Comprehensive Website Audit

Website Audit Report
Fisher Stone, P.C.

fisherstonelaw.com
April 2026
Prepared by NorthEra
Act I — The Verdict

Three audits. One conclusion.

Performance
54
Needs Work
Design Quality
48
Below Average
AI Visibility
38
Critical
Overall
45
Below Standard
The Bottom Line

Fisher Stone has real expertise — 157+ five-star reviews, two founding partners with hands-on business experience, and three offices across New York City. But the website that represents all of this scores 45 out of 100 across performance, design, and AI visibility. The site reads as a WordPress template with a chatbot widget that covers 40% of the mobile screen. When AI systems are asked to recommend NYC business attorneys, Fisher Stone doesn't appear. The website is actively undermining the firm it's supposed to represent.

Score Dashboard

The full picture, at a glance

54 /100
Performance
85 /100
Accessibility
75 /100
Best Practices
85 /100
SEO
48 /100
Design
38 /100
AI Visibility
Legal Services Benchmark
● You: 45   ● Leaders: 75+
Act II — What Your Visitors Experience

The first 30 seconds

A business owner in Manhattan needs help structuring an LLC. They Google "NYC business attorney," find Fisher Stone, and tap the link on their phone.

5.6 seconds pass. They're staring at a blank screen. The page hasn't painted a single pixel. Their thumb is already hovering over the back button.

11.5 seconds later, the hero section finally appears — "LEGAL DONE RIGHT" over a New York skyline. But before they can read the subheading, a chatbot widget slides open and covers 40% of their screen. The CTA button is now partially hidden behind the chat window.

By the time the full page finishes loading at 17.7 seconds, most visitors have already left. Google's own research shows 53% of mobile visitors abandon a site that takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Your site is nearly 6x over that threshold.

Largest Contentful Paint Breakdown — 11.5 seconds total
Render Delay — 57%
TTFB 1.4s (12%)
Load Delay 2.7s (23%)
Load Time 0.9s (8%)
Render Delay 6.5s (57%)
2.7 MB
Total page weight (recommended: < 1.5 MB)
9
Render-blocking resources
220
HTTP requests per page load
What They See When It Loads

A professional firm with a template website

You represent businesses, negotiate real estate deals, and plan estates. Your website scores 48/100 on design quality — lower than most off-the-shelf templates. Here's how that breaks down across 10 categories of visual design:

First Impression & Hero
5/10
Typography System
5/10
Color System & Palette
5/10
Navigation & IA
5/10
CTA & Conversion Design
5/10
Visual Hierarchy & Layout
4/10
Spacing & Whitespace
4/10
Imagery & Visual Assets
4/10
Craft & Polish
4/10
Responsive Design
3/10
The Perception Gap

The "LEGAL DONE RIGHT" headline is bold and confident — it communicates a firm that takes itself seriously. But everything surrounding it (the chatbot overlay, the generic blue palette, the stock photography, the six competing CTAs) communicates "WordPress template purchased last year." Prospective clients subconsciously register this gap. They're looking for trusted legal counsel, but the website communicates budget.

Act III — The Hidden Cost

What this is costing you

Every issue identified in this audit has a business consequence. Here's what these scores actually mean for Fisher Stone:

⚡
11.5-second load time
Google penalizes sites that load slower than 2.5 seconds in search rankings. Your site is 4.6x over that threshold. Every second of delay reduces conversions by an estimated 7%. At 11.5 seconds, the majority of potential clients have already left before seeing a single practice area.
⚡
220 HTTP requests — 64 scripts, 26 stylesheets
The average well-optimized law firm site makes 30-50 requests. Fisher Stone makes 220. jQuery, jQuery UI, Owl Carousel, reCAPTCHA, and dozens more — a stack of legacy dependencies that compound into a site that feels broken on slower connections.
⚡
61 resources with no cache headers
Every time a potential client revisits your site — to share it with a business partner, to check your number, or to take another look before calling — they re-download almost everything as if it's their first visit. Repeat visits are as slow as the first.
✎
Chatbot covers 40% of mobile viewport
The Intaker chatbot auto-opens on every page load, covering the hero CTA, content below, and attorney information. On mobile — where over 60% of legal searches happen — visitors can't engage with your site without first dismissing a widget. Every unnecessary click is a potential client lost.
✎
Six competing conversion paths
Header consultation button, header phone button, hero CTA, chatbot widget, floating green phone icon, and contact form — all visible simultaneously. When everything is a call-to-action, nothing stands out. Interested clients don't know what to do next, so they leave.
✎
Template-level design for a professional firm
Blue + white with stock photography — this is every law firm template ever made. A client comparing your site to a competitor with a custom, polished presence will choose the one that looks established. Your 157+ five-star reviews deserve better than a $500 WordPress wrapper.
🌐
AI assistants can't recommend you
When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI "What are the best business attorneys in NYC?" — Fisher Stone is not cited. Your GEO score of 38/100 means your content is largely invisible to AI systems. Competitors with AI-optimized sites get recommended instead.
🌐
No llms.txt — AI can't discover your services
Without an llms.txt file, AI systems have no structured way to understand what Fisher Stone specializes in, which boroughs you serve, or what makes you different from the hundreds of other NYC law firms. You're invisible to the fastest-growing discovery channel in legal services.
🌐
89+ Google reviews not in structured data
You have 89+ Google reviews at 4.9 stars and 157+ on Trustindex — this is powerful social proof. But there's no Review or AggregateRating schema on your website. Google's AI Overviews and rich search results can't feature your stellar reputation because it's not structured for machines to read.
Act IV — The Gap

