Website audits are a critical component of ensuring that your website performs at its best.
They can help identify issues with your website's functionality, user journey, and design, allowing you to make the necessary changes to improve its performance.
During website audits, common mistakes that businesses make can impact the effectiveness of their website. In this blog post and podcast episode, we'll discuss some of the most common mistakes found during website audits and offer tips on how to fix them, leaving you with a perfect website!
Unclear brand identity
One of the first mistakes often found during website audits is an unclear brand identity.
Your website should reflect your brand clearly so that your customers can easily identify your presence online. Consistency across your business builds trust with the customer.
Websites may score low for brand identity if they're using colours, fonts, and images inconsistently over their social media, website, and physical assets such as business cards and flyers.
If you're unsure about your brand's colours and fonts, creating branding guidelines can help. These guidelines can record what colours you're using, what font you are using for your headings, which font you're using for your paragraphs, etc.
Inconsistent layout and design
Inconsistent layout and design can also impact the effectiveness of your website.
If each page of the website is inconsistent with its margins, header and footer, colours, and font, it can start to look a little bit spammy.
Each page should flow seamlessly into the next. So, it's crucial to ensure that your website is visually consistent throughout the whole site. It should be consistently on brand, relevant, and speak directly to your target audience.
Functionality
Functionality is an essential component of a successful website.
During a website audit, the focus is on how the processes and systems within the website work. It is checked if the forms are working correctly, if the online shop is easy to use, if there are any 404 (error) pages, and if the website serves its purpose.
If there are broken links or 404 pages on your website, it's essential to remove or remedy them as soon as possible.
After that, changes can be made to improve the site's overall impact, such as content additions, subtractions, and design alterations.
User journey
During a website audit, the user journey is examined to establish what the ideal outcome of the site is and whether it is currently working to subtly push people down a strategic path to their ideal destination for the business.
This could look like buying a product, booking a discovery call, signing up to be a member, or just getting in touch or signing up for a newsletter.
The website's performance on mobile devices is also checked because many people view websites on their mobile devices before ever seeing them on a desktop.
The website copy is also examined to determine if it needs to be adjusted to say 'we' or 'me' less, with a focus on writing for the customer.
The top priority is to ensure that the website is functioning correctly, while design changes are considered less important.
Who makes and implements the changes?
After a website audit is completed, a detailed report is provided outlining all the urgent issues and areas that require improvement.
For complex websites, changes can be passed on to your developer, or for simpler changes, a website designer will be able to action the tasks before re-running the website audit report to ensure that the changes were successful.
A website audit is a vital part of ensuring that your website is functioning at its best. By identifying common mistakes such as unclear brand identity, inconsistent layout and design, functionality issues, and problems with the user journey, you can make the necessary changes to improve your website's performance.
If you're unsure how to conduct a website audit or need help implementing changes, our team of web design experts are here to help! Book a discovery call with our design team, Wildhouse Design Studio, here for more information on how we can help you with your website audit.
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