Businesses that are looking to reach more consumers should focus on developing a successful web presence. A strong digital presence enables brands to tap into a large, targeted audience, creating opportunities for growth and revenue. Creating a corporate website to represent your brand is usually the start of building your online presence, but when the sales numbers are low, it’s a good idea to run a website audit.
No matter how much time, effort, and money you put into your website, it can quickly get outdated. It is essential to regularly review the performance of your website to ensure your audience has a good browsing experience. Identifying and addressing any problems early will ensure optimal website performance and offer a pleasurable user experience.
The most effective way to get a complete and detailed website analysis is to conduct a website audit to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of your site. This will help bridge the gaps affecting end-user experience and improve conversion rates.
What is a Website Audit?
A website audit is a thorough examination of a website’s effectiveness. Website audits analyze different components of your site and provide insight into what works well and what needs improvement. Once a website audit is completed, businesses can identify and address issues that negatively impact the user experience and hinder business growth and success.
Types of Website Audits
Different types of audits are designed to analyze specific areas of a website. Here are some of the most common types of website audits.
Technical Audit
A technical website audit includes evaluating all the ways that impact how smoothly a website runs. Some issues to look at in a technical audit include search engine crawl errors, mobile friendliness, broken images, links, and site and page load times.
SEO Audit
An SEO site audit analyzes your website’s search ranking performance. Some assessment categories include keywords, link profiles, traffic behavior, metadata, and goal conversions.
Content Audit
This is often a subgroup of SEO audits. However, stand-alone content audits provide feedback about what type of content resonates with your audience and drives conversions.
Design Audit
Design audits ensure the website’s design is visually appealing for an enhanced user experience. Elements reviewed in a design audit include content presentation and structure, formatting, colors, etc.
Competitor Audit
Competitor audits give your business an advantage by identifying gaps in your competition’s product or service offerings. By understanding your competitor’s techniques, you can formulate strategies for better business performance.
The Significance of a Website Audit
Auditing a website offers a complete picture of the current effectiveness of your site. A detailed analysis will highlight issues hurting your site’s conversion rates and negatively impacting its overall performance.
Successful businesses constantly evaluate and test improvements to track and measure their effectiveness. After identifying and implementing website improvements, your brand will ultimately benefit from more traffic, better user engagement, and higher conversion rates.
5 Reasons to Audit Your Website
1. Improve SEO and Accessibility
Optimizing your website ensures that all your content and features are accessible to users and search engines. Your website is more likely to be discovered by search engines if it is correctly optimized for search engines.
Some items that impact a website’s accessibility include:
- Useless Content
- Broken Images
- Headers
- Mobile Responsiveness
- URL Structures
- Indexability
- Duplicate Content
- Broken Links
2. Simplify Navigation
A poorly designed website navigation system creates a poor user experience and ultimately drives visitors away. Therefore, you can improve user experience by making your website easy to navigate. A positive user experience results in reduced bounce rates, increased conversion rates, and enhanced engagement metrics.
Some items that can impact a user experience include:
- Cluttered Navigation Bar
- Overlinking
- Homepage Accessibility
- Information Overload
- Poor Search Function
- Hard to Find Contact Information
- Distracting Pop-Ups
3. Improve Loading Speed
A website’s loading speed is a vital aspect of your conversion metric. If your website takes longer than five seconds to load, you’ll experience a higher bounce rate or cart abandonment rate. Additionally, sites that take longer to load rank lower on search engine result pages.
Issues that impact loading speeds can include:
- Image and file size
- Amount of Redirects
- Amount of Plugins
- Poorly written code
- Bad server/hosting configurations
4. Ensure a Mobile-friendly Experience
Your website must be optimized to give mobile users a quick and seamless experience, as most consumers complete purchases using mobile devices. A smooth mobile experience improves user experience and increases conversion rates. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you may miss out on many valuable business opportunities.
5. Increase Security and Privacy
A significant responsibility of maintaining a strong brand is keeping your customer information safe. A website audit analyzes your site’s data security, integrity, and confidentiality. In addition, evaluating security policies, controls, and potential IT threats can help ensure your website is secure.
Conducting a Website Audit
Regular, scheduled audits give you a baseline for future improvements and allow you to catch and rectify potentially significant issues down the line. Furthermore, the following are recommended timelines for auditing maintenance.
- Small Websites – annual
- Large Websites – bi-annual
- New Websites – immediately after a site goes live
Evaluating the Performance of Your Website
Website audits are essential in evaluating a website’s efficiency and visibility. By identifying user pain points, inconsistencies, and areas for improvement, website audits present businesses with an exceptional opportunity for online improvement and growth.
Website audits need professional expert guidance and take time to complete effectively. Our team at ContentFirst Marketing has the expertise and experience to provide comprehensive and reliable website audits. Our website audits are in-depth and give you a clear direction on what to optimize for immediate results.
Get a Free Website Audit
ContentFirst Marketing is a digital marketing agency with a track record of success assisting companies in building and optimizing high-conversion websites. We operate a collaborative model, and our digital website audit specialists will work closely with you to recommend solutions that align with your core sales objectives and help you achieve sustainable business growth.
Get your free website audit today.
