So you've decided to invest in a website audit?
Having your website audited by an expert is the perfect place to start when you want to make improvements to your website's appearance and performance.
You can learn more about what a website audit is, and what we look for here.
Here's a list of the key issues we find when auditing a website:
Unclear brand identity
Your website needs to reflect your brand clearly so that customers can easily identify your presence online. Consistency across your business builds trust with the customer.
Generally, a website that scores low for brand identity is using colours, fonts and images inconsistently over their social media, website, and physical assets (business cards, etc.).
In this scenario, we would recommend changing these visual elements of your website to be more aligned with the rest of your business branding. Potential clients will then be able to easily recognise your brand when they first land on your website.
Complicated processes
A website needs to have smooth, easy-to-follow navigation that creates paths for the customer to follow towards an end result, such as making a purchase or booking a call.
Visitors should be able to land on your website and identify the area they are seeking, or follow the breadcrumbs you leave strategically throughout the website to find what they are looking for. This means having clear headings, menu options and call-to-action buttons across the site.
A website that doesn't have these clear paths or processes will be converting poorly, with few people reaching out to contact you or making a purchase. If this is the case, simply identifying and implementing your ideal customer journey (I.e. what you want your customer to do when they reach your website) will make a huge difference.
Inconsistent page design and layout
Each page on your website needs to be structured consistently to show continuity. This includes consistent margins, header/footer, colours/fonts, and headings. Each page should flow seamlessly into the next.
This is usually a quick fix. Ensuring that your page designs are consistent provides a more visually appealing experience for your clients and customers.
Not enough value placed on your position in the market
This is one that we see frequently, but is easily overlooked! Often we find that a company has a great aspect or selling point to their brand that isn’t highlighted enough on their website.
If you have a cool feature that sets you apart from the competition, shout about it! This can be woven through your website copy, blog posts, images, and more. Not only does this further build trust with your audience, but also helps with SEO (search engine optimisation).
Too much or too little text on each page
Each page of your website should have at least 250 words to be optimised for SEO. Any less than this and search engines are less likely to show your website in search results.
There's a delicate balance to strike with the text elements on your website. You want enough text to keep the user engaged without overwhelming them.
To strike this balance we recommend creating pages with a combination of text, image and video content.
Overall website health is poor
This covers things like missing H1 heading text tags, links, descriptions, and alt text for images. It also looks at page loading speeds, number of backlinks, crawling issues, and CSS issues that require addressing by a Website Developer or SEO specialist.
To explain this more deeply, we need to cover the difference between UI design (user interface) and UX design (user experience). Most website audits are carried out by UX designers, which deal mainly with the user's overall experience with a brand, product or service.
While UX designers have the tools to run search engine ranking diagnostics to highlight areas of your site that aren't performing well, these processes are generally outsourced to a UI designer, who deals with the backend design of the website.
The website is all about you, and not about your website visitor.
Your website copy needs to clearly let the visitor know that they’re in the right place, that they’re understood, and that you have the perfect solution to their problem.
If your website copy has a lot of ‘I, we, me’ in it, then your visitor is going to be less inclined to get in touch with you. The harsh reality is that they don’t care about you, they care about themselves! They have a problem and want to know if you have the right solution to their problem.
To fix this, simply take a look at your website copy and switch it around to ‘you’ statements, not ‘we’ statements!
There you have it - when auditing a website, we’re looking for ways to enhance your website visually which will help with the optimisation of the site itself.
Are you ready to have your website audited by our creative team, Wildhouse Design Studio?
