Website Redesign Signals: Outdated Website Checker for Web Design Leads

Paste a list of business websites. Get back which ones look outdated, why, and one factual sentence you can open an outreach email with.

Website Redesign Signals is an outdated website checker and quick website audit tool for web design agencies, SEO agencies and freelancers. You bring a list of prospect websites; it checks each homepage over plain HTTP (no browser), gives it a 0–100 outdated score with a reason for every point, and writes one neutral, checkable outreach line per site. Use it to turn a raw list into ranked redesign prospects instead of opening 200 tabs.

Example hook from a real run: "The site has no mobile viewport tag and it still loads jQuery 1.10.2."

What does this outdated website checker do?

For every website in your list it:

1. Loads the homepage (https:// first, then http://), plus the contact page by default.
2. Checks the signals that make a site look old or hard to use: no mobile viewport, no working HTTPS, a stale © year, old jQuery/Bootstrap, legacy markup (Flash, frames, table layouts), broken homepage links, very large images, missing title/meta description/Open Graph tags, no enquiry or booking form, no tap-to-call link.
3. Adds up an outdated score (0–100) and lists each finding in reasons[] with its points and a plain-English explanation.
4. Writes an outreachHook: one factual sentence built from the two strongest findings, plus primaryIssueType and primaryGapTag so you can segment campaigns.

Results land in an Apify dataset you can export to CSV, Excel or JSON, or pull through the API.

Who is it for?

Web design agencies and freelancers

• Qualify a prospect list before a cold-email campaign: sort by outdatedScore and start with the 40+ sites.
• Personalise the first line with a verifiable observation (outreachHook) instead of a generic compliment.
• Segment campaigns by the main issue (primaryIssueType: no mobile viewport, plain HTTP, broken links, dated footer, heavy images, no enquiry form…).

SEO agencies

• Quick technical website audit across many homepages at once: missing title or meta description, missing Open Graph tags, broken internal links, HTTPS problems, mixed content, heavy images.
• Spot quick-win prospects whose sites have basic on-page gaps you can fix.
• It is a fast first-pass check, not a full SEO crawler (see Limitations).

Lead qualification and sales teams

• Score web design leads you already have (from your CRM, a licensed data source or your own research) so reps spend time on sites that clearly need work.
• Audit your own client portfolio for quick wins (old jQuery, missing meta descriptions, broken homepage links).
• Re-check on a schedule to see when a prospect's site changes.

What the website audit checks (per site)

Signal	How
Final URL, HTTPS works, certificate errors	Loads https:// first, falls back to http://; reports certificate/TLS errors
http:// forwards to https://	One extra request to the plain-http address
Mixed content	http:// scripts/styles/images on an https page
Mobile viewport tag	<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width…">
Copyright year in the footer	© 2019, Copyright 2015–2019 etc. Script-generated years are recognised and not penalised
CMS / site builder + version	WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, Joomla, Drupal, GoDaddy, Weebly, Jimdo, Duda, BaseKit, Framer, Next.js, FrontPage, Dreamweaver templates… (version only when it is public in the markup)
jQuery and Bootstrap versions	From public script/style URLs and library banners
Legacy markup	Flash, frames, <font>/<center>, table layouts, HTML4 doctype, old-IE comments
HTML size and referenced resources	Size of the homepage HTML and the number of scripts/styles/images it references
Largest images	Top 3 by file size (HEAD Content-Length)
Title, meta description, Open Graph tags	Missing / empty
Broken internal links on the homepage	Up to 25 links checked (HEAD, GET fallback)
Contact / quote / booking form	Forms on the homepage and the linked contact page; Contact Form 7, WPForms, Gravity, HubSpot, JotForm, Typeform…; booking widgets such as Calendly, Acuity, Setmore, Fresha, OpenTable, ResDiary
Tap-to-call	Whether a tel: link exists (true/false only)
Placeholder text	"Lorem ipsum", "Just another WordPress site"…

How the outdated score works (0–100)

Each finding adds points, e.g. no mobile viewport +25, HTTPS certificate error +22, plain-http only +20, © year 5+ years old +15, Flash +15, broken homepage links up to +14, jQuery 1.x +10, Bootstrap 3 +8, old WordPress/Joomla/Drupal +8, 1 MB+ image +7, no enquiry form +6 … capped at 100. Every point comes with a reasons[] entry (code, points, plain-English detail), so you can see exactly why.

Rough guide from testing: 40+ = strong redesign prospect · 15–39 = fix-level issues worth a short email · under 15 = modern site, skip.

Outreach hooks for redesign prospects

One neutral, factual sentence built from the two strongest findings, e.g.

• "The footer still says © 2019 and the phone number isn't tap-to-call."
• "The "Kitchens" link opens a 404 page and the homepage has no meta description."
• "The secure (https) version of the site shows a browser warning."

It never uses scare words ("hacked", "insecure", "dangerous"), and each record also has primaryIssueType (e.g. NOVIEWPORT, HTTP, BROKEN, DATED, HEAVY, NOFORM, NOTAPCALL) and primaryGapTag (e.g. site-no-viewport) so you can segment your campaigns. Check every hook yourself before you send it. Sites change, and a quick look takes 20 seconds.

How to check if websites are outdated (step by step)

1. Click Try for free / Start and paste your websites into Domains or URLs (bare domains or full URLs, one per line).
2. Keep the defaults, or set Max pages per site to 1 for homepage only.
3. Optionally set a maximum cost per run in the run options.
4. Run it, then sort the dataset by outdatedScore and export to CSV or Excel.

