When I first start working with my business growth consultancy clients, I help them with their marketing. But part of that process involves a website audit.
As part of the marketing process with my clients, I do quite a lot of market research and audits on the business. I check their website, their content, their social media channels, and their SEO. I don’t actually carry out the audits myself – I have experts that work with me to help. And from those audits, I generate recommendations I can give my clients to help them make improvements. In this episode of Starting to Scale with Emmie Faust, I talk about why it’s important to have an audit, what to look for in one, and what you should do afterwards.
Tune in and you will learn…
Tune in and you will learn…What to look for in a website audit?
A website audit allows you to verify whether your website is working, so check for the following:
- Are all links working?
- Can you actually buy the products or services?
- If you sell products, I recommend buying a product and sending it to yourself to check the customer experience. If you’re using a logistics business to fulfill your products for example, then it’s really interesting to see what happens for your customer.
- What is the process?
- Why not ask a friend or a fellow business owner if you could review their website and for them to review yours in return? You give them feedback around what things don’t make sense, aren’t working, or aren’t clear, and get them to do the same for you.
- It’s really good to get someone from outside of your business to do that because you’re too invested – too close to it – and often you can’t see the wood for the trees.
Things to bear in mind when it comes to your website
- Is your website secure? I see so many businesses whose website isn’t secure, and that’s a really bad sign to Google and to your existing and prospective customers. So make sure you have your HTTPS, and that your website is secure.
- Also, remember that people buy from people. So add that human element to your website. Show some personality and make sure people can see who they’re buying from. You may have heard this already, but people want to know, like, and trust the business that they’re buying from. So aim to achieve that through your website.
- Make sure your website speed is not really slow. You might have lots of large images on your website, and that can slow down the site. If your website is loading really slowly, that’s going to be a bad sign to Google for your search engine optimization. And it affects the user experience too. Your visitors are basically going to leave and go elsewhere! You can test your website speed here using Google PageSpeed Insights, and if you find speed is an issue, speak to your developer.
- Ensure you have good hosting.
- Make sure your homepage is appealing to the users. Is what you’re offering 100% clear? So many businesses I work with have a nice picture or some vague words – that’s not going to cut it. When someone arrives on your website they should feel like they are in the right place – you should be talking to your ideal customers. Talk to them in their language, and let them know that you have got the solution for them.
- Make sure that it’s really easy to contact you, so have a link to contact you in the top menu bar, or in the bottom footer so that people can find that easily.
How to connect with your ideal clients through your website
- Talk to them in their language.
- Make it very clear what your company sells.
- Include testimonials on your homepage, which is social proof.
- Make it easy for customers to be able to contact you.
- Make sure that there’s a clear call to action on your site – what do you want your visitors to do next? Do you want them to buy a product? Book a call with you? Get in touch? Read a blog post?
- And make sure that the site is user-friendly. That means it needs to be easy to navigate and the page speed is loading fast.
Related podcast episodes
#9 – Have you got Google My Business set up yet?
#14 – Why is SEO important for your business growth?
#21 – Do they know, like and trust you?
Related LinkedIn post
Want to see what people are talking about on this topic on LinkedIn?
My call to action to you today is to find a friend or another business and agree to do a website review. Spend half an hour reviewing their website, and letting them know what’s working, what’s not working, and what improvements they can make, and get them to do the same for you.
More about me
If you do find that there are issues with your website and it’s something that you’re not able to change yourself, then obviously just get in touch with your tech team, or you can find people on PeoplePerHour, there are lots of people on there, I’ve used them before. So look for someone with really good ratings, and you can ask them to help you with your issues.
And if you’d like to work with me to help you grow your business, check out my Work With Me page. You can book a FREE 30-minute discovery call. Let’s discuss the challenges you’re facing and talk about how I can help you grow your business! And if you have any questions for me get in touch via my website or connect with me on LinkedIn, and I’ll aim to cover questions on the podcast.
