.A website audit is important to do at least a couple of times of year to make sure your site is running well and accomplishing the goals you have for it. In the previous posts, Performing a Website Audit – Part 1 and Part 2, we looked at a list of tasks that included several areas of your website that need to be addressed.

Need Special Attention

After looking through this list and accomplishing the tasks it sets out, there are two areas that need some special attention. The first is your website performance – how easy is it for visitors to find what they need and how quickly your site loads. The other is SEO, search engine optimization. This is especially important for Google rankings to attract new visitors to your site.

We will take a look at these two areas in this and the next post to make sure your website is doing what it needs to be doing.

Website Performance

This includes both how fast your pages load and how your visitors interact with your site. If your pages load slowly, visitors will click away from your site and move on.

Visit Your Site

The first test is easy. Simply visit your site from different browsers including Chrome, Explorer, and Firefox and click on several pages. Are your pages loading quickly regardless of which browser you use? If your pages are loading slowly, this is usually caused by a slow server. The problem may be with your hosting company. Contact them to either fix the problem, upgrade your plan, or switch to a different hosting company.

Do You See What I See?

The second test is a little bit harder because you may be too invested in your site to see problems. You may want to ask a few friends to help with this. Give them 3 things to find on your site that you want your prospects to find.  Ask them to tell you how long it takes to find this information and how many pages they had to click on to find it.

Navigation

Are your menus and pages easy to navigate? Is contact information easy to find? Is it easy to find information about your services or products? Do you have a search option on your page? Do you have a place for visitors to give you their email address? Can visitors easily find blog posts relevant to them?

These are all questions you should be asking about the navigation of your website to ensure your visitors can find what they need in a short time.

Tips

Check out our book of tips, 50 Tips To Turn Your Website Into a Sales Machine.

I’m offering my ebook for 99 Cents as a way to help non-profits and small business owners get a good start to preparing their website for 2019.