Your website is the first impression you give potential customers and the foundation of all your marketing and sales efforts, so it’s crucial your site is up to date, optimized and functional 24/7.

If you’ve experienced any issues with your website, are concerned it’s not 100% functional, or just haven’t evaluated it in a while, the first thing you should do is complete a full website audit to identify any potential issues. 

While many technical aspects of a website audit can initially appear complicated, three essential components are most important to consider: User Experience (UX), Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO).

These three key elements, and the many behind-the-scenes technical pieces that affect them, all work together to ensure your site is functional, successful and usable.

1. UX | How user-friendly is your site?

If your website doesn’t offer a good experience for your users, they may have difficulty finding important information, won’t engage well with your content, and could gravitate toward your competitors’ more user-centric sites.

Auditing your site for UX ensures users can navigate your site easily and intuitively, and your efforts to drive traffic and conversions won’t be hindered. In addition to your overall design, layout and responsiveness, two of the most important aspects of UX to analyze are content and accessibility.

Content

When reviewing content during a website audit, you should pay close attention to its context, the value it offers users, and site placement. Two important questions to ask when auditing website content are:

• Does the site include engaging content, like a blog and monthly events calendar?
• What types of new content, such as a photo gallery, videos, interactive floor plans, calculators, testimonials, etc., would be beneficial?

Accessibility

Auditing your website accessibility ensures users with disabilities, including those with age-related impairments, can access your information. An accessible website with good user experience provides information through a variety of tactics and multisensory channels and includes alternative text for images.

2. SEO | How will (the right) users find your site?

Good SEO increases both the quantity and quality of your website traffic, meaning you’ll attract the right visitors who will be the most valuable to you and interested in your services, and you will get more visits from these ideal customers.

SEO traffic is also unpaid or “organic” (53% of all website traffic comes from organic search), so users are finding your website through a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) like Google, Bing or Yahoo when you rank on search results and not through paid advertising.

In addition to content, some important aspects of SEO a quality website audit will analyze include:

• Title Tags — Descriptive headlines that tell users and search engines the title of a given page and accurately describe the page’s content
• Meta Descriptions — Short snippets of content that influence users to click into the page from a search result

• Header Tags — Headlines appearing on website pages that range from H1 (most important) to H6 (least important)

• Alt Text —Alternative Text describing an image on a page that provides context to images for search engines and helps visually impaired users

3. CRO | What will the right users do on your site?

Auditing the CRO of your website evaluates how well you are using conversion elements to encourage your visitors to take specific actions. What points of conversion are you displaying, and how do they allow users to convert?

You can use different conversion elements depending on the goals of your site, such as:

• Forms
• Phone numbers
• Subscriptions
• Event registration (virtual or in person)

Free Website Audit

To receive an audit of your own website for free, contact us here!