what if now Brutal audit · 8 reviewers
Audit · v1.0 · April 2026

whatifnow.ie — torn apart, gently put back.

Eight reviewers, eight lenses, one verdict: you've built a competent, tastefully designed brochure site that under-sells a sharply differentiated product — and is leaking the leads you explicitly said you want to capture. Here's what needs fixing, in priority order.

62/100
Overall

Good bones. Dull delivery. Bleeds leads.

The brand system is legitimately strong. The codebase is clean. But the homepage reads like every other mid-tier agency site in Dublin — generic pain points, four identical stage cards, a hero that says "Do what only you can" and then talks about AI. The moment a visitor wants to take the one action you care about — the contact form — they're hit with six required fields including phone number. For a first conversation. You're turning away warm leads at the door.

12 P0 issues 21 P1 issues 14 P2 issues 9 pages reviewed 11 components

Scorecard by lens

Click any card to jump to that reviewer's full critique. Grades are against peer Irish / EU SME consultancy sites, not against Apple.

Do these in this order

If you only read one thing in this document, read this. Fix the P0 list before anyone sees the site again.
Priority 0 · This week

Stop leaking leads

  • P0·1Cut contact form to 3 fields (name, email, message). Remove required phone + preferred-contact-method.
  • P0·2Rewrite hero. Name the audience in the first line. "Do what only you can" is a riddle, not a value prop.
  • P0·3Fix Organization schema — url points at whatifnow.github.io, not whatifnow.ie. You're confusing Google.
  • P0·4Add the August 2026 EU AI Act deadline above the fold. This is your single sharpest hook and it's buried.
  • P0·5Fix privacy.astrotext-slate-300 and text-slate-500 don't exist in your theme. Those classes render invisibly.
  • P0·6Put a price, a price range, or "from €" on the engagement tiers. "Fixed-fee, not day-rate" is your differentiator; hiding the number erases it.
Priority 1 · This sprint

Earn the trust you're claiming

  • P1·1Add at least one named person. "Our team brings decades of experience" is anonymous hearsay.
  • P1·2Add one real case study or anonymised engagement summary — hours saved, tool, sector.
  • P1·3Replace the dots-and-circles SVG hero visual. Every consultancy site has this; it signals nothing.
  • P1·4Collapse ServiceStages + ForensicAudit + HowItWorks. They are three process sections saying similar things.
  • P1·5Ship an OG image. /images/og-image.jpg is referenced but not present in public/images/.
  • P1·6Surface the interactive demos (SAR, RTB, Quiz) on the homepage. They're your strongest proof-of-competence and they're hidden behind direct URLs.
  • P1·7Add a sticky "Book a call" CTA that follows on scroll — your nav CTA is the only path.
Priority 2 · Next month

Grow into the positioning

  • P2·1Publish 3–5 SEO-targeted articles: "EU AI Act for Irish SMEs", "AI inventory template", "AML KYC + LLMs".
  • P2·2Add a /clients or /engagements page with 2–4 story cards once you have them.
  • P2·3Add FAQ schema + Article schema to the toolkit and quiz pages.
  • P2·4Unify typography — the site mixes font-bold, font-extrabold, and font-serif inconsistently.
  • P2·5Build a small testimonial-lite component: logos of sectors you've served, not fake quotes.
  • P2·6Set up Plausible or similar. You cannot improve what you do not measure.

What's actually working

Because a brutal audit without this is just rude.
StrengthWIN·W1

The brand system is genuinely good

Navy/teal/amber with DM Serif Display over Inter is a confident, grown-up system. The wordmark treatment — "what if now" — is memorable. Keep this. Most of this audit is about living up to it.

StrengthWIN·W2

The privacy page earns the "honest" claim

Plain-English data inventory, named sub-processors (Resend, Formspree), the six GDPR rights, DPC escalation route, and a 2-year retention window. For a consultancy that claims GDPR expertise, this is table stakes executed well.

StrengthWIN·W3

The interactive demos are a serious asset

A working SAR threshold demo, an RTB precedent tool, and an 18-question readiness quiz. Most competitors have a PDF download. You have working software. You are massively under-promoting it.

StrengthWIN·W4

The engagement-model tiering is smart

DIY / Done With You / Done For You is a clear mental ladder. The "Most Popular" framing on DWY correctly nudges toward the middle tier. Just add prices.

The reviewers

Eight opinions. No sugar.

