How Well is your Website Performing? Time to Find Out!

September 15th 2012 | By Steve Grant

Have you taken time recently to evaluate whether your website investment is bringing you the return you anticipated? Are you getting the visitors you expected? Are they converting into sales or enquiries?

A website audit can help you understand how well your website is performing and what, if any, improvements need to be made. An audit is often prepared by someone outside of the business so that they can remain objective and look at the site with a completely fresh perspective.

Typical things that are looked at on a basic site audit include:

• Navigation – is it clear and easy to use?
• Information available – are USPs and crucial facts clearly displayed?
• Links – do they all work?
• Graphics – do they download quickly and are they relevant and of good quality?
• Content – is it well written, salient, rich in keywords and free from errors?

These examples all relate to the onsite journey.  A good audit, however, will also examine other information relating to your website including:

• How visitors are arriving at your site, e.g., through organic or paid search or via third party links.
• Which pages visitors ‘land’ on, exit from and spend most time on.
• What information visitors are searching for and whether they can actually find it.
• What keywords are currently being focused on, and whether these are actually the right ones.

In addition to the usability of the site, website audits often look at all areas of online marketing which include social media, SEO, analytics and visibility. Visibility means examining how your website ranks in search engines as well as discovering how many pages your site indexes for.  Auditing your social media means not only analysing how well platforms like Facebook are working for you, but using various tools to find out what people think of your brand.

Audits are often performed when a company is planning a re-design or an update to a website. However, periodic web and online audits are invaluable at any time. A website audit can help you:

• Gain a better understanding of the user journey and help improve it
• Create new or enhanced online marketing strategies
• Discover the reasons behind low traffic or poor conversion rates
• Boost your return on investment

A good website SEO audit should encompass more than just an evaluation of the look of your website; it should examine other areas of your online marketing processes. A good website audit can help to assess which areas need improvement or modification and this in turn should lead to a greater performance online and a greater return on investment.

If you are looking for a thorough audit of your website and your online marketing processes, get in touch: it’s what we do.