50 Critical Questions About Your Website

1. Can you tell someone how to get to your site without having to spell anything?
   
2. Are the URLs human-readable or are they full of special characters and dynamically-generated gobbledygook?
3. Do you have an About page?
4. Can visitors tell what your site is about without visiting your About page?
   
5. Is your contact information readily available on every page - or at least from every page?
6. If not, what are you hiding from? Your customers?
7. Is your home page doing you any favors or is it merely an “Enter Site” gateway?
   
8. Do you have an RSS Feed?
9. Did you decorate for the holidays?
10. When is the last time you added new content?
    
11. Why has it been so long?
    
12. Is your site ranking highly in search engines for relevant keywords?
13. What about for your name? Or your business name?
14. What are your relevant keywords, anyway?
    
15. Is anyone linking to you these days?
    
16. If not, what can you do to make this happen?
17. Who are you linking to these days?
    
18. How long does it take your site to load at your mother’s house?
19. Do you need to download anything on her computer to even see your site?
20. What is the single most important thing you want a visitor to do?
    
21. Is that clear from looking at your site?
22. Does your site look professional, or does it look like a teenager’s MySpace page?
23. Do you link out to your other web presences (social network profiles, Twitter account, YouTube page, Flickr photostream)?
24. Is it clear what content is protected by Copyright and what is free to take and re-use?
25. What one thing can you do to your site today to increase visitors?
26. Are you commenting on blogs and building relationships with other site-owners in your industry or niche?
27. How does your site look on a mobile device?
    
28. An iPhone?
    
29. Blackberry?
    
30. Cheapo-plastic-freebie phone?
    
31. Amazon Kindle?
    
32. Is your site usable with images turned off?
    
33. On a computer with no Flash or Javascript?
    
34. In every web browser?
    
35. How many clicks does it take for a visitor to give you money?
36. Is your site “fine for the moment” or is it flexible enough to be fine for the next 5 years?
37. Are your ads annoying?
38. How easy is it for a visitor to leave a comment or write a review?
39. Can your site run without you?
40. Is the entire site backed up?
41. Is the important stuff backed up multiple times in multiple formats in multiple physical locations?
42. How long would it take to turn your entire site navy blue with white text?
    
43. Is this time measured in seconds (awesome), minutes (good), or hours (you’re doing things wrong)?
44. Is your branding consistent between your site, your printed material, your storefront, and you as a person?
45. Do your product descriptions sound like they were written by a person or by a mentally-ill robot programmed with the vocabulary of an out-of-work Madison Avenue ad guy whose last account was for one of those food processors they sell on TV at 2am?
46. Do you care about your website?
    
47. Is it important to you?
    
48. Are your readers and customers important to you as people, not just as eyeballs with wallets?
    
49. Would you be sad - actually sad - if your site disappeared tomorrow?
50. What would you do if it did?