Input example

{
  "domains": ["example.co.uk", "https://www.another-example.com/"],
  "maxPagesPerSite": 2,
  "maxConcurrency": 5,
  "checkBrokenLinks": true,
  "checkImages": true
}

• maxPagesPerSite: 1 = homepage only; 2 (default) = + contact page; 3 = + one services/about/quote page.
• minScore: rows under this score get belowMinScore: true, so they're easy to filter out.

Output example (one dataset item per site, abridged)

{
  "domain": "www.example.co.uk",
  "finalUrl": "https://www.example.co.uk/",
  "status": "ok",
  "httpsOk": true,
  "httpRedirectsToHttps": true,
  "hasViewportMeta": false,
  "copyrightYear": null,
  "cms": "Adobe Dreamweaver template",
  "jqueryVersion": "1.10.2",
  "bootstrapVersion": null,
  "titleMissing": false,
  "metaDescriptionMissing": true,
  "ogTagsMissing": ["og:title", "og:description", "og:image"],
  "largestImages": [{ "url": "https://www.example.co.uk/images/home.jpg", "kb": 476 }],
  "brokenInternalLinks": [],
  "hasContactOrBookingForm": true,
  "hasTapToCall": false,
  "outdatedScore": 52,
  "reasons": [
    { "code": "no_viewport", "points": 25, "detail": "No <meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width\"> tag", "issueType": "NOVIEWPORT", "gapTag": "site-no-viewport" },
    { "code": "old_jquery", "points": 10, "detail": "jQuery 1.10.2 (1.x line, no longer supported)", "issueType": "DATED", "gapTag": "site-old-jquery" }
  ],
  "outreachHook": "The site has no mobile viewport tag and it still loads jQuery 1.10.2.",
  "primaryIssueType": "NOVIEWPORT",
  "primaryGapTag": "site-no-viewport"
}

Other status values: http_error (the homepage returned 4xx/5xx; still analysed), tls_error_only (only the certificate error could be observed), fetch_failed, skipped_robots_txt, invalid_input.

Pricing (pay per event)

Event	Price	When it's charged
site-analyzed	$0.015 per site ($15 per 1,000 sites)	Once per website that was actually fetched and analysed (including sites whose homepage returned an error page or only a certificate warning, since those are still analysed)

Not charged: invalid inputs, robots.txt skips, duplicate domains and sites that couldn't be reached. Set a maximum total charge per run in the run options; the actor stops when it's reached. Platform usage (compute) is included in the event price under Apify's pay-per-event model.

Responsible use

• You bring the list. This actor doesn't discover businesses or scrape directories, maps or social networks.
• No personal data. It doesn't collect or output email addresses, phone numbers or people's names. Contact signals are true/false only (e.g. "a tap-to-call link exists"). Link text that looks like an email or phone number is dropped.
• Polite by design. It checks robots.txt before every request (user-agent token RedesignSignalsBot), identifies itself with a clear User-Agent, uses timeouts, never logs in, never submits forms, and only fetches the homepage plus at most 2 more pages per site. Link and image checks are lightweight HEAD requests with low per-site concurrency.
• Not a security scanner. It only reads what any visitor's browser sees. It doesn't probe paths, ports or logins.
• If you use the hooks in cold email, follow the law where your recipient is (e.g. PECR in the UK, CAN-SPAM in the US, CASL in Canada).

Limitations

• It reads HTML over HTTP and doesn't run JavaScript, so content rendered only by scripts isn't seen. A form injected by a script may be missed, so hasContactOrBookingForm: false can be wrong on JavaScript-heavy sites. Check those by eye.
• It doesn't measure full page weight, load time or Core Web Vitals. Image sizes come from HEAD requests for homepage images only.
• A CMS version is reported only when the site exposes it publicly. Many don't, and that's fine.
• A missing © year isn't penalised. Only an old year is.
• Sites behind bot protection (e.g. Cloudflare challenge pages) may return http_error 403/503.
• The scores are heuristics for prioritising, not a quality verdict. The weights are ours and haven't been calibrated against campaign reply rates.
• Tested on 10 real UK small-business homepages before launch (the main issue matched a manual audit on 7 of 10). Treat hooks as drafts and check each one.

FAQ

Can it find web design leads for me? No, on purpose. It qualifies a list you already have. Use your CRM, a licensed data source or your own research to build the list.

How do I find outdated websites in my list? Paste the list, run the actor, and sort by outdatedScore. Sites scoring 40+ usually show several clear problems (for example no mobile viewport plus an old © year or old jQuery).

Is this a full website audit or SEO audit? It's a fast homepage-level check of the most visible problems. It doesn't crawl whole sites, run JavaScript, or measure Core Web Vitals.

Does it run Lighthouse / PageSpeed? No. It reports HTML size and the largest homepage images instead, which is faster and cheaper per site.

Does it collect emails or phone numbers? No. It outputs no personal data; contact signals are true/false only.

Can I run it on a schedule? Yes. Save a task with your list and schedule it to spot sites that changed.

Can I use it through the API or with Make, Zapier or n8n? Yes, like any Apify actor: call it through the Apify API or Apify's integrations and read the dataset.

How much does it cost? $0.015 per analysed site ($15 per 1,000 sites). See Pricing above for what is and isn't charged.