Website Audit: What Is It and Why Is It Important?

A strong website is the first building block of a strong online reputation.

In fact, studies reveal that 75% of customers judge a company’s credibility based on its website.

Hence, it is important that you assess your website regularly to offer an enhanced user experience to your audience.

The best way to do so is to audit your website as it helps you to check the performance and health of your website. It helps in bridging the gaps that are affecting your end-user experience and conversion rate.

In this blog post, we will walk you through what a website audit is, its types, benefits, and parameters.

So, let’s dive in!

What Is a Website Audit?

A website audit is a thorough examination of a website to determine its smooth functioning, full-proof security, and seamless end-user experience. It helps –

• Evaluate the website on parameters that determine its visibility in Google’s search rankings
• Provide an in-depth analysis of your website
• Unravel issues hampering the website’s performance
• Suggest the areas in your website that need improvement
• Increase website traffic and user engagement

Now that you are aware of what a website audit is, let’s understand the types of website audit.

Types of Website Audit

Every website differs from another and has its own challenges that need to be addressed and resolved. So, there are different types of audits designed for specific areas of a website.

Some of the common types of website audit are:

• SEO Audit: SEO audit analyzes how your website is performing on search rankings. Keywords, link profiles, traffic behavior, goal conversions, metadata are some of the parameters on which a SEO audit is conducted.

• Content Audit: Often, content is reviewed in SEO audits. However, stand-alone content audits ensure your tone of voice resonates with your business. Furthermore, it also identifies the content that is driving conversions.

• Technical Audit: Keeping up with SEO algorithms and great quality content is not going to yield results if there is a technical issue. So, a technical audit examines broken internal links and redirect chains, inconsistent XML, and more.

• Design Audit: It ensures that your website’s design is visually appealing for an enhanced user experience. It examines whether the content, structure, colors on your website help provide a stellar user experience.

• Competition Website Audit: To make sure that your business is one of a kind, you need to be aware of what your competitors are up to. Analyzing your competitors’ websites from time to time can help you formulate strategies for better business performance.

Take a look at this blog post to learn the top 6 key areas to optimize your site for smoother workflows, better traffic, and higher engagement.

Now, let’s dig deeper and find out top 10 crucial parameters for a website audit.

10 Crucial Parameters For a Website Audit

While auditing, your website is examined on a variety of parameters. However, the 10 most crucial parameters for a website audit are:

• Website Speed

The speed of your website has an impact on how your users interact and take action on your website. In fact, studies reveal that the first 5 seconds of page-load time have the highest impact on conversion rates.

• Website Responsiveness

It is imperative for a website to adapt to various devices like phones, desktops, and tablets. So, one of the ways to test if your website is responsive to a smaller screen is to use the Mobile-Friendly testing tool offered by Google.

• User Interface

In a user-interface audit, your website’s UI, navigation, and overall layout of the website are checked.

• Security Measures

A web security audit analyses your website’s data security, integrity, and confidentiality. It includes inspecting security policies, security controls, and potential threats related to the IT assets of your website.

• Third-Party Plugins and Tools

A website audit helps in examining the performance of third-party plugins and tools that are running on the website. Furthermore, it also checks if your website needs any third-party plugins to upgrade its functionality.

• Platform Upgrade Assessment

Website hosting platforms and content management systems such as WordPress and Drupal regularly release new versions with added features. A website audit assesses a website for its platform version and evaluates the need for upgrade and scalability.

• Image Optimization

If your website has a lot of images, it can slow down its speed which might lead to poor SEO ranking. An audit on image optimization checks website images for size and compression, thumbnails, and alt attributes.

• Content Optimization

Auditing the content on your website includes assessing resources such as blogs, landing pages for relevant links, targeted keywords, and other SEO measures.

• Compliance with ADA/WCAG

Compliance with ADA/WCAG not only makes your website accessible to differently-abled users but also protects your business from lawsuits. A website audit checks if your website is built in compliance with ADA and WCAG norms.

• Database Evaluation

A data evaluation audit checks your website for database structure, indexing, and space utilization while identifying any orphaned data.

Benefits Of Website Auditing

By now, we know that website auditing is beneficial for your business as it evaluates your website for problems and suggests solutions to those problems.

Here are some more benefits of website auditing –

1. Enhanced User Experience


An audit helps fix issues with your website resulting in it loading faster, making it easy to navigate, and mobile-friendly. All of these factors combined enhance user experience which further increases conversions.

2. Search Engine Optimization


Optimizing your website and its content not only improves your ranking in SEO but also attracts traffic. A website audit will help you optimize your website for SERPs and users.

3. Increased Conversion Rates


Every marketing manager wishes to generate leads and increase conversions. A website audit helps you identify and bridge the gaps in your website resulting in a great user experience and hence increased conversion rates.

4. Improve the Quality of Content


Content plays a vital role in customer engagement and is also a boon for SEO ranking. A website audit will highlight the necessary measures to improve the quality of your content which further helps in engaging and converting potential customers.

5. Keeps Pace with Google Algorithm

Google algorithms are ever-changing and your website needs to keep pace with the change. A website audit at regular intervals will keep your website in good health and updated according to the latest algorithms. It will in turn increase your site’s visibility in SERPs.

Conclusion

Now that you know why you need a website audit for your business, you must be wondering how often should you get the audit done for your website.

Well, according to experts you should get your website audited annually or bi-annually, depending on how large your website is.

You must also get an audit done right after you release your website as it can check and fix any issues immediately.

Get Complimentary Audit for Complete Website Health Check