Look, you launched a website with a great design, focused on user experience, intuitive navigation, and superintelligence in the support chat, but there are still no sales. Or there aren’t as many sales as you’d expect. Common situation? Think of your site as a complex machine that needs regular website maintenance and website update to work the best.
To understand why users are leaving, not making purchases, you need to conduct a website audit – this means analyzing the site’s effectiveness, usability, and logic. We will tell you how and why you need to work on this.
A website audit is carried out in several key blocks – technical audit, SEO, UI / UX, competitive, branding communication audit, etc.
You can analyze everything: advertising banners, the number of clicks before taking action, the format of the pictures on the site to optimize the page load speed.
In general, a website audit is a complete analysis of the factors that affect a website’s visibility to search engines and its ease of use for users. But a full site audit is not always needed. Below are some of the most common types of audits and our team’s advice on when they might be required. Let’s take a closer look.
Content and SEO audit
This type of content can reveal how well your site’s content is performing. It can detect any issues with broken links, alt tags, meta descriptions, or duplicate content. All of these issues can confuse search engines and hurt your rankings. For that reason, you must conduct a content and SEO audit to create unique and engaging content that will attract your visitors.
Evaluation of Efficiency
The most important question is whether the site fulfills the main tasks and functions?
We use the well-known Google Analytics; we look at conversion rates and behavioral factors. If these indicators are low, the site has an unsuccessful structure and should be changed. If advertising materials are used, we also look at them: is there an imbalance “expectation – reality” when a person moves from advertising to the site.
Usability and Interface (UI / UX) Audit
Here we need to evaluate what you want to get from the user – an application, a purchase, a subscription? The easier it is for a user to register/buy/subscribe, the better. The entire path should be within 1-3 steps.
Site Health Audit
A site health audit assesses the architecture and usability of a website. It also identifies potential gaps in content structure, technical gaps, and website speed. One of the indicators of why people leave a site is the speed of its loading and operation. If the download takes more than 2-3 seconds, there is a risk that the user will not wait. Additionally, it discovers new opportunities for key performance indicators (KPIs).
There are two more essential points: Cross-browser compatibility and adaptability to the type of device. In the era of mobile-first, the site must open correctly on a mobile phone or tablet, otherwise you will lose your users.
Competitor Site Audit
Knowing your competitors is crucial. You’ll be able to understand what their competitive advantages are, improve your processes, and navigate challenges in your market. By auditing your competitor’s site, you’ll discover insights and opportunities to implement into your digital marketing strategy.
Social Media Presence Audit
Wouldn’t you like to see more visitors interacting with your site? An active social media presence is essential to website traffic. A relevant and targeted social media strategy drives more qualified leads. It also increases visibility and improves engagement—a social media audit analyzes which content channels perform best. Content channels include tools like blogs, videos, infographics, and social media.
Who Needs Website Audit
By the way, if you are thinking of a website redesign, an audit before the development of a new version is also needed – this way, you will better understand what required revision or maybe even change your mind. The point is that clients get used to the site architecture – sometimes, it’s better not to change the architecture for no good reason.
Small or big, every business needs a website audit. If your company has a website, then you should consider doing it every 3 months. Remember that a website audit can spot problems, and it can increase your site conversion rate. It doesn’t matter how many customers you get on your website every month. Overall a good site audit works to your advantage.
Well, I hope we helped you with the theory. We can help in practice too. If you need a website audit, don’t hesitate – send us an email to hello@sweetcode.pro.