Each reviewer covers one lens. Scores are independent. Findings are ordered by severity: P0 = fix now, P1 = fix soon, P2 = worth doing.

Annotated pages

Red pen on the live frames.

High-fidelity mocks of the actual page structure with numbered callouts. Hover the red dots. Each mock is built from the real component code, not a screenshot.

Home · Hero

src/components/Hero.astro — the single most important 400 pixels on the site.

1
2
3
4
5
6

Do what only you can.

We find what's eating your team's time and build tools to handle it — so your people can get back to the work that actually needs them.

Let's Talk See How It Works
→ Not sure where to start? Take the free AI Readiness Assessment
1
Audience invisible

Nothing says "SME" or "charity" or "Europe". Someone skimming on LinkedIn has no reason to believe this is for them.

2
Riddle headline

"Do what only you can" sounds profound and means nothing. Test: cover the subhead — can a stranger tell what you sell? No.

3
Two primary CTAs of equal weight

Amber solid + bordered ghost next to each other dilutes each other. Pick one hero action; demote the other to a text link.

4
Tertiary link is your best hook

The free assessment is the lowest-friction conversion on the site and it's below the buttons in smaller, lighter text. Flip the hierarchy.

5
Nav CTA repeats the hero CTA

Two "Let's Talk" buttons 120px apart. Diversify: "Book a call" in nav, "Start the free assessment" in hero.

6
The circles-and-dots visual

Stock "AI / connectivity" signifier. Replace with a concrete product shot: the quiz, the SAR tool, or an AI inventory screenshot.

Contact · The form that's eating your leads

src/pages/contact.astro — six required fields to ask a question.

1
2
3
4

Let's Talk

Tell us a little about what you're working on and we'll get back within 24 hours.

Send Message
1
Six required fields, zero optional

Industry-standard for B2B first-touch is 3 fields. Every extra required field cuts conversion ~10%. You're doing this to yourself.

2
Phone is required

For an initial enquiry from a GDPR consultancy? You're telling cautious prospects you'll call them before they ask.

3
"Preferred contact method" required

Most of these are trivially inferable. Remove the field; default to email; add a single optional checkbox "prefer a call".

4
No honeypot, no reCAPTCHA-lite

With Formspree this form is going to fill with spam the moment it's indexed. Add a hidden honeypot field as a bare minimum.

Engagement Models · The pricing that isn't

src/components/EngagementModels.astro — three tiers, zero numbers.

1
2
3
4

Work With Us Your Way

Self-Guided

DIY

Templates, community Q&A, self-paced.
Book a Scoping Call
Most Popular

Done With You

Audit, workshops, roadmap, coaching.
Book a Scoping Call
Full Service

Done For You

End-to-end, integration, training.
Book a Scoping Call
1
"Work With Us Your Way" is a corporate shrug

Your brand voice is "Confident · Clear · Practical". This headline is none of those. Try "One engagement. Three depths."

2
No prices, ranges, or anchors

Fixed-fee is a real differentiator — your guidelines say so. By not naming a number you hide your best weapon against day-rate competitors.

3
Every tier has the same CTA

"Book a Scoping Call" × 3. DIY should link to a free resource; DWY to a scoping call; DFY to a deeper qualification form.

4
No "what happens next"

After the call, what? 15 min / 30 min? Free? With whom? A one-line timeline would convert more than another feature bullet.

Redesigns

Three sharper angles.

Not throw-it-all-out redesigns. These rework the three highest-leverage sections with the same brand system, demonstrating the tone you said you wanted.

Hero — three rewrites, same grid

All three use your existing nav, tokens, and type. Only the copy and visual focus change. Pick the one that matches the appetite of the week.
Option A · The deadline

The EU AI Act is enforced in August.
Most Irish SMEs don't even have an AI inventory.

Fixed-fee AI Act readiness for small businesses and charities. From inventory to classification to EU-hosted deployment — without the Big Four invoice.

Start the 3-minute assessment or book a 20-min call →
· EU-HOSTED· FIXED FEE· AMNESTY BEFORE AUDIT
Option B · The promise

Eight hours back.
Per person. Per week.

We find the manual, repetitive work eating your team's time. We automate it — with EU AI Act compliance built in. Your people do what only they can.

See a real audit or take the assessment →
Option C · The contrarian

Illumination before enforcement.

We audit the AI your team is already using — the quiet ChatGPT tabs, the Copilot transcripts, the rogue Zapier jobs — map them to the EU AI Act, and turn them into compliant, owned infrastructure. Amnesty, not audit.

