Website Audit Checklist (2023)- with Free Notion Template
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Why is a Website Audit Important?
Much like your car needs to be maintained and serviced periodically, the health of your website can deteriorate too.
And I’m glad you’ve recognized that before it’s too late! It’s important that you identify and rectify problems with your website early – so you can save yourself from expensive fixes down the line and also ensure optimal performance.
Website audits in general follow a structured guideline that we hope to share in this document. We have also included additional resources for you to read up on, should you find any of these steps unclear.
Components of a Website Audit
👨💻 User Experience
User experience and design is a strategic process of enhancing a website by improving the visual elements, usability, accessibility, and interactions to ensure the site is user friendly and intuitive to use.
Professional Website Design
Your website is usually the first thing a customer sees when they learn about your business. It’s important to make sure that it looks professional, is simple and intuitive to use.
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Professional Digital Branding
Your brand is one of the most important factors in determining your website’s success. Good online branding includes a logo, colour scheme, images and other visual elements, as well as a cohesive website design.
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Relevant Headlines & Page Copy
Your headline should describe your product, your page copy should explain how your product/service solves your customers’ problems, and your call to action should attract visitors to purchase.
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User-Friendly Navigation
Create a navigation menu that is simplified in that, it helps your website visitors intuitively know where they are on their site, where they can go, and how to get back again.
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Custom 404 Page
When people encounter a generic 404 Page Not Found error, they’re likely to get frustrated and click away from your site. Installing a custom 404 page keeps visitors on your site and helps them find what they’re looking for.
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Mobile Friendly
Make sure your website is responsive to mobile devices. More visitors are likely to visit your website through a mobile device for the first time.
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Relevant use of Images & Video
High-quality, relevant images, and video is the most important part of your website in that: they are the best way to impress visitors on your website, improve your in search engine positions, and help build your brand.
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🔍 SEO / Online Visibility
SEO gives you an edge over your competition by bringing more prospects and customers straight to your website from searches they make on search engines like Google.
FB Pixel
It’s a code Facebook provides that goes on your site. This allows you to track and retarget ads on FB to those who have visited your site. It also tracks various actions that can be used for optimizing your FB ads.
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Local Map Pack Listing
If you are a local business, you want your businesses to show in the Local 3-Pack at the top of the results page above the organic listings. This leads to increased visibility, traffic, and revenue.
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AMP Enabled
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an initiative created to help increase usability and engagement by delivering fast, high-performing content from the web onto mobile devices.
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WWW Resolve
Search engines consider example.com and www.example.com to be different. Unless you use a WWW Resolve, you could be penalized for duplicate content.
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Google Analytics
From visitor count, to popular pages, to traffic sources, you can gather data on visitors that visit your website by integrating your website with Google Analytics.
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Google Business Profile (GBP)
Google Business Profile gets you in front of customers who are looking to buy. You’ll stand out, whether people are looking for you on Google Search or Maps.
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Blog / Resource Centre
An effective blog can improve your search engine position, drive more traffic to your website, position you as an industry leader and help generate more leads and customers.
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Sufficient Page Content
Search engines seek pages that contain relevant and unique content that best serves a searcher’s intent. Longer content has been shown to rank higher in Google’s search results.
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Keyword Ranking on Page #1
When your site shows on the first page of the search engines, it puts your business in front of prospective customers. This leads to increased visibility, traffic, and revenue.
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Accessible to Search Engines
To rank in search results, search engines have to be able to access your site—or “crawl” it— to find out what information is on it. Describing that information is called “indexing.”
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Keyword Used in Page Title
Using a keyword in your title helps search engines associate your page with a topic. Higher search engine positions are strongly correlated to keyword use here.
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Use of Keywords in H1 Tags
H1 tags can help improve your site’s search engine ranking. They are also a best practice for accessibility and help potential visitors determine your page’s content.
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Meta Title & Descriptions
This search-engine-facing text can influence a page’s position in search results. On the results page, it also provides context to searchers about your page’s topic and focus.
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Meta Description Length
Search engines use this description to describe your page. Its maximum length is usually 160 characters. A good description can convince more searchers to click on your link.
