Website audit
Every credential you could ask for, and not one price
A company that has done the expensive, slow work of being trustworthy and then withholds the one cheap thing every visitor came for. Forty-three faces, verifiable registration numbers, two real offices and a sub-headline that names the industry's actual problem — against a site where the word “price” does not attach to a number anywhere except a $350 maintenance plan, and where that plan quotes two figures that do not agree. Three of the four visitors got a long way. The one who was ready to buy this month left with nothing to compare.
Cold visitor
Homeowner, Mitcham, summer bill just landed
Arrived
Googled “solar installer Adelaide” with three other tabs already open.
Wants
To know in ten seconds whether these people are electricians or salespeople.
Judges on
Whether the first screen says something the other three tabs did not, and whether there is a real company behind it.
Ready to act
Retiree, Burnside, battery rebate in hand
Arrived
Ready to buy this month. Straight to the residential page.
Wants
A ballpark number before she hands over her phone number.
Judges on
Whether any figure exists on the site, and whether anyone like her appears in the proof.
Comparison shopper
Operations manager, Wingfield distribution site
Arrived
Shortlisting three commercial installers. Needs figures for a board paper.
Wants
Evidence with numbers attached, and proof the company is who it says it is.
Judges on
Whether case studies carry results, whether the credentials are verifiable, and whether he can find a human.
AI agent
AI assistant acting for an Adelaide homeowner
Arrived
Direct fetch. Task: shortlist Adelaide installers with an indicative price for solar plus battery, accreditation, and a contact route.
Wants
A price or range, accreditation status, and a non-form contact channel, all extractable as text.
Judges on
Readable without JavaScript · buyer facts extractable · structured data · non-form contact.
Cold visitor
Dan Whitlock
/
lands on the homepage
Leading the way in energy innovation and reliability. That is what all three of my other tabs say.
AI agent
Research agent
/robots.txt
checks crawl policy first
robots.txt answers and declares the sitemap. There is no llms.txt — that returns a 404 — so nothing here tells me to stay away.
Ready to act
Helen Pritchard
/home-energy-solutions/residential-solar
goes straight to residential solar
Maximise savings and reduce your carbon footprint with our custom solar solutions. Right. What does it cost?
Cold visitor
Dan Whitlock
/
reads the second line
We design your system around your actual bill, install it properly and we're still here when you call three years later. That is the whole industry's problem in one sentence.
Comparison shopper
Marcus Teale
/commercial/commercial-solar
opens the commercial page
Boost your bottom line and reduce operating costs. Good opening. Now show me a number.
AI agent
Research agent
/
checks for structured data
Open Graph and Twitter cards are present. No JSON-LD I can see, so for a local installer there is no machine-stated address, phone or service area — only prose I have to parse.
Cold visitor
Dan Whitlock
/
reads the credentials strip
Qualified electricians.Thousands of SA & WA homes and businesses powered. Missing space after the full stop, on the first screen.
Ready to act
Helen Pritchard
/home-energy-solutions/residential-solar
scrolls the whole page
Eleven Get a free quote buttons and not one figure between them.
Comparison shopper
Marcus Teale
/commercial/commercial-solar
reads the benefit blocks
Enhance your brand's sustainability credentials, and underneath it, Store excess energy for use during peak demand or outages. Those two sentences are about different things.
Cold visitor
Dan Whitlock
/
sees the awards
4x SunWiz Awards 2026 and a Solarquotes Platinum rating. I do not know what SunWiz is, but Solarquotes I have had open all morning.
AI agent
Research agent
/home-energy-solutions/residential-solar
extracting fact 1 of 3 — price
No price. No range. No from figure. There is nothing on this page for me to return.
Ready to act
Helen Pritchard
/home-energy-solutions/residential-solar
reads a benefit block
Cut your electricity bills significantly, and under it, Store excess energy for use during peak demand or outages. The heading and the sentence do not match.
Comparison shopper
Marcus Teale
/case-studies
opens the case studies
LOGOS Distribution Centre, Hazelmere WA, 1MW, expected annual savings $260,000. That line goes straight in the board paper.
Cold visitor
Dan Whitlock
/blogs
clicks About Us
I wanted to know who these people are and I have landed on a list of about a hundred and thirty blog posts.
AI agent
Research agent
/faqs
tries the page built for this question
How much can I save with residential solar panels? Savings vary based on your energy usage and system size. That is not a value I can return to my user.
Comparison shopper
Marcus Teale
/case-studies
counts what the list actually shows
The other five give me kilowatts and nothing else. Uniting SA, 80kW. And?
Ready to act
Helen Pritchard
/case-studies
looks for someone like her
Six case studies. A distribution centre, a transport company, a development project. Not one house.
