I've looked at thousands of small business websites over the past few years. Some are fine. A surprising number of them are actively costing their owners money. Here are the seven things I check first. Any two of these together and you're looking at a prime redesign candidate.
1. No SSL Certificate
If the URL starts with "http://" instead of "https://," the site doesn't have SSL. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all display "Not Secure" warnings for these sites now. Your mom might not know what SSL is, but she knows "Not Secure" looks bad.
Here's the kicker: SSL certificates are free through Let's Encrypt. Every modern host includes them. If a business doesn't have one in 2025, it means nobody's maintaining their website. Period.
2. Not Mobile-Responsive
Pull the site up on your phone. If the text is tiny and you have to pinch-zoom to read anything, it's not responsive. Over 60% of web traffic is mobile now. This isn't a nice-to-have; it's a deal-breaker.
Want the quick technical check? View the page source and look for a viewport meta tag. No viewport = not responsive. But honestly, you can just look at it on your phone and know in two seconds.
This is maybe the easiest redesign to sell. Pull out your phone in the meeting, load their website, and hand it to them. "This is what your customers see." Conversation over.
3. Painfully Slow Load Times
Google's own research says 53% of mobile visitors bail if a page takes more than 3 seconds to load. I've tested this anecdotally and it tracks. I personally won't wait more than about 4 seconds for anything.
Common culprits on slow small business sites:
- Massive uncompressed images (someone uploaded a 4MB photo straight from their iPhone)
- Bargain-basement shared hosting
- 30+ WordPress plugins, half of which are deactivated but still loading
- Page builders that generate absurd amounts of code for a simple layout
4. Built on a Dated Platform
Not all platforms are created equal. When I see a site on GoDaddy Website Builder, old-school Weebly, or a 2015-era Wix template, I know what I'm dealing with. Limited customization, poor performance, cookie-cutter design.
To be fair, modern Wix and Squarespace can produce decent sites. The issue is specifically with old templates that were never updated. You can usually tell by the design: if it has that distinctly "2014 flat design" look with massive hero images and generic sans-serif fonts, it's overdue for a redo.
5. No Analytics
If a business doesn't have Google Analytics (or anything) installed, they have no idea what their website is doing. Zero data on visitors, traffic sources, or which pages people actually look at.
This tells you two things about whoever built the site: they either didn't know to set up tracking, or they didn't bother. Both are bad. And it means the business owner has been flying completely blind about their online presence, probably for years.
6. Missing Schema Markup
This one's invisible to visitors but huge for search. Schema markup helps Google understand what a business does, where it is, what its hours are, and more. With it, businesses can get rich results in search: star ratings, hours, phone number right in the listing.
Without it? Just a plain blue link competing with everyone else.
Most small business websites have zero schema. It's an easy win in any redesign and something tangible you can point to: "See how your competitor has star ratings in their Google listing? That's schema markup. Your site doesn't have it."
7. "© 2019" in the Footer
Nothing says "neglected" like an outdated copyright year. But it goes deeper than that: outdated team pages with employees who left two years ago, blog sections with the last post from 2021, phone numbers that ring to voicemail.
Stale content erodes trust. If someone lands on a website that looks like it hasn't been touched in years, their first thought is "Is this business still open?"
Finding These Sites at Scale
Checking these things one website at a time works, but it's slow. If you're seriously prospecting, look into tools that automate the checking. LeadsByLocation's scoring tool hits all six technical signals in seconds. For bulk prospecting, you can search entire cities by business type and see quality scores for every result.
The businesses at the bottom of the list (lowest scores, most red flags) are your warmest prospects. They need help the most, and they usually know it.