Why do I need a website audit?

Building a website is often on the initial checklist for setting up a business...

Business idea - check

Company name - check

Bank account - check

Nice looking website - check

The trouble is, there can be so many things a business is thinking about when first starting up...including surviving and growing! And often in these initial phases, particularly in an industry where your clients come from lots of different places...networking, trade shows, word of mouth....that the website is often forgotten about in terms of whether it's actually doing its job, and bringing in potential interest and clients for your business.

In reality, the creation of a beautiful website to showcase your business is just the first stage of attracting prospective new clients and customers. With the amount of online competition, getting visitors’ eyes on the website and convincing them to take action, to give you a call, complete a contact form or purchase a product is a lot harder. It’s difficult to know where to start, or indeed, prioritise what needs doing first. The old chicken and egg question, do we need more traffic or do we need to better convert the traffic we're already getting? And do we actually know how many visitor eyes we're getting every day, where they're coming from, and what they're doing when they are on our website?

This is where a website audit can take some of the guesswork out of how to optimise your website and get those quick wins, and get your website working harder for your business.

A website audit can look at a number of key metrics that can guide your decision making for moving your website forward including:

User Experience – does your website have a professional look and feel and work on all devices?

Users these days are online savvy and will often decide within three seconds of viewing your site if they're going to stay. And more than 50% of your visitors are likely viewing on a mobile device, if the site isn't optimised for mobile, they won't be hanging around.

Conversion Optimisation – does your website have all the key factors to convert website visitors to clients or paying customers?

Does the visitor know what you want them to do when they visit the site? Maybe book a call, complete a form or buy a product. If it's not obvious to them, they will be tempted to look elsewhere. And do they trust you enough to complete that action, more than 70% of website visitors need some sort of social proof that you are trustworthy.

Online Visibility – is your website being indexed by Search Engines and is it optimised correctly to ensure it gets indexed?

Having a website doesn't mean that Google will automatically index your site, and even less will it put you at the top of the listing for your chosen keyword. More than 90% of online experiences start with a search engine.

Performance and Security – does your website load quickly on all devices and are there any issues which could affect the security of the site?

Remember that three seconds I mentioned earlier...imagine if your website is still loading while those three seconds are ticking away. A lot of users will lose patience, on average 40% will abandon your site if it doesn't load up in three seconds. Not everyone will be viewing on a desktop with superfast broadband either...they could be browsing on a mobile phone on a train with a very variable mobile connection.

Accessibility – is your site structured correctly for all visitors?

Your visitors come from far and wide, and some may have some sort of visual impairment, including colour blindness or worse, meaning they are viewing the site with a reader. Websites can be structured to ensure that all visitors can clearly understand what the website is about and how your product or service could help them.

There's even more we could look at, but the above comprehensive list contains the most important metrics for a lot of websites. And it can be a scary looking list, and you could end up sourcing a lot of different bits of software to check on all the metrics.

This is where a website audit can help and get someone else to do the heavy lifting for you. We've been testing out our free website audit service for a few weeks and the feedback so far has been fantastic, proving value for business owners and helping them plan to move the digital side of their business forward.

If this sounds of interest, click on the link below and fill in the form and we'll send you an audit of your website covering more than 40 key metrics absolutely free of charge.

https://visiospective.com/free-website-audit/