Audit a customer task, not the visual era.
Start with what a visitor needs to do: understand the offer, trust the company, view work, check a menu, book, buy, call or send an enquiry. Follow that path on a phone and desktop. A lead becomes credible when a visible failure matters to that task and matches a service you can deliver.
Describe what happened, where it happened and which customer task it affects. Do not claim lost revenue, poor conversion or customer frustration unless the company has published evidence supporting that claim.
Use conditions two researchers could assess the same way.
| Customer task | Observable condition | Possible offer |
|---|---|---|
| Book or reserve | No clear route, broken form or every path leaves for a marketplace. | Direct booking or enquiry journey. |
| Understand the service | Audience, scope, location or next step remains unclear on key pages. | Positioning, information architecture and service pages. |
| Use the site on mobile | Navigation, text, forms or primary content cannot be used at a small viewport. | Mobile-first redesign of the affected journey. |
| Trust the company | Broken pages, expired certificates, missing contact identity or unsupported claims. | Technical repair and evidence-led trust content. |
| Review the work | Projects, outcomes or service examples are absent or impossible to browse. | Portfolio and case-study system. |
Add disqualifiers before the list grows.
A weak list accepts every imperfection. A useful list rejects companies when the condition is cosmetic, the site was recently rebuilt, the relevant experience is controlled by a parent company, the project is outside your capabilities or the business no longer appears active.
- A dated typeface or colour palette without a task failure is not enough.
- A low automated score needs manual confirmation of the affected experience.
- A missing feature is irrelevant if customers clearly use another intentional path.
- A recent redesign deserves evidence of a real problem, not a second redesign pitch.
Turn the observation into a question.
Observation: a restaurant's menu opens as a desktop-sized PDF and its reservation link is absent on the mobile navigation. Relevant angle: a mobile menu and direct reservation path. Opening: mention the path you tested and ask whether improving mobile reservations is a priority. Do not tell the owner how many bookings the current site loses.
Keep the evidence beside the contact.
Store the page URL, condition, device or viewport, check date, company fit, decision-maker, verified contact, likely service and exclusion checks in the same row. A screenshot can help your own review, but the written observation should be clear enough to understand without it.
Use the complete web design prospect-list standard to match that evidence to the right role and outreach angle. If you would rather start from a verified shortlist, define the condition on the web design leads page and continue to the territory configurator.