We audited our own agency. 2 green, 5 amber, 2 red

We audited our own agency this week with the same nine-stone system we use on clients, and we’re publishing the result. The scorecard came back 2 green, 5 amber, 2 red. The reds sit in the part of the business that brings work in. We build websites for a living, and our own site was invisible for every commercial search someone would use to find us. This post covers what we found, why we’re sharing it, and three checks you can run on your own business this week.

The numbers first

What the audit actually measures

The Digital Growth System looks at a business across nine stepping stones, grouped into three pillars. Foundation covers whether you control your own digital assets, whether there’s a plan, and whether the website is built right. Pipeline covers whether people can find you, whether the site captures the enquiries it gets, and whether leads leak out of the follow-up. Freedom covers whether you can pick the jobs you want, offload repetitive work, and hand things off without everything depending on you.

Each stone gets scored out of 100 based on the share of audit checks it passes. Green means it’s working, amber means it’s partly working, red means it’s costing you money right now.

What we found on our own business

The strongest stones were the ones we’d hope for. We own and control every asset, and the automation behind the business genuinely carries a lot of weight. That part of the story was comfortable.

The rest wasn’t. Three findings stung in particular.

We’re invisible on Google for every search that matters. We checked 8 commercial searches a business owner would actually type, things like web design and WooCommerce development with Melbourne and Brisbane attached. Around 6,570 searches happen across those terms every month. We didn’t appear in the top 50 results for any of them. Not once.

Our site was broken on phones and we didn’t know. On a normal phone screen the desktop menu refused to hide, the page scrolled sideways, and the main contact button sat off the edge of the screen. Desktop previews hid all of it.

Our Google Business Profile existed but never showed up. Verified, filled in, logo and all. It still didn’t surface in the map results or listings for any of the searches we checked. A profile that tools and searchers can’t find is functionally absent. For good measure, the audit also found our contact page wasn’t linked from the site navigation at all.

Why publish this

Because the gap between “we think we’re fine” and “here’s what the data says” is usually invisible from the inside, and we just proved it on ourselves. If an agency that does this for a living can miss a broken mobile menu on its own site, a time-poor business owner running a trades company or a professional practice has very little chance of spotting it.

The honest version of this story is more useful to you than a polished one. So the full report is public, reds and all: read the audit report here.

Three checks to run on your own business this week

You don’t need an audit tool for these. Fifteen minutes covers all three.

1. Search like a stranger. Open an incognito or private browser window, so Google doesn’t recognise you, and search what you do plus your suburb. “Plumber Cleveland”, “accountant Wynnum”, whatever fits your business. Check the map results and the first two pages. If you’re not there, you have a pipeline problem, and your next customer ran that exact search this week.

2. Open your website on your actual phone. Skip the preview tool your designer showed you. Swipe down the whole homepage. If the page drifts sideways at any point, something’s broken. Try to tap your main button, then try to find your phone number. Most of your visitors are on a phone, so whatever you just experienced, they’re experiencing too.

3. Name the source of your last five enquiries. If you can’t say where they came from, nothing is being measured, and you can’t tell which of your marketing efforts is paying for itself. You don’t need fancy attribution. A one-line log per enquiry beats nothing by a long way.

What happens next

We’re fixing our reds in public over the next month. The mobile menu is already fixed, the Google Business Profile diagnosis is underway, and proper conversion measurement is being wired in. In early July we’ll rerun the audit and publish the before and after, same scoring, same ruler.

If you’d like to know where your own business stands across the nine stones, we run the same audit for Australian service businesses. Or just run the three checks above. They’re free and they’ll tell you more than most reports you’ve paid for.