Check your website from the passenger seat

Why the phone is the real test

Pew Research Center reports that 91 percent of U.S. adults own a smartphone. A homeowner looking for a cleaner or a handyman is often doing it on the couch at night or in a parking lot at lunch. If your site only looks right on the big monitor in your office, most of your customers never see that version.

Google works the same way. Its documentation on mobile-first indexing says Google uses the mobile version of a site’s content for indexing and ranking. If something is missing from your phone layout, Google may treat it as missing, period.

You don’t need any tools for this test. You need your phone, ten minutes and a willingness to be annoyed on your customer’s behalf.

Step 1: The three-second look

Open your site on your phone with the screen at normal size. Don’t zoom. Look at the first screen for three seconds, then look away. Could a stranger say what you do and what town you’re in? If not, that top screen needs work before anything else.

Now check the text. If you have to squint or pinch to read it, it’s too small. Light gray text on a white background is a common culprit, especially outside in Florida sun.

Step 2: Do the job the customer came to do

Pick a realistic task. Find out whether you service a certain town. Find the price for a typical job. Call you. Then try to do it with one thumb.

• Tap the phone number. It should open the dialer with your number filled in.
• Tap the menu. Every link should be big enough to hit without zooming, and the menu should close when you pick something.
• Find your service area. If it is buried in a footer or a PDF, move it up.
• Look for anything that covers the page: chat bubbles, cookie banners, pop-up coupons. If it blocks the phone number, it is costing you calls.

Step 3: Fill out your own form

Forms are where most mobile sites quietly fail. Fill yours out start to finish on your phone. Watch for these problems:

• The phone field should bring up the number pad, not the full keyboard.
• Your phone should offer to fill in your name and number automatically.
• If you make a mistake, the form should tell you what is wrong and keep what you already typed.
• After you send it, you should see a clear confirmation, and the message should actually arrive in your inbox.

That last one matters most. When I launched this site, I sent a test inquiry and found that the lead tracker was dropping the person’s name. The thank-you page looked fine. Only the test showed the problem. Send yourself a test after any change to your site.

Step 4: Check the speed on cell signal

Turn off Wi-Fi and load your homepage on cell data. If you are staring at a blank screen, your customers are too.

Google publishes targets for this, called Core Web Vitals. The main loading target is that the largest thing on the screen, usually the top photo or headline, should appear within 2.5 seconds. You can test any page for free at pagespeed.web.dev. Don’t chase a perfect score. Aim for pages that feel quick on an ordinary phone, and fix the biggest problem first. My note on making a page lighter covers the usual causes.

Step 5: Look at it sideways and with big text

Turn your phone sideways and make sure nothing breaks. Then go into your phone’s settings, turn the text size up a notch or two and look again. Plenty of customers keep their text larger. A good site makes room for it instead of cutting words off.

Write down what you found. Most of these problems are quick fixes for whoever manages your site. If nobody does, that’s part of what I set up in a free preview.

The usual fixes

Most of what this test turns up has a short list of causes. Text that is too small or too light. Buttons and links packed so close together that a thumb hits the wrong one. A phone number written as an image instead of real text, so it can’t be tapped. Pop-ups that cover the page on a small screen. Photos far larger than they need to be.

None of these needs a redesign. They are settings and small edits. If your site makes it hard to change them, that tells you something about the site, too.