Why You Really Need a Website Audit

You know how important it is to have a website. It’s often how people discover you. It tells them everything about your business, including your story, values and services. It’s a place to show off your work and clients. It’s a vital tool to help you make money.

What is a website audit? A website audit is like a health check for your website. It lets you know how you can improve it, as well as highlighting what you’re doing well. When you look at your site every day, it’s easy to miss things that aren’t working or could be improved. An audit will identify what’s broken or missing, what’s taking too long to load, how the user experience could be improved and much more. Some of the issues the audit will identify are quick to fix, others are much more labour-intensive, but it’s all worth it to ensure your website is the best it can be.

Here are the most important ways you can benefit from an in-depth website audit.

Improve your SEO

How many times have you gone online just to look up that actor your friend mentioned, to research an item you’re thinking about buying or to check out where to go for dinner? You probably used a search engine to do this. Did you know that 93% of internet experiences begin with a search? 

This stark statistic is hard to ignore. With almost every internet user utilising search engines so much, you want to make sure your target audience sees you before your competition. It’s very important to rank near the top of the first page of results. How often do you scroll past the top few results, let alone go to page two?

If your website is full of missing pages, broken links and irrelevant text, search engines will consider it dysfunctional. You won’t see your website at the top of organic search results. As search engines want their users to find information as quickly as possible, they won’t recommend them a bad website if there are so many alternatives. Consider an audit to see what you can improve your search engine optimisation.

Improve your site speed

Long gone are the days of dial up internet when everyone had a chance to put the kettle on while waiting for a website to load. Nowadays, people are impatient - really impatient – and first impressions count. 57% of people leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. 

With this in mind, your website should load within 3 seconds. You can use Google’s Page Speed Insights to see how long it takes your website to fully materialise. There are a few steps you can take to help minimise your load time. 

• Check the size of your images. Large images can really take a toll on your page speed. It’s likely that they will appear on your website smaller than their full size and can be reduced. If they’re too big, resize them using a free tool like Resize Image. 

• Get your developer to minify your JavaScript and CSS files. This is done by removing all unnecessary characters and comments. 

• Reducing the number of redirects on your website will make it load faster. If you have too many, you’re more likely to confuse a browser and it’ll need to take some time to figure out where to go. 

• Cache the most recent version of your website using a plug in. This will keep make your browser remember the website so next time it visits, it won’t have to generate it from scratch all over again.

Improve your user experience

Don’t you hate it when you land on a website and can’t find what you’re looking for? You may know where every bit of information is on your own site but someone new to it may have trouble trying to find something. They may struggle with a busy navigation menu, countless overwhelming webpages, too many links, snail-pace load times, unintuitive design decisions or an absent search bar. These issues become even more frustrating on the compact screen of a mobile (is your website even mobile responsive?). 

A website set up with consideration for the user experience will translate into people spending more time on it. It will also make users more likely to come back and even recommend it to others. 

No matter which industry you’re in, every website should undergo auditing. For most organisation, they should be undertaken every year. However, if you have a large website, you’ll benefit hugely with an audit twice a year.

A full website audit will comprehensively analyse your site speed, technical issues, in and outbound links, backlinks, copy quality, images and more. You don’t need to pay for it either. At Primeria, we’re offering a free no-obligation website audit plus recommendations to get your website running as well as possible. If you’re interested, contact us now.