4 Reasons a Website Audit is Critical
In the age of constant disruption and evolution, it's important to assess your website on a regular basis. Audit the content, check that your website is up-to-date with all the latest versions, and make sure it’s optimized for performance and speed.
A recent study by Google found that 53% of mobile users will abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load.
While we don't want you focusing too much on time-on-site or bounce rate metrics (the top 2 most often used in this context), it's still important to consider how you can improve your website experience for your customers. An audit will help you determine whether or not there are any hiccups in their journey through your site, so they can find exactly what they need while also enjoying an optimized experience.
But why should you invest resources into auditing your website? We'll give you 4 reasons:
1. Performance and speed may be affecting your website traffic.
Let's face it: slow websites can be frustrating for users and Google. Slow websites are frustrating for visitors who have to wait for content to load, and they're also a bad experience for the search engine that wants to show up on the first page of results. If your site takes too long to load on mobile devices or if it doesn't work well with JavaScript disabled, then you could be missing out on a lot of potential traffic from Google.
Google has been moving towards mobile-first indexing since 2015, which means that if your site isn't mobile ready or if it loads slowly on smartphones and tablets, then you're not going to get any benefit from rankings in mobile searches—and that's pretty important given how many people are using their phones these days!
2. Optimizing your customer journey helps your audience navigate your website.
The customer journey is the path a customer takes when interacting with your business. It's what happens in between the awareness phase and the conversion phase, which are usually the only two phases marketers talk about. A customer journey map is a visual representation of this process. It shows where you stand now and how you can improve your website to make it more effective at helping customers take this journey.
A customer journey map is a powerful tool because it gives you insight into how people interact with your website, so that you can optimize it based on real data rather than assumptions or guesses (or worse yet, myths). You'll be able to see exactly where people drop off at each point during their interaction with your brand--and why they dropped off there--which means that instead of having an abstract idea about what needs improvement, now all those improvements have concrete targets to aim for.
3. Optimizing your SEO means driving more people to your website.
If you're looking to build your online presence, SEO is one of the best ways to do it. To attract more people to your website, you need to create content that people want and then publish it on a regular basis.
However, manually updating your content can be time-consuming and difficult when there are so many other areas of running a business that require attention. That's why we recommend using our Website Audit Checklist to carry you through the process.
4. Improve the quality of your content.
Content is the most important element on your website. As such, it's crucial that you take the time to make sure it is engaging and relevant to your audience. It should be written for people and not search engines, using keywords only when they're appropriate and helpful. Too many businesses are focused on getting their content indexed by Google rather than ensuring readers can find what they're searching for—or worse yet, they just slap any old text onto the page without giving it much thought at all!
While this may seem counterintuitive at first glance (after all, if no one reads my stuff then why bother?), remember that SEO is about converting visitors into customers or leads—and nothing happens until someone visits your site in the first place! You want people coming back again and again so they'll remember who you are when they need help from you down the road.
We hope that this article has given you a clearer understanding of the importance of auditing your website. It’s easy for business owners to get caught up in other areas, but it’s critical to take some time and evaluate the state of your website. If you don’t have time or are unsure how to do that yourself, contact us! We can help audit your current website and provide suggestions on how to best improve it.