Where you are vs. where you should be

Today
54 /100
Performance
48 /100
Design
38 /100
AI Visibility
⟶
After NorthEra
100 /100
Performance
90+ /100
Design
90+ /100
AI Visibility
The Opportunity

The gap between 45 and 93+ isn't cosmetic. It represents the difference between a website that loses clients before they see your expertise, and one that converts interest into consultations. Performance at 100 means instant loading on any device. Design at 90+ means every pixel communicates the professionalism your reviews prove. AI Visibility at 90+ means when someone asks an AI assistant about business attorneys in NYC, Fisher Stone is the name that comes up. Your expertise, your reviews, your track record — all of it is already there. It's the infrastructure, design, and discoverability layer around it that's holding everything back.

AI Visibility Deep Dive

How AI systems see your firm

AI-powered search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini) is rapidly replacing traditional search for high-intent queries like "best business attorney NYC." Here's how your site performs across 6 dimensions of AI visibility:

Content E-E-A-T
42
Brand Authority
40
Technical GEO
45
Schema & Structured Data
35
AI Citability
30
Platform Optimization
30
Platform-by-Platform Readiness
Google AIO
35
Not appearing
ChatGPT
30
Not cited
Perplexity
30
Not cited
Gemini
25
No entity recognition
Bing Copilot
30
Low authority
What's Holding You Back

Fisher Stone has 134 indexed pages including 80 blog posts — that's decent volume. But the content is thin, with generic marketing copy instead of quotable expert analysis. No author attribution on blog posts. No FAQ schema despite having FAQ content on the homepage. No llms.txt file. Duplicate meta descriptions across practice area pages. The foundation for AI visibility exists (content volume, directory presence, positive reviews) — but none of it is structured for AI systems to discover and cite.

Act V — What This Looks Like in Practice

Recent results from a NorthEra engagement

Same methodology. Same standards. Here's what happened.

Performance
100
Perfect Lighthouse — All Categories
Lighthouse scores: 100 Performance, 100 Accessibility, 100 Best Practices, 100 SEO
All four Lighthouse categories at 100/100 on mobile with slow 4G throttling. FCP 0.9s. LCP 1.8s. Zero blocking time. Zero layout shift.
AI Visibility
15x
AI Citations — Overnight
AI Performance: 1.5K total citations, 13 avg cited pages, exponential growth
Microsoft Copilot citations — from near-zero to 1,500+ total. 15x overnight spike when GEO optimizations went live. Growth still accelerating.
Search Traffic
3x
Impressions — Overnight
Google Search Console: 337K impressions, 4.33K clicks, hockey-stick growth
Google Search Console — 3K/day to 15K/day impressions overnight. 337K total impressions. 4.3K clicks. Average position 6.4. Hockey stick still climbing.
Same methodology. Same standards. Applied to your brand.
Site Screenshots

Your site across devices

Viewport — Above the Fold
Mobile S
Mobile — 375px
Tablet
Tablet — 768px
Desktop
Desktop — 1280px
Mobile L
Mobile L — 428px
Laptop
Laptop — 1024px
Desktop HD
Desktop HD — 1920px
Full-page captures
Mobile full page
Mobile — Full Page
Tablet full page
Tablet — Full Page
Desktop full page
Desktop — Full Page
Methodology

About this audit

This report was produced using three independent analysis methods: Google Lighthouse 12.x for performance, accessibility, best practices, and technical SEO metrics (mobile emulation, throttled 4G); multi-breakpoint visual analysis across 6 device sizes (375px – 1920px) for design evaluation; and proprietary GEO scoring across 6 dimensions of AI visibility including citability, structured data, platform optimization, and content quality.

All scores are based on live data collected on 9 April 2026. Scores may vary with subsequent changes to the website. This report presents findings and analysis only — it does not constitute technical consulting or prescribe specific implementations.

Ready to discuss what these scores
mean for Fisher Stone?

This report identifies what's holding your website back. The next step is a conversation about what moving forward looks like.

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hello@northera.io