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Broken Links
Having broken links on your website can seriously impact your rankings on search results. Fixing them is important if you want to improve your online visibility as contributes positively towards Google algorithms.
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Keywords in the Meta Description
Make sure to use relevant keywords in your meta description for your website pages. This can help increase your page’s prominence and visibility when users search for a specific keyword and will likely lead to more website clicks.
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Alt Attribute
This piece of website code is used to tell visually impaired people what an image is about. It can also help search engines understand why you’re using an image.
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Keywords in Image Alt Attribute
Using keywords in the alt attribute of an image can boost search rankings slightly—but it can also add value for sight-impaired users.
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Open Graph
Open graph tags when used on your website allow you to control how and what content shows up when a link from your site is shared on Social Media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
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Schema Markup
Schema markup code helps search engines return more informative results about your business to users. Used effectively, it can boost your website rankings.
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🔐 Performance & Security
Securing your website builds trust. Slow-loading pages are a killer! Make your pages faster. Increasing your page time can improve your visitor experience and increase your conversion rates.
HTTPS
Security technology called an SSL certificate protects websites from attacks—and gives visitors confidence that your site is authentic and trustworthy.
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Google Page Speed
Every second counts when a visitor is waiting for your landing page to load. Slow page speeds lead to poor user experience. Stats show that your conversions drop for every second longer your visitor has to wait.
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CAPTCHA
A system for identifying if humans or bots are inputting info on your website forms. The benefit of installing CAPTCHA is that you’ll reduce unwanted actions by bots from spam emails to injection attacks on your forms.
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Content Delivery Network (CDN)
CDN is designed to make your webpage load faster. It does this by caching information from your website. Faster load times result in an improved user experience and better SEO.
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📊 Conversion Optimisation
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action — be that filling out a form, becoming customers, or otherwise.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Your USP clearly describes how your product or service solves your customer’s needs or desires better than the competition. Communicate that message clearly to your visitors.
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Relevant Trust Factors
Trust factors — such as awards, affiliations, certifications, case studies, and guarantees — help position your business as knowledgeable experts who can be relied on. Showcase them on your website lavishly.
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Testimonials / Reviews
Include reviews and testimonials that help convince people to buy, because they are honest recommendations from people your visitors trust the most—other customers.
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Primary Call To Action (CTA)
A call-to-action asks visitors to take a specific action on your site—buy, contact you, learn more, and so on. Every site needs at least one effective CTA in a noticeable place.
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Secondary Call To Action
Secondary CTAs help you engage visitors who are not interested in your primary CTA, or who may need additional information before taking the desired action.
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Noticeable Phone Number
To make it easy for web visitors to contact you, it’s a good idea to have your phone number in a prominent place on your website, ideally in the top right corner or in the mobile header.
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Lead Capture Forms
An intuitive form will help you capture high-quality lead information or, at the very least, an email address from visitors who aren’t interested in calling you.
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Online Chat Functionality
A good chat script should be like a sales conversation. It can help capture customers by answering their questions more quicker. It can also drive more leads by reaching out to prospective customers before they leave.
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Social Media Share Buttons
Make your content easily shareable across different social media platforms with just one click. You’ll improve your branding and increase your traffic and exposure.
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Newsletter Signup
You’d want to install an opt-in form that encourages visitors to join your email list. This gives you the opportunity to follow up, build relationships, and convert your website visitors, into a customer over time.
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Thank you Page
The thank you page is where a visitor is redirected to once they’ve submitted a form on your site (contact form, free quote, email signup, etc.) If you don’t have a thank-you page, then you’re missing out on an additional opportunity to engage your visitors and to prompt them to take action.
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✍🏼 Content Format & Copy
To dominate a crowded market your website content & copy needs to be well written, formatted so that it is easy to read, SEO friendly, and focused on your ideal target audience.
Captivating Headlines
The job of any headline is to captivate your reader and get their attention. If your headline fails to do this, your reader will simply click away. And you’ll lose an opportunity to generate a lead or even a sale.
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Relevant Headlines
Often, one of the first things a new visitor sees on your website is a headline. If the headline isn’t relevant to them, they’re going to click away without reading anything else. That’s why you’ll want to make sure your headlines are relevant and speak directly to your ideal customer.
