With tax season gearing up, the a word strikes fear into the heart of many.  But there is one audit that your business would not only benefit from, but could help it thrive in 2015 and beyond.
A website audit is one of the most valuable things you organization can do as it thinks about moving forward with a new web design.  Often times, when you create a website for your own business, you know so much about your product or service that you don’t explain it well enough for people that know very little (I’m guilty of this as well).  That is why a third party will be able to give you a look from the outside that is invaluable when trying to decide what changes you should make.  When we do web design for Indianapolis-based companies, we will often meet with companies in person and go through a number of different items with them.  Whether or not they ultimately decide to sign on with us to do the work, our hope is that the website audit is a helpful exercise for them.  The list below is from one such audit from 2014 (with some items removed that were too specific to the company we were helping to include here).

It is worth noting that this company was a B2B that provided a SaaS.  My hope is that even if your company or organization is a B2C or a nonprofit, some of the ideas below will be helpful and that the idea of a website audit will resonate.

• You may want to add calls to action on the client login page – especially around upsell services/client education.
• Have you thought about doing a live chat that would be specific to your sales team? I’ve seen it increase engagement by a substantial amount.
• I can click 3 times in a row on learn more on the front page and subsequent pages and don’t get a form to actually learn more until the 4th. Probably losing a lot of conversions.
• Lead forms aren’t specific to the page I was on – this should be looked at. Without doing this, you:
  • Can’t easily track specific goal completions in Google Analytics. (You technically can by setting up a Goal funnel but very few companies do this).
  • Can’t pass along this valuable information to the sales team.
  • Less specific messaging on the form means fewer people will convert.
• ‘Submit form’ should be removed from all submit buttons. Even changing the term to ‘Get Help Now’ can increase conversions by 200%.
• It is great that you have specific whitepaper landing pages. However, the header call to action should confirm that what they are signing up for is what they are getting.
• You don’t ask for phone number on your forms. What happens to these leads upon form completion?  Do they go into a drip campaign or to your sales team?  What methodology do you use to try and get a phone number?
• Download now isn’t a bad call to action for the submit button but you should test bigger buttons, different colors – all of these can make a substantial difference in conversions.
• I like how you guys ask people to visit your blog after converting a lead. You may also want to push people to follow you on Twitter, Facebook or call you for immediate info.
• Wow! Amazing content.  Great job on the whitepaper I downloaded.  Love the graphics, consistency, overall clean design, etc.
  • Let’s personalize that triggered email you send to receive the whitepaper by using the info we just collected from the user.  We want to make sure they open the email and this personalization may help.
• I love that you guys are using Google Custom Search. It is very useful since you can see what people are interested in/not seeing on your website within Google Analytics (make sure you set this functionality up in Google Analytics).
  • However, it only costs $100 per year to not include ads. By default Google Custom Search includes ads – even from your competitors!
• I’d recommend a popup campaign to get people signed up for your email list – it works surprisingly well based on my experience.
• You might want to have an example of the newsletter people can see on the newsletter signup page.  An archive might make sense as well.
• Your FAQ is an awesome idea. Another opportunity is to connect the FAQ to blogs that have already been written about the subject on your website.  Great for SEO and for user experience.
• How do your recorded webcasts convert since you ask for contact details before people can watch them? Even if they are awesome webinars, I’m betting you don’t have a lot of people fill in their info to watch them.  How about setting up the videos without the lead wall?  You could always give them a taste for ‘free’ and set up a turnstile lead entry form 5 minutes into the video.
• There are two call to actions on the front page – subscribe and learn more. Those two things stand out because they use completely different color schemes.  Are they the most important things you want people to notice?
• I think a list of logos showcasing the clients you work with on the front page would be a huge help. I have seen those be the most popular component of a website and are ‘proof’ that you are a company visitors would like to work with.
• Your WordPress website has not been updated since 3.5 – that means the security on the website has been out of date since August 1st, 2013 (over a year at this point). Always make sure to keep your website’s up to date just in case there are security holes that have been found and fixed in updates.  A hacked website is worst than a down website.

Would your organization find value in having us do a website audit for you?  We’d love to help.  Just fill out the form to get started.