A structured checklist you can genuinely work through yourself in 20 minutes — the same categories a paid audit checks, explained plainly.
A checklist is genuinely useful for catching the obvious gaps — missing contact info, no clear headline, broken links. It's less useful for the things that require judgement: whether your messaging is actually clear to a stranger, whether your trust signals are placed well, whether your site's 'feel' matches what a competitor's does better.
That's not a reason to skip the checklist — it's the fastest, free way to fix the obvious 20% of issues before spending any money. It's just worth being honest that the remaining 80% usually needs an outside, evidence-based perspective, because you're too close to your own site to catch the subtler gaps.
Use this checklist first. If you've fixed everything on it and still aren't converting the way you'd expect, that's the point where a proper audit earns its value — it's finding the things a checklist structurally can't.
For obvious issues, yes — missing contact info, broken links, unclear headlines are all catchable this way. For subtler issues around messaging clarity or trust signal placement, an outside evidence-based review usually catches more.
Most site owners can work through all 20 items in 15-20 minutes, since it's mostly a matter of looking with fresh eyes rather than technical work.
Either order works. Doing the checklist first fixes the obvious issues before the audit runs, so the audit's findings focus on the subtler things you couldn't self-diagnose.
That's a completely normal reason to run the free audit instead — it explains findings in plain language rather than assuming technical knowledge.
The SiteMedic team can implement every recommendation for you. Send us your results and we'll quote the fix.
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