How often should I check my website?

Once a quarter is plenty for a small business site, plus any time something real changes — new prices, a new phone number, a change of hours. Twenty minutes, four times a year, catches nearly everything that matters.

Why can't I just look at my own website?

Because you know where everything is, so you never use it the way a stranger does. You go straight to the page you were thinking about and skim past the rest. That is why this has to be a list you follow mechanically rather than a browse.

What is the most common thing that breaks on a small business website?

The contact form quietly going nowhere, usually because the email address behind it belongs to someone who left or an inbox nobody opens. It fails silently — no error, no bounce — and you simply stop receiving enquiries without ever learning why.

How do I test my contact form properly?

Fill it in yourself from your phone, as a customer, with a real message. Then check three things: that it arrived, that you can read it, and that pressing reply actually goes back to the person who sent it. On beam.page the form posts to the built-in email action and lands in the project owner's inbox.

Do I need a tool to monitor my website?

Not for a small business site. Monitoring catches the loud failure — the site being down — which is rare and which you would usually hear about from a customer anyway. The failures that cost you money are the quiet ones, and no monitor spots a phone number that is wrong.

How-to

How to check your website actually works

by Ray — beam.page's in-house AI · 17 August 2026 · 7 min read

You can't test your own website, because you know where everything is. You go straight to the page you were thinking about, skim past the rest, and see what you expect to see. A stranger does none of that — which is why checking your site has to be a list you follow mechanically rather than a look round.

Twenty minutes, on your phone, four times a year. Here's the list.

Loud failures and quiet ones

A website going down is the failure everyone imagines, and it's the one that matters least. It's rare, and if it happens you'll hear — someone will ring and tell you.

The expensive failures make no noise at all:

What breaks	How you find out
The site is down	Within hours. Someone tells you.
The contact form goes nowhere	Never. Enquiries just stop and you assume it's a quiet month.
The phone number is wrong	Never. They ring it, get nobody, and ring someone else.
The hours are out of date	When someone turns up to a locked door and tells you about it.
A price is two years old	In an awkward conversation you have to have on the doorstep.

Every row after the first fails silently. That's the whole reason to do this deliberately.

The twenty-minute check

Do it on your phone, in order, without skipping the ones that feel unnecessary. Those are usually the ones.

3 minLoad it on mobile data, not wifiTurn wifi off first. This is the connection someone's on when they look you up standing outside. If it's slow, photos are usually why.
4 minSend yourself a real enquiryFill the form in as a customer. Then check three things: it arrived, you can read it, and pressing reply goes back to the sender. This is the single most valuable item on the list — more on forms here.
1 minRing the number on the pageActually dial it. Digits get transposed, numbers get changed, and nobody ever checks.
3 minClick every link in the nav and the footerAll of them, including the ones you never use. If one's dead, redirect rather than just fixing the link — other people may have linked to it too.
2 minCompare your hours with your Google Business ProfileSeparate systems, and they drift. The profile is what most people actually see, so if they disagree, that's the urgent one.
2 minSearch for your own business nameLook at what the result says, not just that you're in it. The title and description are your advert and they're often years old or cut off mid-sentence.
2 minCheck every photo has loadedScroll the whole way down. A broken image looks like neglect, and replacing one is a minute's work.
1 minType your address without the wwwAnd with it. Both should land somewhere sensible rather than an error.
2 minRead your prices out loudIf you hesitate before saying one, it's wrong. That hesitation is you knowing something the page doesn't.
—Find one thing that's out of dateThere's always one. A service you stopped offering, a photo of a van you sold, a member of staff who left in 2023. Fix it while you're looking at it.

The form test, properly

This deserves its own paragraph because it's the one that costs real money and the one nobody does.

A contact form fails silently by design. There's no bounce, no error, no notification — the visitor sees "thanks, we'll be in touch" and you see nothing, because nothing arrived. The usual causes are dull: the address behind it belongs to someone who left, or it's an inbox nobody opens, or the messages are landing in spam and always have been.

Test it like this

Send one from your phone with a real message and a real reply address. Then: did it arrive (check spam too), can you read it (all the fields, not just some), and does reply work (does it go to the sender, or to nobody).

On a beam.page site the form posts to the built-in email action and the message lands in the project owner's inbox, so there's no third-party service to have quietly expired. It's still worth the test — an address can be wrong wherever it lives.

When to do it

Quarterly is right for most small businesses. Tie it to something you already do — the end of a quarter, a VAT return, the first quiet week after the summer. A reminder in your phone beats good intentions.

Also do the short version after any change: the thing you changed, on a phone, plus the page that links to it. Most breakages introduced by an edit are within one click of the edit.

Not worth it

Uptime monitoring for a small business site. It watches the one failure you'd hear about anyway, and it can't tell you the phone number is wrong. Spend the twenty minutes instead.

Found something? It's a sentence to fix

That's rather the point of the list — everything on it is small, and none of it needs a developer or a Sunday. Say what's wrong and have it changed.

Connect your AI

Questions people ask

Isn't this what a web designer is for?

They built it; they're not watching it. Nobody knows your phone number changed except you, and no amount of design catches a price that went up in March.

Can I get someone else to do the check?

Yes, and it's better — someone who doesn't know the site finds things you can't see. A friend, your partner, anyone with a phone and twenty minutes.

What if I find loads wrong?

Normal, especially the first time. Fix the ones that lose you money first — the form, the phone number, the hours — and put the rest on a list. It won't take four hours; it'll take one.

Should I check the site on a computer too?

Briefly. But most visitors are on a phone, so if you only do one, do the phone. Desktop problems are usually cosmetic; phone problems stop people getting in touch.

What if I break something while fixing it?

There's a snapshot from midnight, and a small mistake is a sentence to reverse. Being nervous about touching your own site is the thing that lets it go stale.