Web Audit 101: A Guide to Assessing Your Company Website

As a business owner, are you contemplating partnering with an agency to increase your company’s marketing effort to boost your brand recognition and to generate new leads? 

Where do you start: contact an agency, hire a new associate to focus on just that, or take a go at it yourself? 

Either way, you need to start with evaluating your most important asset and the center of your marketing efforts – your website! A website was originally created in the early 2000’s as a place holder and extension of the Yellow Pages for customers to look you up.  Now, websites have morphed into a tool, and yours should be the hardest working sales tool that you have. It works 24/7 without complaining or charging overtime!

Here are a few tips and tricks that we consider to be website auditing 101 or 'the basics' to determine if your website meets today’s tough standards. 

Mobile

Is your site mobile responsive?  As of 2016, about 62% of Google searches were done via a mobile device.  Fast forward two years, and today that number approaches closer to 70% based on the advancements of technology and how we are always on the go. 

Responsively designed websites “respond” to the screen size of the device being used. In a sense, responsive design picks up where mobile-optimization leaves off. Responsive design reformats and restructures websites for any device—regardless of screen size.

If the site does not look good or load quickly on their phone, they are off to the next service provider that can answer their question.

Content Organization

Make sure your products and services are in plain view and clearly draw attention to make a quick impression on your lead.

• Can your lead find what they need on your site in fewer than 3 clicks?
• Is your information organized in a way that they can find your phone number or email address without clicking on ten different links?  
• Is your speed of response stated on your site? Will you return a call or email within 2 hours or 24 hours? You have to give the person a sense of when they should expect to hear from you, especially if it is an emergency situation. 

UI/UX (User Interface and Experience)

The easiest way to lose a lead is by making your site difficult to navigate. Define the experience that you want your target audience to have. 

• Is the visibility friendly and easy to use? Make sure all links work as they should and test them periodically. 
• If a tile, icon or image looks as if it is a gateway to other information, maybe you should have it link to it. Using a tool like Hotjar would be ideal to learn what experience customers are having on your site now and adjust where needed.

Visually Pleasing

Aesthetics make all the difference when keeping visitors on your site. According to Brain Rules, “We are incredible at remembering pictures. Hear a piece of information, and three days later you'll remember 10% of it. Add a picture and you'll remember 65%.”

If your visuals are lacking, your visitors aren’t likely to stay on the site or remember your brand.

Make sure the images are current and up-to-date reflecting your products and services so there is no confusion when they connect with you.

The color scheme should be consistent and in tune with your logo and brand guidelines. 

Backend Components of Your Website

Ultimately, you want your website to be found by potential leads; it doesn’t matter how pretty your site is – if the backend components are not in place, then it will not matter.

A good place to start is to try the free Website Grader provided by our partners at HubSpot.

• By typing in your website URL, it will analyze four main aspects of your site: Performance, Mobile, SEO (search engine optimization) and Security.
• You will receive a number ranging from 0-100, with 100 being the strongest possible score. Anything above 80 is considered good, but why not strive for the best? There are small things that you can do to improve your score as listed in the website grader feedback.   

These are just a few of the tips and tricks that you should use to evaluate the strength of your website.  If you would like to discuss your findings or have the experts here at Stratagon review it with you, click here to schedule time to connect with our Business Development Team.