Spring Clean Your Website with a Web Audit
By Steve Grant | February 19th 2013
By Steve Grant We often associate spring cleaning with our house, our office or perhaps even the car. So why not take the opportunity at this time of year to spring clean your website too courtesy of a professional website audit?
Why Conduct a Website Audit?
If you want to increase your website visitor to customer conversion rate, to enhance revenue or boost sales, then a website audit could really help by getting to the bottom of why your success rate isn’t what it could be, and making suggestions for improvements that could make all the difference.
If your traffic and level of sales have been stagnant for a while despite increasing your marketing efforts, then it is time to get a website audit. If your website traffic has increased due to other marketing efforts, but your conversion rate remains low, then it is essential to have a professional website audit to analyse why visitors might not be buying or making an enquiry.
The Benefit of Using a Professional Expert to Conduct Your Web Audit
Website audits are best conducted by a team of professionals that are not based within your organisation and are not affiliated to any of your existing web or marketing providers.
This will allow an unbiased, objective approach. Website audit professionals will review your website from the customer perspective and report back on their experience as a visitor. They’ll then make suggestions as to why sales levels may not be as high as expected and for the reasons behind a low conversation rate. Expert advice on action to take to rectify these issues will also be provided.
What does a Website Audit Involve?
- Competitor Analysis. Your website auditor will look at how your website compares to those of your competitors and how it could be improved to match up to and outperform them.
- Testing Website Usability and Interface Design. An audit will look at the usability of your website. How easy is it to navigate? Are there clear signposts to point visitors in the right direction? Are there strong calls to action to compel contact or sales?
- Search engine optimisation. A website audit will look at how well your site is optimised for search engine success. This will involve examining the keywords that your website currently ranks for and whether these are the right keywords to be aiming for.
- Website Content Review. A review of the content on the pages of your website will be undertaken. Are there clear messages? Are the brand values well communicated? Does the content effectively call visitors to action? Is it well written and free from errors that could be making your business appear unprofessional and a turn off for potential customers? And does the content contain the right keywords at the right density?
- Link Analysis. A website audit will look at the number of inbound links pointing to your website and how effective they are. Good quality inbound links are a vital SEO tool.
- Analytics Review. A review of your website’s analytics will demonstrate any problem hotspots, such as pages that present high bounce rates. Various trends will also be examined and conclusions drawn in order to formulate a suggested action plan for improvement.
A website audit, when conducted by external professional experts, can be an incredibly valuable and insightful way to find out why your website may not be performing or to increase your conversion ratio and revenue. An audit will provide you with a list of clear recommendations for you to take action that you may never have considered before.
If you’re interested in spring cleaning your website and gaining an insight into how you can improve your website ranking, conversion rate, your sales and your website’s general performance, visit our website audit page or contact us to find out more.