Before anyone reads a word on your website, a few things have already been decided. Their phone checked whether the connection is secure. The page either opened or it did not. And the address they tapped either belongs to you, or to someone else.
These are the basics underneath your website, and they are the first part of Website Health in Marketbase. Nothing here is about your words or your design. It is about whether the site works, and whether the address it lives on is yours to keep.
In this article
- 1. Why the basics come before anything else on your site
- 2. The three things we check about your website and its address
- 3. Four faults that quietly cost New Zealand businesses the call
- 4. What to do today, this week and this month
Why the basics come first
Think of your website as a shop on the main street. Your words, photos and layout are the window display and the fit-out. None of it matters if the door is locked, or the sign above it says the shop belongs to someone else.
A site that does not open, shows a "Not secure" warning, or bounces through several addresses before it lands is closed for business to the person holding the phone. They go back and tap the next result. Every dollar you put into ads, a Facebook post or your Google listing then sends people to a dead end.
Key point
These faults are usually cheap to fix. Most take one phone call to your host or your registrar. The hard part is knowing they exist, because a site you open from a bookmark at the desk can look fine long after a customer's view of it has broken.
What we check
Website Health reads four parts of your website together: the basics covered here, how your pages are built, the other websites that link to yours, and the visitors search sends you. The basics are three checks. Each one is set against the other businesses in your market, the same trade in the same city.
Does your website answer cleanly?
We visit your site the way a customer does, from the address on your Google listing. A clean result opens over a secure connection with nothing in the way. A problem result opens, but something did not check out: an insecure connection, a chain of redirects, or a listing that points at a social page instead of a website. A failure means the site did not come back at all, or came back with an error.
Is the address yours alone?
A web address can be yours alone, shared with other businesses, or owned by a platform. A site at yourbusiness.co.nz builds its standing under your name and keeps it. A branch page on a franchise's domain shares that standing with every other branch. A Facebook page or a site builder's free address leaves it with the platform, and you lose it the day the platform changes its terms.
How long has the domain been registered?
We compare how long your domain has been registered with the rest of your market. Age on its own is not something Google rewards. What an older address has had is time to collect links, mentions and customers who type it from memory. That is why moving to a new address in a rebuild sends you back to the start.
Four common faults
These come up again and again on New Zealand business websites. Most are fixed in an afternoon once you know they are there.
1. No padlock
When a site is secure, the address bar shows a padlock. When it is not, Chrome and Safari mark it "Not secure", and a customer comparing three businesses on their phone does not stay to find out why. A security certificate is usually free through your host. Ask them to switch it on and to send every visitor to the secure version.
2. A lapsed certificate or domain
The faults that hurt most arrive without warning. A certificate's auto-renewal quietly breaks, or the domain renewal notice goes to a staff member who left two years ago. For a .nz name you have roughly three months after it lapses to get it back. After that, anyone can register it.
3. Redirect chains
Someone typing your address should land on your site in one step. Some sites bounce from http to https, then from no www to www, then on to a home page, and every hop adds a wait. The usual cause is a host move or a rebuild that left old redirects stacked on top of each other.
Tip
Test all four versions of your address. Type http://yourbusiness.co.nz and https://yourbusiness.co.nz, then the same two with www in front. All four should land on the same secure page in one step. Send your host any that break or bounce.
4. An address that is not yours
Plenty of businesses run on a Facebook page or a free address like yourbusiness.wixsite.com. It works, but everything you earn sits against an address you do not control. A .co.nz name costs less than a tank of petrol a year. Pointing it at a site builder is usually a settings change rather than a rebuild, though most builders need a paid plan for it.
Picture this
A physiotherapist in Hamilton opens her website every morning from a bookmark on the clinic laptop, and it looks fine. Her free Marketbase report says her website did not answer cleanly.
She checks on her phone, on mobile data. Chrome shows a full-screen "Your connection is not private" warning. The certificate lapsed two months ago, and her laptop had been showing her a saved copy the whole time.
Her host renews it in 15 minutes and turns on auto-renewal. New patients had been meeting a warning she never saw.
Sort the basics
5 minutes today
- Open your website on your phone with wifi off and look for the padlock
- Tap the website link on your own Google listing and check it lands on your site
30 minutes this week
- Test the four versions of your address and send your host any that break
- Log in to your registrar and check the domain is in the business's name, with an email someone still reads
- If you are on a free site-builder address, register a .co.nz and connect it
Ongoing this month
- Turn on auto-renewal for the domain and the certificate, on a card that will not expire soon
- Make sure more than one person can get into the registrar account, and note the expiry date somewhere other than that inbox
Where Marketbase comes in
Your free Marketbase report already has these three checks on your website, set against every business in your trade and town. Find your business by name and see what is working and what could move first. Then sort it yourself, or hand it to us and we'll do it for you.