I started a new series called Website Autopsy. The plan is simple. A real Kiwi business volunteers their website, and I work through the easy stuff - the low-hanging fruit, the marginal gains that close the gap between where your business actually is and what shows up online.
First up was Titoki Land Care
Adam put his hand up, and his site gave us heaps to work with. Cheers Adam.
Here is the thing though. Almost everything I picked apart on his site, you can check on your own. So rather than a straight recap, here are the eight fixes that came out of it - the ones any service business in New Zealand can have a crack at this week.
1. Your homepage is not a menu
The most common mistake I see, and Titoki had it too. The homepage was basically a list of services with a link to every other page. No story. Just a directory.
Your homepage is the most valuable page on your website. It is where most people land first. In a few seconds it needs to tell them four things: who you are, what you do, who you do it for, and why they should pick you.
Run that test on your own homepage right now. If a stranger landed on it cold, could they answer those four questions? If not, that is your first job.
2. Show your faces
Titoki has incredible people doing genuinely meaningful work. You can see it all over their socials. But there was not a single face on the homepage.
New Zealanders buy from people. A homepage full of stock-feeling service tiles does not build trust. A team photo does. Faces do the heavy lifting.
Get a group team photo up high on the homepage. On your About page, lead with your people - leadership first, then the wider team - and make the photos big. This is one of the easiest trust wins going and most sites skip it.
3. Make your call-to-action impossible to miss
On Titoki's site the contact button was tucked away. You had to dig for it. On mobile it was buried inside a hamburger menu behind some long page titles.
A call-to-action is just a fancy word for a button. Pick the one thing you most want a visitor to do - ring you, fill in a form, book a job - and make that button loud, clear, and sitting top right where eyes go first.
The goal is to reduce the drag. Make it idiot-proof. Every extra click between a keen customer and getting in touch is a chance to lose them.
Small one that matters: make your phone number clickable so a tap on mobile starts the call. You would be amazed how many sites still make people copy and paste a number.
4. Use the dumbest language that works
Titoki's menu had things like "mapping and geospatial data sets". That might be technically correct. But is it how their customers describe what they need?
My rule of thumb is to use the simplest, plainest language possible. The dumbest version that still makes sense. That is usually the language your customers actually use when they search and when they talk.
Save the technical wording for deeper pages where someone has already decided they care. The top of every page should be readable by anyone.
5. Bring your credibility to the surface
Titoki had five-star Google reviews, industry affiliations, accreditations, and awards. All of it was buried at the bottom of the About page where nobody would ever see it.
If you have proof, flaunt it. Reviews, logos of organisations you work with, awards, testimonials - drag them up onto the homepage. This is the stuff that turns a maybe into a yes.
And if you are doing great work but not collecting reviews, that is the easiest fix of the lot. Ask your happy clients for a Google review. Send the link. It takes them two minutes and it pays you back for years.
6. Repurpose your social gold
This was the big one for Titoki. They have built a huge following on Facebook and Instagram with a brilliant content series, but almost none of that energy showed up on the website.
Think of your website, your socials, your Google profile and your YouTube as one flywheel. When you post something that takes off on Facebook, ask how you can put it to work on your website too. The content already exists. You are just spreading it across more places.
Titoki also had a powerful video sitting unused on a back page. My advice was to give it a clear title, move it up the homepage, and splice the long version into shorter clips. One good asset, used properly, can feed a lot of your site.
7. Check it on your phone
Quick trick. Grab the edge of your browser window and drag it narrow. That gives you a rough preview of how your site looks on mobile.
Titoki's mobile view had tight margins, missing headings, inconsistent spacing, and one image that had bugged out completely and was showing as a block of green. None of it was obvious on desktop.
More than half your visitors are on a phone. If your site is a mess on mobile, that is most of your traffic having a poor experience. Test it, fix the obvious stuff, and make sure your key button is easy to thumb.
8. Give every project its own page
Titoki had a list of projects all crammed together. My advice was to give each one its own standalone page, expand on it, and tag them by location and by the type of work.
This does two jobs. First, it is a sales tool. When a new lead asks if you do a certain type of work, you send them a link to every example you have already done. Second, it is gold for Google and for AI search. A site with lots of clear, well-organised evidence is far more likely to get found and far more likely to get referenced when someone asks an AI tool for a recommendation.
The bottom line
None of this is hard. That is the whole point. Most websites are not broken, they are just lagging behind a business that has moved on. The job is to close that gap.
Titoki Land Care is a brilliant business. The fixes above would help their website finally reflect that. And nearly all of them apply to your site too.
Want to know where your own site is leaking leads? Run my free 90-second website audit and get a quick read on what to fix first
Keen to put your website on the table? I am looking for volunteers for the next Website Autopsy. Get in touch here