Start your AI amnesty 20 min · free · no sales call
Sample AI inventory · 14 staff
▸ ChatGPT Plus × 6 users · risk: limited
▸ Copilot (M365) × 11 users · risk: limited
▸ Zapier + Claude (email triage) · risk: HIGH
▸ Custom GPT (customer summaries) · risk: HIGH
▸ Otter.ai meeting notes · risk: limited
2 high-risk systems need Article 9 review by Aug.

Engagement tiers — with numbers

Same three-tier structure. Prices added (placeholders — you confirm). "Most Popular" keeps its pride of place; DIY CTA drops to a real self-serve link; DFY has a qualification filter.
Self-guided
DIY
Free

Substack, templates, community. For teams who want to learn in public.

  • — Weekly Substack
  • — AI inventory template (Excel)
  • — EU AI Act cheat sheet
  • — Slack community
Subscribe free →
MOST POPULAR
Done with you · 6–10 weeks
Guided adoption
from €12,000

Fixed fee. EU-hosted. Shadow + audit + workflow build. We run the engagement; your team keeps the keys.

  • Full AI inventory & Act mapping
  • 2–3 workflows automated
  • Team training (2 half-days)
  • 60-day support window
Book a 20-min scoping call
Full service · 3–6 months
Done for you
from €35,000

For organisations with 20+ staff and a clear automation target. End-to-end delivery, integration, handover.

  • — Everything in DWY
  • — Custom-built AI tooling
  • — Full Art. 9/10 documentation
  • — 6-month post-launch support
Request a proposal →

Contact form — 3 fields, not 6

Minimum-viable first touch. Everything else you learn on the call.

Start a conversation

Tell us what's on your plate. We reply within one working day. No forms, no sales sequence.

I'd prefer a call — leave a number and we'll arrange one.
Send →
Stored with Formspree. Retained 2 years max. Privacy policy.
Walkthrough deck

Eight slides. Read in five minutes.

Present this to anyone who hasn't read the long document. Arrow keys or the buttons below.

Audit · April 2026

whatifnow.ie

A brutal 8-reviewer audit of the live site, scored against peer Irish & EU SME consultancy sites. Goal: more qualified inbound.

WIN · Brand audit v1.0Slide 01 / 08
The verdict

Good bones. Dull delivery.
Bleeds leads.

Strong brand system, clean code, genuine proof-of-work in the interactive demos. Undermined by a generic hero, a 6-field contact form, and no named humans on site.

62 / 100 overallSlide 02 / 08
P0 · Priority zero

Six fixes. This week.

  • Cut contact form to 3 fields. Remove required phone.
  • Rewrite hero. Name the audience in the first line.
  • Fix Organization schema URL (points at .github.io).
  • Put the August 2026 AI Act deadline above the fold.
  • Fix text-slate-300/500 — invisible on privacy page.
  • Put at least a "from €" number on the engagement tiers.
Est. effort · 1 day eachSlide 03 / 08
The one big idea

You sell amnesty.
You market "do what only you can".

Your brand guidelines have a sharper story than your homepage: "illumination before enforcement". Lead with it. Every competitor promises productivity. You promise safe-passage through a specific August deadline.

Reframe the hero around the ActSlide 04 / 08
Leads
6→3

Form friction is the single biggest leak.

Six required fields including phone and "preferred contact method" on a first enquiry. Expected lift from cutting to three fields: 30–50% form completion, per industry baselines.

contact.astroSlide 05 / 08
Trust deficit

No names. No faces.
No stories.

"Our team brings decades of experience" is the opposite of "Confident · Honest · Capable". One named person, one specific sector story, one real hours-saved number would move the needle more than any redesign.

About.astro + new /engagements pageSlide 06 / 08
Hidden strengths

The demos are your moat.
Put them on the homepage.

A working SAR threshold tool. An RTB precedent demo. A scored 18-question readiness quiz. Most competitors ship a PDF. You have working software that no one sees unless they land on a direct URL.

Add /demos hub + hero surfacingSlide 07 / 08
Next

Ship the P0 list this week.
Measure everything.

Plausible (or equivalent) before any redesign. Then the hero rewrite, the form cut, and the schema fix. After one month of data, revisit the rest.

WIN · Brand audit v1.0Slide 08 / 08
01 / 08
WIN · audit v1.0 · prepared by an eight-person reviewer team
whatifnow.ie · /audit