For most business owners, the word “audit” has a less-than-positive connotation. It’s easy to associate mental alarm bells with audits – thoughts of paperwork, legal troubles, and a long slog through a difficult process might overtake you. So your first reaction to learning about website audits might be to groan and shy away. However, WordPress website audits are essential to improve performance and conversions. Fortunately, there’s no lengthy paperwork to fill out, no documents to gather, and no frustrating process for you to go through. Instead, you can hand the responsibilities of your audit off to a web professional, let them produce a detailed audit with suggestions for improvement, and decide where to go from there. If we haven’t convinced you yet, keep reading.
How a WordPress Website Audit can Improve Your Business
Improve website speed and performance
There’s no other tool that can so comprehensively tell you how your website is performing. That’s why an audit is not just a nice tool to have but an absolute necessity. You can run a page speed test, and you can learn some thing about user experience and performance from tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, but a complete WordPress website audit can tell you exactly what users are seeing when they come to your website. With an audit, you get an overview of the performance status of your site along with detailed metrics for things like load time, time to interactive, and cumulative layout shift (how much your website “jumps around” by loading additional elements after initial load). A WordPress website audit aggregates all this data so you can not only see the problems but understand how you can fix them. The Opportunities section in the image below is one example of suggested solutions an audit can provide.
Better understand SEO performance
In the category of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), audits are once again a winner due to their ability to aggregate data. They might not tell you anything you couldn’t get from other tools, but instead of running a dozen or more different reports on your own, you can look to your WordPress website audit to understand everything from how your page experience impacts your SEO to whether social media and Google tracking tags are installed correctly.
Check accessibility
Do you know if your website is accessible to people with disabilities? If the answer is “I’m not sure,” you’re far from being alone! While being in the dark about accessibility is not out of the ordinary, learning about how you can make your website more accessible is essential, both for your customers and for your business. Curious about web accessibility? Read more here.
Use your WordPress website audit to learn what you can change to improve your site
Overall, when you think of an audit, you might shudder at the thought of having all your problems and errors pointed out. However, a WordPress website audit is a process focused on improvement. While it will explain what’s suboptimal about your existing site, it will also offer a clear path to fix those items; better yet, it can even point out what has the highest impact and lowest effort, offering you the option of targeting the low-hanging fruit first. With a web professional at your side and a WordPress website audit in hand, you’ll be on the path to improving your business. Reach out to get your free web audit today!