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Compelling Messaging / Calls to Action
If you fail to provide a strong call to action, your prospects are simply going to click away without taking action. A good call to action tells your readers exactly what you want them to do next. This boosts your opt-ins, generates more sales, and increases your conversions.
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Easily Readable
If your content is difficult to read, you can guess what happens: your visitors aren’t going to read it. In most cases, they’ll just click away to your competitor’s site instead. That’s why you’ll want to make sure your web pages are easy to read.
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Consistent Formatting
Consistent formatting is important because it makes your content more readable and easier to understand. Inconsistent formatting may make it harder for your readers to follow your message and may even distract them from reading what you have to say.
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Spelling
Misspellings on your site will give a poor impression to your visitors, and people may click away from your site. Many people will judge the quality of your business by the quality of your content. If your site has misspellings, people are going to view your business as sloppy and amateurish.
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Easy to Scan
While we’d love for every visitor to read every word on our web pages, the truth is most won’t. Make sure visitors can extract the highlights of your content just by scanning. This helps engage visitors, keeps them on your site longer, and read more of it.
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🧏 Accessibility
Web accessibility refers to the practice of ensuring websites are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with them.
Color Contrast
Low-contrast websites are difficult for many people to read but are impossible for visually impaired individuals. By using color and contrast on your site, you can help make your website more accessible and easy to read.
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Descriptive Link Text
Use descriptive text so it is clear where links are going and/or what the purpose of the link is. This improves both the usability and accessibility for people using screen readers.
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Text Size & Readability
People with visual impairments often increase text size using ctrl + or sizers built into their browsers. You’ll want to be sure your website’s text is still readable and accessible even if it’s enlarged to multiple times its default size. It’s also important to use readable fonts.
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Alternative (ALT) Text for Images
ALT text should be added to all relevant images on a site to describe the images. Both search engines and screen readers used by people with visual impairments process the alternative text to better understand how images are used on the site.
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Captions / Transcripts for Audio & Video
Audio or video files are often used to present information to prospects and customers. These multimedia files are most effective when they are accompanied by a transcript, for sighted users, and text describing the sound for visitors who are hearing-impaired.
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Navigation & Site Structure
Not everyone navigates your website using a mouse or by touching their screen. Some people will navigate using only their keyboard. If your site isn’t accessible to those who do this, then you’re going to needlessly block a segment of your population from fully accessing your site.
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Fields & Forms
Your forms should be set up so that those who’re using assistive technologies (such as screen readers) are able to easily understand the forms and use them. Creating accessible forms also makes it easier for those who have cognitive disabilities, problems with dexterity, or those who’re using speech-to-text technology to fill in your form.
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🧑⚖️ Legal
Protect your business by making sure your website is compliant with national and international laws, rules and regulations.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
This is designed to give residents of the European Union more control over their personal data. These regulations apply to those who operate within the EU, as well as to those who offer products or services to EU residents. If you’re not in compliance with these regulations, you could incur heavy fines.
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Privacy Policy
Your privacy policy informs your visitors of what sort of information your website collects and how this information will be used. You need a privacy policy because in most cases it’s legally required. Aside from that, a privacy policy builds trust with your visitors.
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Terms & Conditions
A terms and conditions agreement is a legal document that outlines how visitors may use your site, and what happens if they abuse your site. For example, you can detail what happens to users who spam your blog (e.g., they may be permanently banned). This protects you legally in the event you need to take action against an abusive visitor.
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Cookie Policy
A cookie policy tells your visitors how cookies are used on your site. If your business operates in the EU or EU citizens use your website, then a cookie policy is a legal requirement. For all others, it’s a good idea to have this policy as it instills trust.
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Website Copyright in Footer
Generally, you retain copyright over your graphics and content the moment you create them. This means that a copyright notice isn’t absolutely mandatory. However, a notice makes it clear who owns the copyright, and it may potentially help you win damages if there is ever a lawsuit related to your copyrighted material.
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WHOIS
Whois is an Internet record listing that identifies who owns a domain and how to get in contact with them. If you don’t make your Whois info private, then anyone can look it up and obtain your name and contact info. This opens you up to receiving unsolicited calls and emails.
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