Before You Rebuild Your Website: What We Check First

A lot of websites don't need a rebuild. They need the main button to go where it says, pages that read well on a phone, and the same phone number on every page. Before you pay for a redesign, run through the checks below. They're the first things we look at on every site that comes our way, our own included, and they're useful even if you never work with us.

How it looks on a phone and a tablet

Start here. Google uses the mobile version of your site for indexing and ranking, and there's a good chance that's where your customers see you.

We test every site at five screen widths, from phone to desktop. Look for:

• Text you can read without zooming.
• Buttons you can reach with a thumb, not stacked on top of each other.
• No sideways scrolling.
• A menu that fits. On our own site, at tablet width, the menu pushed the "Get Started" button off the screen. It looked fine on desktop and on a phone, which is why we check all five widths.
• Forms that are comfortable to fill in on a phone.

What happens without JavaScript

It sounds technical, but it's a two-minute test that tells you a lot. Many sites hide their content until an animation "reveals" it; if the animation code doesn't run, the text stays invisible. It happened to us: with JavaScript off, our own site showed almost nothing. We fixed it so the text is always visible and the animation is just a bonus.

Google puts it plainly: server-side rendering or pre-rendering is still a great idea because it makes your website faster for users and crawlers, and not all bots can run JavaScript. To try it in Chrome, open DevTools, press Ctrl+Shift+P (Cmd+Shift+P on a Mac) and choose "Disable JavaScript".

Speed: measure it, don't guess

Put your address into PageSpeed Insights. Google has concrete thresholds for the three metrics it calls Core Web Vitals: the main content should appear within 2.5 seconds, the page should respond to an interaction within 200 milliseconds, and layout shift should stay at 0.1 or less. The culprit is usually the same: huge images, too many fonts, or scripts nobody uses.

Contrast and motion

Light gray text on a white background looks elegant and can't be read. The WCAG accessibility guidelines call for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. On our site, a gray we used for labels didn't even reach 3:1; we changed it, and now an automated test calculates the contrast every time the design changes. On the orthodontic practice site we have in preview, AA contrast is checked in the tests too.

The same goes for motion: some people set their phones to reduce animations, because motion makes them dizzy or simply because they prefer it. Your site should respect that.

A main button that goes where it says

It sounds obvious, and it's one of the most common failures. The main button on our own site said "Explore services" and took you to the contact page. Now it says "Quote my project," which is where it goes. Click every important button on your site, on a phone too, and check that you land where you expected.

Claims you can't back up

We have a rule for everything we write: if a number can't be backed up, it comes out. "500+ happy clients," "the best service in town," counters that tick up on their own: if you can't show where the number comes from, describe what you do instead. A customer who catches one inflated number stops believing the rest.

Also check what expires on its own: the footer year nobody updated, the "available from Q2" that has come and gone, or three pages giving three different numbers for the same thing. That last one happened to us with our project count; now the number comes from a single list.

A good example of the opposite is Papá Presente Michoacán, a free legal guide in our portfolio where every claim cites the exact article of the state's family code behind it.

Contact details in one place

On our site, the phone number was written in eight different files and an old email address kept turning up in a corner. Now the phone, email and domain live in a single file, and a test makes sure they don't get duplicated again.

Make sure your phone, email, address and hours are identical on your site, your Google Business Profile, WhatsApp and social media. Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results.

Basic SEO that actually matters

• A distinct title on every page. Google asks that every page have a title that's descriptive and concise, without repeated boilerplate. "Home" tells nobody anything.
• One official address. If your site loads with and without "www," or on two domains, tell Google which one is right with a canonical tag so it consolidates signals into a single URL.
• A complete Google Business Profile. Google ranks local results by relevance, distance and prominence; the right category, your hours and your reviews all count.
• One page per major service, if people search for each service separately. That's how we built the site for Grupo Coprinci, an industrial construction company in Morelia, Mexico, with pages for industrial buildings, epoxy floors and maintenance, aimed at local search.

WhatsApp, from any page

If your customers like to reach you on WhatsApp, make sure the button works on every page, on desktop too. Use a wa.me link with your number in full international format and a pre-filled message that says which page they're writing from. And check that the button actually shows up: on our site, the floating WhatsApp button was coded but didn't appear on any page.

If you can, have the message arrive already organized. On the LANT Audio site, a six-step calculator builds an audio and lighting rental request and sends it over WhatsApp, with no public pricing.

When a rebuild does make sense

• You can't change your own content without paying someone every time.
• The platform is abandoned or no longer gets security updates.
• Your business has changed and the site's structure no longer reflects it.
• Fixing everything above would cost more than starting over.

If none of that applies, fix the items above and measure again. Sometimes the new website you wanted was the same one with five things fixed.

And if what you really need isn't a website but a system, like a customer portal or a quote builder connected to your inventory, that's a different conversation; we cover it in custom ERP or spreadsheet.

If you'd like us to take a look

We're happy to go through your site with this same list and tell you what we'd fix first, even if someone else ends up doing it. See how we build websites on Web & App Development, or reach us through contact. And if most of what your site brings in is WhatsApp messages, you may want to read when a WhatsApp AI agent makes sense.