We help business owners to improve their website by doing a thorough audit of their current website and providing practical recommendations on how to improve it.
Business owners often face the problem of not fully understanding how their website works or is performing. We help them to overcome this problem by auditing their website and writing a jargon-free report in plain English that they can use to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to their website.
We also create a more technical audit with practical recommendations that can be used by us, or the businesses web team, to improve their website.
If the issues discovered are ingrained in the platform that the website is built on, we often offer to rebuild the website using Jamstack.
Here are the areas we typically examine in a Website Audit:
Speed
Websites need to be downloaded to a visitor's device to be viewed. This will happen very quickly, very slowly, or somewhere in between. The faster it loads, the better experience a visitor will have, and the more likely they are to stay on your website and contact you or make a purchase.
There are many factors that affect the speed of a website, such as the size of images, the amount of code on a given page, and the order in which that code is downloaded. We examine all of these factors and give practical recommendations on how to improve the speed of your website.
Some of the areas we examine are
- Optimised, minified code
- Optimised images in the WebP format
- Use of a Content Delivery Network
- Server performance
- Deferral of non-critical Javascript
- Lazy loading of images and facades for video embeds
A sample speed audit of our own website, showing a perfect score and super fast loading time.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a measure of how well your website ranks, or how high it shows up, in search engine results.
We audit the SEO of websites in two main areas:
- Technical SEO: how technical factors such as loading speed affect the SEO rank of your website.
- Content SEO: how the text content on your website affects its SEO rank.
Our audit provides practical recommendations on how to improve your SEO rank, from taking care of technical issues to improving the copy on your website in order to rank higher up for important keywords.
We also look for
- Broken links
- Pages that aren't being linked to (Orphan pages)
- Images that are missing descriptions (alt tags)
- Incorrect use of heading tags
- Ineffective meta titles and descriptions
A screenshot showing a backlink audit of our own website.
Security and Stability
Depending on the way your website is built, it might be at risk of getting hacked or crashing/going offline. The risk can be greatly reduced by taking certain actions. If these actions are available, or if there are major security issues with your website, we will discover them and list them in our audit.
Security and stability issues are most common with self-hosted platforms such as WordPress. A WordPress website for a business will typically have 20 or more ‘plugins’ - additional software that adds new features to the website, e.g. a booking calendar. Each of these plugins is potentially a security or stability issue for your website. We create a list of the ones that are a security threat and provide a system for ensuring all plugins are kept up to date.
We also look for
- Strong, unique passwords in use for all accounts
- Two-factor authentication in use for all accounts
- A system in place for updating software and scanning for vulnerabilities
- Use of a Web Application Firewall
- Security policies for login pages such as max login attempts and IP blacklisting
- ReCaptcha in use on all forms
User Experience
User Experience (UX) is a measure of how easy and enjoyable the experience of using your website is.
Questions we ask include
- How easy is it to find the information you want?
- How easy is it to quickly learn what the website is about, what the business offers and what their unique selling points are?
- Is the website easy to navigate on all devices, from desktops and laptops to tablets and phones?
- How easy is it to contact the business? Are contact links clickable?
The better the UX of your website, the more likely visitors are to stay on it and take an action like contacting you or making a purchase. Poor UX leads to visitors getting confused or agitated and quickly leaving your website.
User Experience is a key element of our Web Design & UX Service.
Accessibility:
Website accessibility is a measure of how easy your website is to use and navigate for people that have a disability or impairment.
It mostly involves ensuring your website is easy to use for people with visual impairments, such as those with poor eyesight or who are blind. But it also includes
- the elderly, who need websites to be simple to use.
- people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds who might be restricted to older devices, or who might have limited or cost-prohibitive internet access.
Our audit will pick up on any areas of your website where accessibility can be improved.
We look for issues such as
- Incorrect use of heading tags which will confuse people using screen readers
- Missing labels on input fields and links
- Missing alt tags on images which describe images to those with visual impairments
It’s all connected
All of these areas are important on their own, but they are also all connected, making them even more important to get right:
- If your website is hacked or crashes, it becomes inaccessible to everyone.
- Speed, UX, and accessibility all have an impact on SEO.
- Poor speed means a poor user experience.
- Poor user experience means poor accessibility for everyone.
Get your website audit today
Use the button below to contact us and arrange a free consultation call. We’ll ask about your business and website, and put together an audit package to suit your needs.
