Establishing a strong online presence for your business starts with your website. While developing the website is the first step, it’s just as important to update it regularly. Web audits play an integral role in maintaining and improving your online presence. A web audit consists of a thorough evaluation of your website’s user experience, security, and overall function. For example, a typical web audit at Nioma consists of an analysis of the following components; performance, SEO, content, user experience, security, analytics, design, as well as whether it fits your marketing goals.
By having regular web audits performed you’re able to accurately gauge whether your website needs updates or improvements. Just as you would conduct performance evaluations with your employees, it’s important to evaluate the performance of your website. Oftentimes it’s the first, if not only, interaction potential customers have with your business. By neglecting to ensure your website is being continually audited and updated, you’re allowing for missed opportunities connecting with your customers. We’ve compiled five of the top ways a web audit can improve your business’ online presence.
Promote Brand Cohesiveness
Having a strong sense of brand cohesiveness on your website creates a great first impression for your customers. The use of unified brand elements across all platforms promotes a strong sense of brand identity and allows you to develop a loyal customer base. Web audits study your brand elements online and can identify areas where there is disjointed branding being used. Strengthening your brand cohesiveness and consistently using standardized branding allows your business to solidify its positioning, as well as build presence and authority with your customer base.
Identify Technical Issues & Improve User Experience
A web audit can help clearly identify technical errors on your website. Things like broken links or slow loading assets can negatively impact user experience. When your website is not functioning optimally, it allows for the loss of website traffic. Now more than ever, mobile responsiveness is a key factor in your overall website function. 60.9% of web traffic now comes from users on a mobile device. A web audit can identify errors in mobile responsiveness to allow users on all devices to effectively use your website.
Improve SEO
SEO is one of the key factors in increasing web traffic. By incorporating the appropriate targeted keywords, you can increase your website’s search engine ranking. Conducting a web audit can identify missed opportunities for relevant keywords, as well as highlighting areas that negatively impact your SEO ranking- for example instances of duplicate copy. Regular web audits allow you to continuously update and improve your SEO ranking, which in turn can result in increased web traffic.
Increase Website Conversion Rates
Having an aesthetically pleasing website is important but if it’s not resulting in conversions, it’s not benefitting your bottom line. Web audits are an opportunity to determine reasons why your web traffic may not be converting. Navigational issues can present a problem for your overall conversion rate, as well as ambiguous or absent CTA’s. Optimizing your conversion process is extremely important, and is something that should be prioritized regularly. Your website should make it as simple as possible for a customer to clearly understand, and subsequently purchase, your product or service.
Enhance Security
One of the most fundamental aspects of maintaining your business’ website is supporting your web security. Having a web audit done allows you to see if there are any security functions that need to be strengthened. A web audit can pinpoint items such as weak passwords or outdated software that could potentially pose a security threat. Keeping a close eye on the back-end functions of your website is crucial to ensuring it stays running effectively, while protecting your users’ security.
As you can see, there are several benefits to conducting web audits. Regular audits are an opportunity to clearly establish the strengths of your online presence as well as identify any challenges or errors that need to be rectified. If you haven’t had a web audit done on your website recently (or at all), now is a good time to start. Nioma provides comprehensive web auditing services to help you optimize your website for a user-experience your customers will love.
