Website Audits Replace Website Reviews
Website Reviews Or Audits
In the past I have expressed some skepticism about the free website reviews that are available.
Another aspect of this topic came to mind when I took part in a website audit online chat hosted by David Harry via his Huomah SEO Blog. I suddenly realized that there is a world of difference between the words review and audit.
What is a review?
Most often the word review is used about art objects, like a play or a book. It is usually one person’s opinion and clearly it is always subjective.
If you want a review of your website, it could be triggered by a simple question like, What do you think of my website? The word review almost emphasizes that this should deal with how the website looks to the reviewer.
If you regard your website as a work of art, then such a review may be all that you are looking for.
Grading Websites
Many website owners need more. They build their websites to achieve certain goals. A review that indicates that the reviewer found the website attractive is not very helpful in measuring performance against goals. Some people have therefore attempted to put some precision in this process by offering grades for websites.
For example Website Grader does attempt to measure how well a given site will appear in the search engine listings. This particular blog seems to be rated quite highly by such a tool.
However the method of computing the score can be somewhat arbitrary and certainly Michael Gray has some major reservations about this process. In addition it is not clear that such a grading tool will give the right list of actionable items to help improve the website.
What is an audit?
The word audit would seem to be a much better choice for a tool that can help point to ways of improving the website. An audit is a disciplined monitoring process to identify how well a website is performing on the important factors involved in achieving the website’s objectives.
A good audit will cover all the important parameters of the website and provide measurements of the website’s position. This allows a detailed list to be prepared of what actions are needed for full performance improvement. The hard-nosed audit process is much more likely to be useful than the somewhat soft and fuzzy review.
SMM offers Website Mini-Audits
A full website audit can be extremely detailed and take a significant amount of time to complete. However in some cases a more summary mini-audit may quickly identify important major factors that need correction. It is for this reason that SMM offers a range of mini-audits to check out major problems when only limited budgets are available.
If you are concerned about your website and whether it is performing as well as it might, why not get in touch with us for which ever mini-audit will work for you.
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BPWrap
August 31st, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I agree that no automated system can properly indicate how a website should improve, because situations are just so unique. But graders are a great first step, a sort of triage for website owners to give an idea of where they should be looking or what kind of specialists to consult…or whether an audit is required.
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:40 am
Website audits can be useful, but in reality my view is that they are simply a means for SEO companies to generate money from work that isn’t actually essential. I would be more tempted to pay a professional to create a website review of my site and then promote this on article directories etc. Most SEO is simply sales promotion and not actually beneficial to your website.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:23 am
I would have to disagree with you, Jonathan, on that. If your website is fully achieving its objectives in terms of visitor traffic and sales, then clearly a website audit is unnecessary. In my experience few websites are as good as this and many are seriously impaired.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:01 am
Website grader? Hmm…, Barry. I’ve never used this stuff before, it sounds like a nice tool to try with. Going to check it out and see, what it can do with my websites! Thanks.
September 4th, 2009 at 2:14 am
From my experience most websites fundamentally are structured incorrectly. They do not clearly illustrate a company’s value proposition, a clear starting place, good use of calls to action that guide a user into the sales funnels. Even some very large sites fall down in these areas.
I would suggest to a person who is about to start a new site to do some user testing on competitors’ sites. This will help find out what users like about your competitors, but even more importantly what usability flaws that they have and you can avoid them in your design.
Website audits can definitely help, however if you take the time at the start in structuring your site correctly you can mimimise many issues on your own.
September 4th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
thanks jonathan for giving me the infomation about website audit i think i should get my blog being reviewed by them.
September 11th, 2009 at 3:42 am
Yes it all depends on how you view your site yourself and what are your goals. But I think most of us look for a way to profit from our sites, so an audit is a realistic option.
September 18th, 2009 at 1:38 am
A website audit is critical to identify how optimized a site is for the search engines. However a site needs more than search engine presence to be successful. I audit for audience conversion where I review the content and identify if it is structured in a way to get the website’s audience to act. For instance there needs to be a call-to-action, without one the audience will come, will leave, and will forget.
I also audit the overall design and performance of the site. Auditing design is a little bit subjective but when broken down into individual elements, there are almost always opportunities to improve a design. The performance of a site is primarily concerned with how quickly pages load.
A well rounded audit will help my clients improve their site not just on search engine visibility but also help turn it into profit center by focusing on conversion capability, design strength, and performance.
September 24th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
We generally start our audits with looking at the site structure and then the way it was coded. We find site after site that has all the CSS embedded in the page.
September 26th, 2009 at 10:35 am
hi.very great article.A good audit will cover all the important parameters of the website and provide measurements of the website’s position. we generally starts the audits with looking at the site structure.thanks for sharing the information and idea’s.