Your website was approved on a laptop, indoors, on office wifi, by somebody who already knew what it said. Almost nobody sees it that way.
The real conditions are a phone held in one hand, outdoors, in daylight on the screen, on mobile data, by somebody who is mildly annoyed because there is water coming through a ceiling. If it works there, it works.
The test, exactly
- Turn wifi off on your phone.
- Go outside, in daylight.
- Search your business name and open your own site from the results, rather than from a bookmark.
- Count the seconds until you can read something.
- Try to ring yourself, using only your thumb.
Everything that annoys you in those thirty seconds is annoying every customer, all the time. This test costs nothing and finds more than any tool.
What usually breaks
In the order it turns up:
- It is slow, and it is nearly always the photographs. A gallery of full-size camera images will crawl on mobile data even on a fast site.
- The number is not tappable, or is an image, or is only in the footer.
- Text is too small, or the page is wider than the screen so everything needs a pinch.
- A pop-up covers the whole screen and the close button is off the edge.
- A menu that needs two hands, or opens over the thing you were reading.
- Form fields so small that typing a phone number takes three attempts.
- A price list or a brochure as a PDF, which on a phone means a download, a wait, and a pinch.