Comparison shopper
Marcus Teale
/studies/uniting-sa
opens one of them
200 panels, estimated annual savings $20,800, estimated time to ROI four years. All of that was one click away and none of it was on the list.
AI agent
Research agent
/solar-maintenance-membership
finds the only prices on the site
AU$350 annually or AU$9.90 a week. Those are not the same amount — $9.90 a week is $514.80 a year. Flagging the contradiction.
Ready to act
Helen Pritchard
/solar-maintenance-membership
stumbles on the membership page
The maintenance plan has a price. The solar system I actually came here to buy does not.
Comparison shopper
Marcus Teale
/our-team
finds the team page
Forty-three people with their faces and their titles, seventeen of them apprentices. This is a real company with real staff.
Cold visitor
Dan Whitlock
/
looks for what it costs
Eight Get a free quote buttons on this page. I am not ready to give a stranger my phone number yet.
AI agent
Research agent
/contact
extracting fact 2 of 3 — a contact route
(08) 8318 1330 and admin@arenergy.com.au, plus two street addresses. Extractable. My user can ring them.
Comparison shopper
Marcus Teale
/contact
checks he can find a human
Adelaide HQ at 73a Graves St, Newton and a Perth office on St Georges Terrace. For a hundred-kilowatt decision I want to know where they are, and I do.
Ready to act
Helen Pritchard
/contact
opens the form
Name and email required, phone optional. That is a kinder form than most. I still do not know what I am asking for a quote on.
Cold visitor
Dan Whitlock
/faqs
opens the FAQ
How much can I save with residential solar panels? Savings vary based on your energy usage and system size. That is the page that exists to answer this.
Ready to act
Helen Pritchard
/contact
hesitates over the send button
Every road on this site ends at this same form. I will ask three companies and this will be one of them, but I am no further along than when I arrived.
AI agent
Research agent
/
reports back to its user
Accreditation, phone, email and two addresses retrieved with high confidence. No indicative price anywhere on the site, so I cannot rank this installer against the two that publish one.
Nav Detail binds here.
Five top-level items is a clean, restrained menu, and three of them go exactly where you would expect. The other two cost real money. “About Us” resolves to the blog index, so the forty-three-person team page — the single most persuasive asset on the site — is not a top-level destination at all. “System Care & Maintenance” goes to a page with no offer and no prices, while the membership page that has both sits outside the menu. The 20-question FAQ is not in the top-level nav either.
The sub-headline is the best sentence on the site and does the job the headline should be doing — it names the fear every solar buyer has and answers it. The headline above it could belong to any installer in the country. Below the fold the copy starts repeating itself: the residential and commercial pages carry the same body sentences under different headings, so a buyer reading both learns nothing the second time.
The strongest part of the site by a distance, and the reason the overall score holds up. Forty-three staff are named and photographed including the Managing Director, the electrical and SAA registration numbers are published so anyone can check them, and two offices carry real street addresses. Fourteen accreditation and manufacturer badges sit alongside a Solarquotes Platinum rating. The only real gap is reachability: the footer carries no phone number, email or address, so the contact details exist on exactly one page.
The commercial evidence is real and quantified — but it is filed where a buyer has to dig for it, and it is all commercial. The case-study index shows a dollar figure for one project out of six and kilowatts for the rest, while the detail pages behind them carry panel counts, annual savings and payback periods. A homeowner, who is the first item in the navigation, finds no one like themselves anywhere: no residential case study, and no named customer testimonial on any page reached in this run.
The form itself is one of the lightest this rubric has scored — two required fields, phone optional — and the post-submit promise is genuinely good. What breaks the path is everything before it: there is no price, range or “from” figure for a solar or battery system anywhere on the site, so every visitor is asked to start a sales conversation to learn the one thing they came for. The FAQ page, which exists to answer exactly this, answers it with “Savings vary”.
Scored 6.7 out of 10. The working, so it can be checked:
Final: 6.7 of 10.
Ranked by likely impact. Each finding quotes the page it came from.
Critical
Conversion path
There is no price, no range and no “from” figure for a solar or battery system anywhere on the site — not on the residential page, not on the commercial page, and not on the FAQ page that exists to answer the question. Every one of the four visitors went looking for a number. The buyer who was ready to purchase this month left to collect three quotes with nothing to compare, and the AI agent could not place AR Energy against the installers that do publish one.
Savings vary based on your energy usage and system size, but many homeowners see a significant reduction in their electricity bills.
