Someone just gave a friend your name. Here's what happens next.
They pull out their phone and look you up. What they find in the next ten seconds decides whether they call. You never hear about the ones who don't. This is how to see what they see.
Do it on your phone.
Not your laptop, and not the site you have bookmarked. Open a browser on your phone, type your business name the way people actually say it out loud, and go through the seven checks below. Be honest. Pass or fail, no partial credit. Better yet, hand the phone to someone who has never seen your site and watch them try.
What the person who has your name needs.
Can I find you?
- Pass looks like
- Searching your name the way people say it puts your site and your Google profile at the top, with the same phone and address on both.
- Fail looks like
- Your site doesn't come up for its own name, the Google profile is unclaimed or wrong, or a competitor's ad sits above you.
Is this the right one?
- Pass looks like
- Within five seconds on a phone, no scrolling: what you do, who you do it for, and where.
- Fail looks like
- "Welcome to our website," a slideshow, or your name with nothing under it.
Does it match what I heard?
- Pass looks like
- The page leads with the thing your happy clients say about you.
- Fail looks like
- Your clients say one thing, the site leads with everything, or with something else entirely.
Do I believe it?
- Pass looks like
- Real reviews, real photos of real people, specific numbers, and a site that looks like your business and no other.
- Fail looks like
- Stock photos, a template look, no reviews in sight, a testimonial from 2019, "we pride ourselves on quality."
Do I know what to do next?
- Pass looks like
- One obvious next step at the top of the phone screen, and it's the step they'd actually want: call, book, get a quote.
- Fail looks like
- Five buttons, or none, or "Contact Us" leading to a form with nine fields.
Can I actually reach you?
- Pass looks like
- The phone number dials when tapped, the form works, the email is alive, the hours are right.
- Fail looks like
- A broken form, a phone number that's an image, hours from before the pandemic, a contact page that's just a map.
Could a stranger find you for what you do?
- Pass looks like
- Searching what you do plus your town puts you on page one or in the map pack, and your page titles say what you do and where.
- Fail looks like
- Nothing on page one for your own category and town, and page titles that just say “Home.”
Count the fails.
- Zero to two.Your site is doing its job. Fix the ones you missed and look again next year. You don't need me.
- Three or four.It's losing some of the people who already have your name, and most of that is an afternoon of work. Start with checks one, two, and five. They're the cheap ones.
- Five or more.It isn't doing the job, and patching it is probably the wrong move. That's the honest rebuild conversation, and you can decide whether to have it with me or someone else.
Check seven is the odd one out. For most businesses that run on reputation, being findable by name is what matters and being findable by category is a separate decision. If seven is the only fail, that's ongoing search work, not a website problem, and I have a partner who does it.
I'll look you up and record the whole thing.
The hard part of this checklist is that you already know what you're looking at. I don't. The Referral Check is me finding you the way a new customer would, phone in hand, on video, with the scorecard filled in and the three fixes that matter most. If your site is fine, I'll say so.
What you get
- A 10 to 15 minute recorded walkthrough, from a stranger’s point of view
- A one-page scorecard: the seven checks, pass or fail, one line each
- Your three fixes, ranked, with at least one you can do yourself this week
Delivered within five business days of sending me your details.
If you keep going, the full $400 counts toward a Messaging Session or a Standout Homepage within six months.
Pays through Stripe. I'll text you the three things I need the same day.