find is a phone number displayed as plain text: the visitor is ready to pay and the site will not let them.
The security checks are the basics, done consistently. Does the site load over a valid encrypted connection. Is the software behind it current. Do forms handle information cleanly. None of this wins customers directly. It fails quietly and costs you rankings and trust if skipped, which is why it is on every teardown we run.
Search and content checks
The search checks test whether your site can be found for the work you want. Does each service have its own page, written for the job the customer actually types, like water heater replacement rather than a generic services page. Do the page titles and descriptions name the service and the place. Can the site be found at all for its own business name.
This is the area where owners most often overinvest relative to the others. Search work compounds, but it compounds on top of a site that converts. Driving more visitors to a page that cannot turn them into calls is a faster way to lose money, not a slower one. Fix the conversion area first, then earn the traffic.
Trust and conversion checks
Trust checks ask what on the page proves anything. Is there a license number, an insurance mention, real reviews with dates, photos of real work instead of only stock images. Is the copyright year current, because a stale date tells the visitor nobody is paying attention. Consistent name, address and phone details across the site matter more than any slogan, since inconsistency reads as risk.
Conversion checks follow the money. Is the contact form short, ideally a handful of fields instead of eleven. Does the visitor get an instant confirmation that something happened. Do submissions route to a person fast, by text if possible, because speed to lead is the whole game in service work. Is there one obvious next step on every page, or three competing ones. When the answer is three, the visitor picks none.
When these fail, our enquiry and conversion repair covers the path from form to a clearly owned next action, priced at $1,950 to $3,950 before anyone discusses a rebuild.
How to check your own site in 15 minutes
You do not need us or any tool for the first pass. Set a timer and work through six checks on your phone, on cellular data rather than office wifi.
- Time the homepage. If you count past five before you can read and tap anything, the speed area is failing.
- Find your phone number without opening a menu, then tap it. If a call does not start, you have found failure number one.
- Fill in your own contact form with a test entry. Count the fields and note whether you see a confirmation on screen. More than a handful of fields, or no confirmation, is failure number two.
- Read the page like a stranger. Look for a license number, an insurance mention, reviews with dates, photos of real work and the copyright year. Stale or missing proof is the trust gap.
- Search your business name in a private window. If your own site is not the first result, the search area needs work.
- Check the address bar for the lock icon and open a few pages looking for security warnings.
Six checks, fifteen minutes, and you will already know which of the six areas is costing you the most.
How the score becomes three fixes
Every check lands in the score, but the output you act on is the short list: the three fixes worth the most enquiries. The ordering rule is not which fix is easiest or which looks best. It is which failure sits closest to the moment a ready visitor tries to pay. A tappable phone number beats a redesign. A five field form with a confirmation beats new photography. Current proof on the page beats a brand refresh.
Everything else on the list gets fixed after those three, and it compounds from there: speed, then one page per service, then the polish. This order is the least glamorous advice in web marketing, which is why so many sites fail the same checks year after year. It is also why the tool reports a score instead of a vibe: two sites can look equally dated while one loses a caller a week and the other loses ten. The number tells you which one you are running.
A worked example with real numbers
Here is the arithmetic we walk owners through, using only figures from our own companies and our published price list.
At Wasatch Cleaners between July and October 2026, the missed-call text-back on the main line answered 244 missed calls by text, and 143 jobs were booked from those conversations. The first number is the one a teardown cares about: 244 people who were ready to pay reached a phone that rang out. Every one of them had already found the site, read it and decided to call. The marketing worked and the last step failed.
On the cost side, our enquiry and conversion repair is $1,950 to $3,950, fixed. Spread the top price over two years: $3,950 divided by 24 months is $164.58, so call it $165 a month. That is less than half our Base care plan at $395 a month, and roughly half the $7,500 floor of a full system build on our price list. The point of the score is to tell you which comparison is the honest one: when one area fails and the rest of the site is sound, the repair price is the number to weigh, not the rebuild price.
What to do with the score
A small business site has four realistic options once the score is in, and the score is what tells you which row you are in before you spend anything.
| Option | Price | When it fits | When it does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fix the top three yourself | Free | The failures are small: a tappable number, fewer form fields, current proof | You need design or development time you do not have |
| Enquiry and conversion repair | $1,950 to $3,950 fixed | Trust or conversion fails and the rest of the site is sound | The structure of the site itself is wrong |
| Website care plan | From $750 a month | The site passes and nobody is maintaining it | The site fails the checks in the first place |
| Full system build | From $7,500 one time | Several areas fail and the fixes compound | Only one area fails and the rest is healthy |
Skipping straight to the bottom row is the most common way owners overspend, which is exactly why the tool hands you three fixes instead of a sales call.
Mistakes we made first
We did not start with this checklist. We arrived at it by being wrong in predictable ways, and three of the mistakes stuck with us.
First, we treated speed as a vanity metric. If a site looked clean on our office monitors we moved on. Then we loaded the same sites on a mid-range phone over cellular data and saw what visitors actually saw. Speed checks now run first, not last, on every teardown we run.
Second, we used to hand owners one overall score. It hid the one thing that mattered, which area was failing, and it let the pretty areas average out the expensive ones. Per-area scores exist because of that mistake.
Third, we counted a ringing phone as handled because voicemail existed. When we finally measured, the missed-call text-back at Wasatch Cleaners answered 244 missed calls by text between July and October 2026, and 143 jobs were booked. We stopped counting voicemail as a system, and we now run the missed-call calculator with owners before any intake discussion, because the number of rings nobody answers is almost always higher than the owner thinks.
Each of those changes is baked into the checklist now, which is the only reason we trust it.
What we do about it in our own companies
We dogfood the whole thing. Every week we run one local service website through the tool and write up what we find. A recent teardown of a plumbing company in Sandy scored 54 out of 100, and it failed the three most expensive checks in order: the phone number was not tappable on mobile, the quote form had eleven fields and no confirmation, and nothing on the page proved anything, no license, no insurance, no reviews, a copyright line still reading 2023. The fix order we handed over was exactly the order above: number first, form second, proof third. The same checklist runs against our own sites monthly, including the growth systems we build for clients, because a checklist nobody runs on themselves is marketing, not method.
Next step. Run this website teardown checklist on your own site before reading another article about websites. The free website teardown tool scores your domain in about twenty seconds across all six areas and hands you the three fixes worth the most. Then you will know whether you need a $1,950 repair or a conversation, and either way you will have the score in writing.