How To Tell the Difference Between A Good and Bad Website

As a business owner without any web development experience, it may be hard to tell a good website from a bad one. This is because not all bad websites look bad. Some websites have an acceptable design but the underlying code that allows them to function is what makes them good or bad.

How Can I Spot a Bad Website?

Generally, it’s easy to spot a bad website. Lack of mobile support, outdated designs, and unsecure connections are immediate signs. But if you are having trouble figuring out whether or not it’s bad, there are a few tools that can help you.

Google Lighthouse

The first tool is Google Lighthouse. It is a tool for developers that allows them to test their websites against Google’s standard, giving them ratings in four categories as well as many different metrics. While this tool is in a menu that looks complicated, you can access this tool to test any website within just a few clicks.

Accessing Lighthouse

To access Google Lighthouse, first open any website you would like to test in a Google browser (Chrome). Next, right click anywhere on the page and select “Inspect”. This will open a menu that will show the code to the website. At the top of the menu, you will find multiple tabs with the tab “Inspector” selected. Look for the tab called “Lighthouse”, if you don’t see it, click the drop down next the the tabs to select more.

Once you have found the Lighthouse tab, all that is left to do is hit the button to start testing. The tool will run through the website to give ratings in four categories including performance, accessibility, best practices, and search engine optimization. This will give you a good indication of the quality of website.

Builtwith

Another option to get a better understanding of a website, is to use Builtwith.com to see what technology the website is using. Builtwith will show you if it is a Wordpress site or not, where it is hosted, if it is using a CDN and more. Although more advanced, it can be a useful tool to see what websites are.

Overview

There are many ways to tell a good website from a bad one, but Google Lighthouse may be the most effective and useful tool to gauge this quickly without any knowledge of web development. Other tools such as Builtwith can give you a deeper understanding of what a website was made with, but gives information that is more advanced for non-developers.