We have run website audits for businesses across the outdoor industry, professional services, media, and e-commerce. Different industries. Different budgets. Different tech stacks.
The same five problems show up almost every time.
These are not obscure technical issues. They are basic, fixable problems that affect how customers experience a site, how search engines index it, and how much money it quietly loses every month.
1. Broken Mobile Navigation
This is the most common problem we find. Not slow mobile performance. Not missing responsive breakpoints. The navigation menu itself does not work on phones.
Sometimes the hamburger icon does not open the menu. Sometimes the dropdown opens but links do not respond to taps. Sometimes the menu opens behind other elements and users cannot see it.
The fix is usually straightforward. A z-index issue. A JavaScript event listener that only fires on mouse clicks, not touch events. A CSS overflow rule that hides the dropdown on smaller screens.
But nobody catches it because the people building and maintaining the site test it on desktop. They open Chrome DevTools, resize the window, see the menu looks right, and move on. "Looks right" and "works right" are different things.
Meanwhile, over 60% of their traffic is on mobile. Those visitors tap the menu, nothing happens, and they leave. The bounce rate goes up. The business blames their marketing.
How to check: Open your site on an actual phone. Not a simulator. Tap every menu item. Try the submenu. Rotate the phone. Check it on both iOS and Android. If anything sticks, fails to open, or requires two taps when it should take one, you have this problem.
2. Missing Image Alt Text
Every site we audit has images without alt text. Not some images. Almost all of them.
Alt text is the description that screen readers use to tell visually impaired users what an image shows. It is also what search engines use to understand image content. Without it, images are invisible to both.
This matters for three reasons:
Accessibility. Screen reader users cannot see your product photos, team headshots, or infographics. They get nothing. For service businesses, this means a portion of potential customers cannot use your site.
SEO. Google uses alt text to index images and understand page content. A page full of images with no alt text looks thinner to search engines than it actually is. You are leaving ranking signals on the table.
Legal exposure. ADA compliance lawsuits targeting websites are increasing every year. Missing alt text is one of the most commonly cited violations. It is also one of the easiest to fix, which makes it harder to defend in court.
The fix is manual but simple. Go through every image on your site and add a description that explains what it shows. Not "image1.jpg." Not "photo." A real description. "Hiker crossing a suspension bridge in Rocky Mountain National Park." "Team meeting in the Ndevr office, five people around a whiteboard."
How to check: Right-click any image on your site, inspect element, and look for the alt attribute. If it is empty or missing, that image needs a description. Most CMS platforms have bulk image management tools that make this faster.
3. Mixed Content and SSL Issues
Your site has an SSL certificate. The URL bar shows a padlock. You think you are good.
Then we run the audit and find dozens of mixed content warnings. Images loaded over HTTP instead of HTTPS. Scripts pulling from insecure CDNs. Fonts served from unencrypted sources. Iframes embedding HTTP content.
Mixed content means your "secure" site is loading insecure resources. Browsers handle this in different ways. Some block the insecure resources silently. Some show a warning. Some break functionality that depends on those resources.
For users, it creates inconsistency. A product image might not load. A font might fall back to a system default. A third-party widget might not appear.
For search engines, mixed content signals a poorly maintained site. Google factors security into rankings. A site with mixed content warnings is not getting the full benefit of its SSL certificate.
The common causes: Old blog posts with hardcoded HTTP image URLs. Third-party scripts that were added before the SSL migration. CMS settings that still reference HTTP paths. Email signup forms embedded from services that default to HTTP.
How to check: Open your site in Chrome, press F12, and look at the Console tab. Mixed content warnings show up in yellow or red. You can also search your site's database or content for "http://" references that should be "https://".
4. Outdated CMS Plugins
WordPress powers roughly 40% of the web. Most WordPress sites we audit have at least one plugin that has not been updated in over a year. Some have plugins that have been abandoned by their developers entirely.
Outdated plugins are a security risk. When a vulnerability is discovered in a plugin, the fix comes through an update. If the plugin is not updated, the vulnerability stays open. Automated bots scan for known vulnerabilities in popular plugins. An outdated plugin is an unlocked door.
Beyond security, outdated plugins cause performance issues. They may conflict with newer versions of WordPress core. They may load deprecated JavaScript libraries. They may add database queries that slow down page loads.
The worst cases are plugins that are no longer maintained. The developer has moved on. There are no updates coming. The plugin still works, technically, but it is accumulating vulnerabilities with no patch in sight.
How to check: Log into your WordPress admin panel. Go to Plugins. If any plugin shows an update available, update it. If a plugin has not been updated by its developer in over two years, find a replacement. If you are not on WordPress, the same principle applies to whatever platform you use. Check your dependencies.
5. No Structured Data
Structured data is the code that tells search engines exactly what your page contains. It is what turns a regular search result into a rich result with star ratings, prices, FAQ dropdowns, event dates, or recipe cards.
Most small business websites have none.
Without structured data, Google has to guess what your page is about based on the text content alone. With structured data, you are telling Google directly: this is a product, here is the price, here are the reviews, here is the availability.
The businesses that benefit most from structured data are exactly the ones that usually lack it:
Local businesses need LocalBusiness schema so Google shows their hours, address, and phone number in search results.
Service businesses need Service schema so Google understands what they offer and where.
Sites with FAQs need FAQPage schema so their questions appear directly in search results, taking up more space and driving more clicks.
E-commerce sites need Product schema for prices, ratings, and availability to show in shopping results.
Adding structured data does not guarantee rich results. But without it, you are not even in the running.
How to check: Paste any page URL into Google's Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results). It will show you what structured data exists and what is missing. If the result is empty, you have work to do.
Why These Five Keep Showing Up
These are not advanced problems. They are fundamentals that get skipped because they are not visible to the people running the business.
The site looks fine on the owner's laptop. The navigation works on their desktop browser. The images display correctly. The padlock is in the URL bar. The site loads. Nothing appears broken.
But appearances and functionality are different things. A site can look fine and still lose mobile visitors, miss search ranking opportunities, expose the business to security risks, and fail accessibility standards.
The businesses that avoid these problems are the ones that audit regularly. Not once when the site launches. Continuously. Because sites change. Content gets added. Plugins get forgotten. Certificates expire. What worked at launch might not work six months later.
What to Do About It
Start with the list above. Check your mobile navigation on a real phone. Run your images through an alt text audit. Scan for mixed content in Chrome DevTools. Update your plugins. Test for structured data.
If all five come back clean, your site is in better shape than most. If they do not, you have a clear list of what to fix first.
These are not redesign-level problems. They are maintenance-level problems. But they compound. A site with broken mobile nav, missing alt text, mixed content, outdated plugins, and no structured data is fighting its own infrastructure every day.
Fix the basics. Then worry about the redesign.