The same list, every time
Sites arrive at a studio for all sorts of reasons: the developer vanished, the business changed hands, the bookings dried up. The faults we find are not varied. The same ten appear so consistently that a diagnosis is mostly confirming which of them apply. Here they are, roughly in the order of how often they show up, with what causes each and how long the fix takes.
1. The form does not send
How often: most sites. Why: the site emails directly from the web server and the host or mail provider stopped accepting it; or a plugin update reset the recipient; or the recipient left the business years ago. Fix: route form mail through a transactional email service and store submissions in the database as well. Half a day, including testing to Gmail and Outlook.
2. Confirmation emails land in spam
How often: most sites with online booking. Why: no SPF, DKIM or DMARC records for the domain, so email sent in the business's name looks forged. Fix: the three DNS records, one per sending service. Twenty minutes plus propagation.
3. Images the size of posters
How often: nearly all sites. Why: photos uploaded straight from a phone or camera at full resolution, never resized. Fix: compress and resize the existing media library in bulk, set the platform to generate proper sizes, and serve WebP. An afternoon, and often the single biggest speed win.
4. Prices as a PDF or an image
How often: about half. Why: it was easier than building a list, and nobody knew Google cannot read a picture. Fix: rebuild the price list as structured content the owner can edit. Two hours.
5. Hours wrong somewhere
How often: about half. Why: hours changed, and were updated on the door and Google but not the site, or the reverse. Fix: one source of truth, marked up so Google reads it, and a note in the monthly checklist. An hour.
6. No padlock, or a padlock that expires
How often: a third. Why: the certificate renewal was manual and nobody did it, or the hosting changed and the certificate did not move. Fix: automated certificate renewal at the host or through a CDN. An hour.
7. Twenty plugins, six abandoned
How often: most WordPress sites. Why: each was installed to solve one thing, years apart, by different people. Six no longer receive updates. Fix: audit, remove the dead ones, replace the risky ones, update the rest on a staging copy. Half a day, and it removes most of the site's security exposure.
8. The booking is a link to somewhere else
How often: a third of appointment businesses. Why: the booking tool's own page was linked rather than embedded, so the client leaves the site, meets a different design, and sometimes lands on a marketplace listing the competitors too. Fix: embed the tool on a booking page on your domain, styled to match, with deposits and reminders configured. Half a day.
9. The mobile layout breaks somewhere
How often: a third. Why: a theme or plugin update changed something, and nobody looked at the site on a phone afterwards. Fix: usually a small CSS correction once found. An hour or two, plus a real-phone check added to the maintenance routine.
10. Nobody has the logins
How often: a quarter, and the most serious. Why: the developer registered the domain or hosting in their own account, or the admin email is a former staff member's. Fix: transfers and resets, which take days rather than hours because they involve other people. Start this one first.
What this list tells you
Every item is a maintenance failure, not a design failure. None of them is fixed by a new website; a new website built the same way would have the same faults in eighteen months. All of them are prevented by someone being responsible for the site every month.
It also tells you where a diagnosis earns its money: not in discovering exotic problems, but in confirming which of these ten apply, fixing the cheap ones the same day, and telling you honestly whether anything underneath justifies a rebuild. Usually nothing does.
If you recognise your site
Run the phone test first: load the site on mobile data, submit the form, check the padlock, look at the layout. If you find three or more of the list above, the diagnosis is the sensible next step, and the care plan is how the list stays empty afterwards.