In our work with schools, not-for-profits, and government teams, there’s a quiet worry that comes up again and again.
Nothing is obviously broken because the phone still rings and people still find you, but the reports look different than they used to, and you hear new phrases drifting through the organisation: AI results, mobile experience, search changes. It can feel like everyone else got a memo you missed.
If you’ve been quietly wondering this, nobody dropped the ball, the rules have changed.
Interested in running through this with your team? Have a look at our Mini Workshop template to go through it together.
Yep, things actually did change
Part of the weirdness is that the ‘normal’ behaviour we were taught to expect isn’t that normal anymore.
One of the biggest changes is that a large share of Google searches now end without a click to any website at all. People get an answer directly on the results page and move on.
So if search traffic feels quieter than it used to, it doesn’t necessarily mean your pages have fallen off a cliff. Sometimes it just means Google answered the question before anyone even reached you..
And when people do click through, they don’t always arrive the way we were taught to expect. They land on a page that matches their question, not necessarily your homepage because that’s how search works.
People arrive with one question
When someone lands on a school, not-for-profit, or government website, they’re rarely there to “explore.” They’ve come with a specific question in mind.
You can hear it in the phrases people use when they call:
- “I just need the dates.”
- “Where do I…?”
- “Am I eligible?”
- “Can you send me the form?”
For schools, it’s often term dates, enrollment basics, uniforms, and “who do I contact?”
For not-for-profits, it’s often “what does my donation do?” and “can I trust this?”
For government teams, it’s usually a task: a form, a requirement, a contact pathway.
This is one reason bounce rate can feel confronting even when nothing is wrong: a person can arrive, get what they need, and leave. That can be a successful visit.
Mobile stats can look grim at first glance
A pattern we see a lot is a team assuming the mobile experience is failing because mobile sessions look shorter.
On phones, people tend to view fewer pages per visit, spend less time, and bounce more often than desktop users, largely because they’re moving fast and trying to complete one small job.
Mobile often brings the visits, desktop often carries the higher-stakes completions, so both experiences need to hold up.
Don't try to make mobile match desktop. Just check: can someone on a phone get the job done quickly, without squinting, pinching, or hunting?
When key information lives in a PDF, people struggle to use it
If there’s one avoidable issue that repeatedly creates doubt (“is our site even working?”), it’s this: critical information living only in a PDF.
Usually the team’s doing the sensible thing: they upload the document they’ve already got. The catch is what happens next, real people try to use it on a phone and it gets painful fast.
What this looks like day-to-day:
- PDFs are harder to read and navigate on a phone
- they’re harder to keep current without duplicating effort
- and they’re more likely to create accessibility issues if they’re not prepared carefully
If your term dates, eligibility criteria, donation process, or “how to apply” steps are only available as a PDF, it can make your website feel unreliable even when the organisation is doing everything right behind the scenes.
When basic information is hard to find, it quietly costs you
This is about staff time because if the site doesn’t answer the basics, the organisation absorbs it elsewhere.
When people can’t find an answer online, they switch channels: they call, email, or walk in. In government work, there’s long-standing modelling that online transactions cost far less than phone, post, or face-to-face interactions.
You feel it in the dumb little repeats: reception fielding the same question again (and again), someone forwarding the same PDF all week, comms rewriting the same explanation because nobody can find the ‘official’ one.
These are the quiet, ongoing “website hidden costs” that build up around findability.
Most of the time, ‘boring but easy’ wins
Another reason people worry is because they compare their site to whatever they saw last: a university campaign page, a big retail brand, or a flashy template.
There’s research behind this (including from Google), but you don’t even need the studies to see it, people trust what looks familiar. Weird layouts make them hesitate.
Nobody's expecting bleeding edge. What matters is whether someone can find your term dates without wanting to throw away their phone.
“Good enough” is more achievable than you think
In training rooms, we often hear a version of: “We probably need a redesign.”
That might be the case, but what’s really happening is that the site is doing its job and it’s just hard for the internal lead to feel certain about it.
A “good enough” website is usually one where:
- the key pages answer the key questions quickly
- the obvious next step is clear
- the content feels current enough to trust
There’s no magic required here, it’s all about creating pages that people can trust.
Most of your traffic come from a small set of pages
Good news: you don't need to fix the whole site.
Most sites have a small cluster of pages that carry the workload: the contact page, the key program/service pages, the calendar or dates page, the donation or enquiry pathway.
So when you’re trying to work out whether your site is “working,” it’s k closely at the pages that carry the load.
You probably don’t need to restructure your whole site
There’s a common decision moment that goes like this:
A colleague says, “Should we redo the website?” or someone else says, “I heard AI search is changing everything.”. Then the room goes quiet and everyone looks at the person who “owns” the site.
A full rebuild is might be the right move, especially if the site doesn’t work properly on phones, or the system has genuinely outgrown itself.
But if the structure basically matches how people ask questions, and the core pages are doing their job, the more effective path is often smaller, targeted improvements. It’s lower risk, and it tends to restore confidence quickly because you can see the impact where it matters.
When things feel quiet, here’s what to check (before you panic)
Forget the big ‘audit’ energy for a second, this is like a quick reality check.
Can someone with a real question get to the answer without unnecessary work?
In practice, it looks like pulling up the handful of pages that matter most, and asking the same simple things we hear in training rooms:
- “If I got here from Google, would I immediately know I’m in the right place?”
- “Is the answer visible without digging?”
- “Is it obvious what I should do next?”
That’s usually enough to separate “everything’s broken” from “two pages need attention.”
What to check when you want to stop worrying
Staring at dashboards doesn’t settle the feeling. What does help is one concrete check where you can go, ‘Okay, this page makes sense, the answer’s here, it works on my phone.’
When the important pages are clear, current, and easy to use, you can stop carrying the feeling that you’ve missed something.
What we usually find is that the site’s basically fine and confidence comes back once you fix the few pages people rely on.
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