If you have a website, whether corporate or e-commerce, the concept of web auditing is something that you should know in detail and apply regularly.

Carrying out an audit of a web page consists of analyzing the web so that possible errors are detected in order to correct them and implement the improvements that are necessary to optimize it. Without performing this web analysis, it will be difficult for you to check the performance of all the elements that compose it and if the design, structure, content, and other aspects are providing you with the expected profitability or can still generate higher traffic and conversions.

How to do a web audit?

The ideal way to analyze a website ensuring that you focus on the navigation flows and the user, to facilitate them to achieve their objectives and satisfy their needs, is to carry out a web audit report. This is divided into three main aspects: usability, optimization, and security.

In order for the website audit to be objective, you must have access to the metrics and the tools necessary to analyze them. Only in this way will the monitoring of the activities that occur within the virtual space have empirical evidence and will help the strategic approach based on the behavior of the users. As it encompasses several aspects, you should consider that to locate errors and correct them, different professionals need to be involved in the process, such as SEO experts, designers, developers, and strategists, among others. For this reason, it is advisable that it be carried out by specialized agencies that have the necessary resources.

In addition, these experts will be responsible for applying the most appropriate methodology to the web audit to verify what works and what does not, what impact the different elements have on the metrics, and what user needs the data reflects.

Website audit: steps to follow

Before starting to analyze the web, you must determine the resources to be used, the basic aspects of the project in question, and be clear about the objectives to be pursued. Depending on whether it is an eCommerce or a corporate website, the purpose will be associated with increasing online sales, conversions, or leads, among others.

All of this will influence the time limit to be set and the team that will be involved in the analysis of conversion metrics, traffic, interaction, evaluation of UX standards and application of practical improvements, conducting wireframes, and new prototyping if necessary.

With this overview, you will know the type of information you need to reflect in the report and the metrics that you should pay attention to in order to proceed with the web audit and its steps.

Usability and navigation audit

The purpose of the web usability audit analysis is to ensure that users have a good experience on the site and can meet their needs simply, quickly, and efficiently.

Among the key points to take into account are that the web structure and the menu are clear, intuitive web browsing, that the page load is fast, that there are no broken links, and that it adapts to all devices and browsers. This way you avoid the bounce rate and ensure the permanence of the lead, in addition to conducting a web accessibility audit to eliminate barriers that may affect the way our website is perceived.

Web design audit

In the audit of a website, reviewing the design is essential. It is not just about an attractive design, choose readable fonts and use the necessary spaces so that reading does not cause an unpleasant experience.

Identify if the CTA's on your website make sense, are clear to the user or if they are missing someone else. For example, if we verify that the leads are insufficient, there must be visible contact forms or phone numbers to increase them. If we want to increase sales, we will have to pay attention to the purchase process, if it is fast, easy, and intuitive, where the shopping cart is located, etc.

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SEO audit

At the time of conducting a website audit, SEO optimization must be reviewed in detail, since it will directly influence the positioning of the web and that potential clients manage to reach it.

This aspect is very broad and, as we detailed previously in the SEO audit post, it attends to the quality of the content, the structure of the URLs, and the optimization of the pages for the correct keywords, among other data from the SEO analysis.

Cybersecurity audit

Related to the aforementioned and the security that owning an SSL certificate guarantees, the online web security audit is one of the aspects most valued by users today.

The concern regarding sensitive personal data such as those related to health or banking when making an online purchase makes it essential to detect vulnerabilities in time that allow a third party to fraudulently access these data and after that lose our potential customers.

Web audit tools

Analyzing all these aspects without leaving behind any metrics or developing the correct hypotheses about the user experience seems impossible, but it is the day-to-day of the experts in web audits.

With the necessary knowledge to do this, they use different web auditing tools to detect errors and make improvements. Among them, to check usability and user experience, Smartlook stands out with recordings of visits made to the website and the most common actions within a page. Also, Site Audit to look for error codes, Screaming Frog to detect broken links, Copyscape to check duplicate content, Google Analytics to see which pages generate the most conversions, Google Search Console and SEMrush, among others.

With all these web auditing software, the issues detected and the metrics analyzed, it is time to define the improvement hypotheses and carry out the optimization of the page to improve the user experience of your website, performing A / B testing to check if these hypotheses were true.