Website Audit Improves User Experience & Online Sales

A website audit report thoroughly checks your website, finds technical and design errors, and suggests website improvements. You want to be certain that it’s SEO-friendly and gives visitors and future customers a great user experience. Improving SEO means that your website will be more visible to your future customers when they search for the products and services that you offer. Better user experience can improve your reputation management efforts by helping your customers easily find the info they were looking for. No more bad comments about your website being hard to navigate.

You want them to find it faster and easier than your competitors’ websites. An excellent user experience (UX) means potential customers will return to your website and share it with their friends and family. A better website means you will convert more online visitors into customers.

Keep in mind, you can’t fix things if you don’t know what needs fixing. Start with a website audit. The surgery doesn’t come before the checkup, right? Find what you need to change, then change it.

Check Possible Technical Errors

A study by Forrester and Akamai found that 79% of online shoppers who aren’t satisfied with a website visit are less likely to buy from that site again. Another study, by Jupiter Research and Akamai, found that 28% of dissatisfied online shoppers blame their dissatisfaction on error messages. These errors include pages not linking to the correct link.

Are you page titles, keywords, and meta descriptions correct, relevant, and well-researched? 56% of small and medium-sized business (SMB) websites do not even use meta descriptions according to a SMB DigitalScape report and BIA Kelsey. Turn this problem into an oppurtunity. Fix the errors on your website today, and you’ll be far ahead of most of your competition.

49% of websites don’t even comply with basic usability principles, as stated by a recent Forrester report. No wonder 50% of online sales are lost because visitors can’t find the content that they are looking for. According to Keynote, 44% of mobile users encounter navigation problems. So, make sure your website audit includes navigation and usability checks for all devices, including smartphones and tablets. A majority of today’s website traffics is on phones and tablets, so you want your website to be mobile-friendly.

Also according to Jupiter Research and Akamai, about 33% online shoppers are dissatisfied with a retail website that loads slow.

Make it Easy for Prospects to Contact You

A website audit report checks your pages for your company’s contact information to make sure that it’s visible to your visitors. Make sure your potential customers know how to contact you! Make it easy for them to do business with you. The SMB DigitalScape report found that 60% of SMB websites are missing either a toll-free or local telephone number on the home page. Some 65.7% had no form-fill option to allow consumers to request information while 74.7% were missing an email contact link on the home page. Also, 91.2% of SMB websites don’t have a Facebook widget (e.g., “like” button), and 94.6% lack a Twitter widget (e.g., “follow” button).

Increase Customer Phone & Email Contacts

Would you like for more people to choose your business? Does your website have contact information displayed strategically to be seen by visitors? According to the SMB DigitalScape report, a staggering 60% of small business websites do not have a phone number on the home page (and you’re wondering why the phone is quiet). A website audit will check all your pages for contact info. The report will recommend exactly where you need to put the information so prospects can immediately spot it and contact you about your products and services using phone or email.

How does a website audit affect your Bottom Line?

When business owners think about a website audit report, they may think it’s just geeky, technical stuff. But, a comprehensive web audit report is more than just a routine site “checkup.” The best audits analyze your current online marketing strategy, and how your website can work better in that strategy. An audit therefore, also brings marketing benefits for your business.

If your website was built by an amateur, then it may have underlying code errors. A lot of these code errors may not be visible to the untrained eye. Coding errors may even prevent your website from being found in a Google search. No wonder, 26.4% can’t be found in an online search, according to the SMB DigitalScape report. Some 56% don’t even have on-page keyword information, which is crucial for search engines to discover and rank your web pages. If Google can’t find your pages, then they can’t rank your pages. If your website pages aren’t ranked, then when people search online for you they simply won’t find you. But, they may find your competitors.

A good audit report also tells you where you need effective content for your website. 68% of consumers spend time reading content from a brand that interests them according to a research by the Content Marketing Association. A report by the Custom Content Council said that 78% believe that companies who provide custom content are interested in building good relationships with consumers.

60 percent of SMB owners say that their website is their most important digital marketing asset. So, it’s normal to think that they are also investing heavily on website troubleshooting, maintenance, and optimization… but most of them don’t do it.

When was the last time your website underwent a thorough audit report? Six months ago? Last year? If you answered “never,” you’re part of the majority of SMB owners who may be in trouble. Because really, terrible Google rankings and poor user experience are just the tip of the iceberg. Discover how you can detect your website’s major issues today, before it’s too late.

UserWorthyMEDIA.com does website audits for the Lubbock, Texas and Abilene, Texas area. And, the rest of the world uses the same internet that we have in West Texas, so we can help worldwide also.

See the infographic below for a visual representation of what is discovered during a website audit.