The free lead response checkup for local businesses

Most website graders stop at page speed and SEO tags. Those matter, but they don’t tell you whether a buyer who lands on your site can actually reach you, or whether they’ll hear back before they book someone else.

The Mikla Checkup looks at the whole path from “found you” to “booked”: how people find you (Google Maps and AI assistants), what they see when they compare you (your Google rating and reviews), how easy it is to reach you (forms, chat, text, click-to-call, online booking), whether your site loads fast on a phone, and whether you can measure and retarget the visitors your ads bring.

A Harvard Business Review study of 2,241 US companies (2011) found that firms that contacted a lead within an hour were nearly 7 times as likely to qualify it as firms that waited even one hour longer. The same study found 23% of companies never replied at all.

In weddings, WeddingPro says up to 50% of bookings go to the first vendor to respond. Tripleseat’s 2025 Consumer Event Planning Insights found 77% of consumers consider a venue’s responsiveness highly important.

That’s why Response speed carries the most weight in the score (30 of 100 points). It can only be measured by sending a real inquiry and timing the reply, so the instant report leaves it out.

Buyers compare your stars, your review count and how you answer reviews before they ever fill in a form. The Reputation pillar pulls your Google rating and review count, and for the thousands of venues in our best-of rankings it also measures how often you reply to reviews, compared with other venues in your metro.

Replying is where many businesses fall short. In our sample of recent Google reviews for wedding and event venues, venues replied to 29.7% of reviews, and 40.5% of venues with 10 or more reviews never replied at all.

• Response speed: 30 points. Measuring it takes a real inquiry and a timed reply, so it’s not in the instant score.
• Lead capture: 20 points. An inquiry form within one click, a short form, chat or text, a tap-to-call number, online booking and a promise about when you reply.
• Reputation: 15 points. Google rating, number of reviews and your review reply rate against your metro.
• AI + local visibility: 15 points. Whether ChatGPT and Perplexity name you for “best {your category} in {your city}”, and where you rank in Google Maps.
• Website on a phone: 10 points. Google PageSpeed on a phone (score, load time, page size), a layout that fits phone screens, SSL, published pricing and a clear call to action near the top.
• Ads + tracking: 10 points. Google Analytics 4, the Meta Pixel, the Google Ads tag and links to your social profiles. We read your homepage and your public Google Tag Manager container.
• The instant score covers the 70 points we can test from the outside, scaled to 100. Each area also gets a letter grade from A to F.

Start with the one issue marked “Fix this first”. It’s the check that costs you the most points, and it’s usually a quick change: a form on the homepage, a tap-to-call link, a starting price, or a reply to your last ten reviews.

Then work down the fix list. Run the Checkup again after your changes; results are cached for a week, so give it a few days. If you want to see where the money goes, the Inquiry Leak Calculator turns your own numbers into a monthly figure, and the AI Visibility Checker shows the full answers from each assistant.