View the pageWhat to do
Critical
Conversion path
The membership page is the only place on the site where anything is priced, and it quotes two figures for the same plan that are not the same amount. Base is “AU$350 annually or AU$9.90 a week” — but $9.90 a week is $514.80 a year, $164.80 more. Premium has the same problem: $550 annually against $11.90 a week, which is $618.80. If there is a surcharge for paying weekly, nothing on the page says so. On a site whose pitch is transparency, the only numbers a visitor can check are the ones that do not add up.
AU$350 annually or AU$9.90 a week
View the pageWhat to do
Serious
Navigation
The forty-three-person team page is the most persuasive thing on this site — real names, real faces, a named Managing Director, seventeen apprentices — and it is not a top-level destination. The “About Us” nav item resolves to the blog index instead. The cold visitor clicked it wanting to know who these people are and landed on a hundred and thirty blog posts.
About Us → https://www.arenergy.com.au/blogs
View the pageWhat to do
Serious
Proof depth
Residential is the first item in the navigation and every case study on the site is commercial — a distribution centre, a transport company, a development project. A homeowner looking for someone like themselves finds no one. The homepage heading says “Trusted by homeowners and businesses across South Australia”, and no named homeowner appears underneath it anywhere in this run.
Trusted by homeowners and businesses across South Australia
View the pageWhat to do
Worth fixing
Proof depth
The detail pages carry exactly what a commercial buyer needs — Uniting SA shows 200 panels, $20,800 estimated annual savings and a four-year ROI — but the index page shows only “80kW”. Five of the six entries give a system size and nothing else, so the numbers that would earn the click are hidden behind it.
Estimated Annual Savings: $20,800
View the pageWhat to do
Worth fixing
Navigation
There are two maintenance pages. The one in the navigation, /maintenance, describes the service and states no pricing. The one with the actual product — two membership tiers, inclusions and prices — sits at /solar-maintenance-membership and is not in the menu. The visitor who found it did so by accident.
System Care & Maintenance → https://www.arenergy.com.au/maintenance
View the pageWhat to do
Worth fixing
Message clarity
The residential and commercial pages share body sentences under headings that mean different things. “Cut your electricity bills significantly” and “Enhance your brand's sustainability credentials” are both followed by the identical sentence about storing excess energy. A buyer reading both pages learns nothing the second time, and each heading is left unsupported by the text beneath it.
Store excess energy for use during peak demand or outages, enhancing your energy independence.
View the pageWhat to do
Worth fixing
Trust & credibility
The phone number, email address and both office addresses exist on exactly one page. Every other page ends with registration numbers and a copyright line and no way to make contact except the quote form. A buyer who wants to ring and ask one question has to find the contact page first.
© 2026 Copyright. All Rights Reserved.
View the pageWhat to do
Worth fixing
Message clarity
The first screen of the site reads “Qualified electricians.Thousands of SA & WA homes and businesses powered.” The missing space after the full stop sits directly beneath a headline about reliability. It is thirty seconds of work and it is the kind of detail a careful buyer reads as a signal about the install.
Qualified electricians.Thousands of SA & WA homes and businesses powered. Over 60 years combined experience.
View the pageWhat to do
Worth checking
Machine readability
Open Graph and Twitter Card tags are present but no JSON-LD was visible on the homepage. For an installer whose entire market is “SA and WA”, there is no machine-stated address, phone, service area or opening hours — an assistant asked for installers near a suburb has to infer all of it from prose. This method reads rendered text rather than raw source, so confirm in the page source before acting.
Adelaide HQ: 73a Graves St, Newton SA 5074
View the pageWhat to do
Keep doing
Conversion path
The post-submit message names the number the call will come from. That is a small, specific, unusual thing to do, and it removes the one fear a homeowner has after handing over a phone number to a solar company — not knowing whether the unknown number ringing tomorrow is them or another lead reseller. Paired with a form that requires only a name and an email, this is the best-designed moment on the site.
Thanks — that's sent. We'll call you within one business day from (08) 8318 1330.
View the pageWhat to do
All findings with their tasks, the four visitor journeys and the methodology. We will email it within one business day.
Four simulated visitors — three human buyer types and one AI agent — were briefed from the site's own content and walked twelve URLs: the homepage, residential solar, commercial solar, the case-study index, one case-study detail page, the FAQ, the maintenance membership, the team page, the contact page, robots.txt, sitemap.xml and llms.txt, which returned a 404. This run was content-only via text fetch: no screenshots, no visual or mobile rendering check, and no performance measurement — for speed, run PageSpeed Insights separately. Two limits worth naming: JSON-LD could not be confirmed either way because the fetch reads rendered text rather than raw source, and robots.txt responded and declared the sitemap but its full directive list could not be read back, so no claim is made about specific Allow or Disallow lines.