As technology continues to evolve, businesses must stay up-to-date with the latest trends and audit their websites regularly. An effective website audit helps identify and address any issues that may hinder performance and user experience. Below, we discuss the top 10 things to audit on your website for 2024 to ensure optimal functionality and improve your online presence.
- Mobile Optimized Design
With the increasing use of smartphones, having a mobile-friendly website is essential. Audit your website’s mobile responsiveness, ensuring that it adapts well to different screen sizes and provides an excellent user experience on mobile devices. We recommend that you look at every page of your website on your cell phone to ensure that your website formatting looks great, that you have accurate spacing, that your font sizes are appropriate, and that all of the various elements on your site are functioning properly. - Page Load Speed
A slow website can drive visitors away. Evaluate your website’s speed and identify factors affecting performance. Optimize images, Minify CSS and JavaScript files, and leverage browser caching to improve load times. It’s critical to test your page speed on mobile and desktop as two different algorithms judge your speed based on how phones load websites versus how a computer loads a website. It is possible to have a decent desktop website speed and have a bad score for mobile website speed. See your website speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights. - SEO Optimization
Conduct a comprehensive SEO audit to ensure your website is optimized for search engines. Assess keyword usage, meta tags, headings, and URLs. Pay attention to relevant, high-quality content and consider incorporating a blog for regular updates. There are over 220 factors that are considered by Google when they rank a website, with some making more of a difference than others. It’s critical that you know these factors and optimize your site weekly for the changes that are made if you want your website to help you monetize the best source of customers in business today, the internet. There are numerous places where you can get an audit of your SEO results, starting with us. Fill out the form on our Free Marketing Review page and we will send you an audit of your SEO today. - Security
The security of your website and visitors’ data is paramount. Conduct regular security audits to identify vulnerabilities or potential malware threats. Install an SSL certificate, use secure authentication methods, and implement regular backups. If you are unsure of the security that your website needs or how to manage it, move your website hosting to us and allow our team to take care of all of those tech things for you. - User Experience (UX)
Focus on enhancing the overall user experience by analyzing the website’s navigation, readability, and accessibility. Evaluate the placement and usability of buttons, forms, and contact information. Ensure that the website is easy to navigate and intuitive for users. Just because you think a feature is cool or looks good on your site, doesn’t mean it does. Using tools like Microsoft Clarity can help you see frustration points on your website to improve your conversions. - Content Audit
Review your website’s content to ensure it aligns with your brand and appeals to your target audience. Update outdated information, eliminate duplicate or thin content, and optimize the use of relevant keywords. Utilizing an SEO reporting system can help you identify pages that need content improvement based on the changes that Google makes to its algorithms. We also recommend using Yoast if you have a WordPress website to help you identify issues in your content on each page to correct to best rank your website. You can also request our team to refresh your SEO and improve your content for a one-time fee. - Broken Links
Inspect your website for broken internal and external links. Broken links can negatively impact user experience and SEO. Use tools to scan your website, identify broken links, and fix them promptly. As websites change their own pages, design, and SEO improvements, the links you put in your blog articles, pages, projects, or elsewhere on your site may break because of the page they are pointing to and you don’t even realize it. An SEO reporting system to monitor this can help you quickly identify and fix these issues. Utilizing a 404 to 301 redirect integration on your site can also help you to eliminate broken links to your internal pages. All Stingray Branding WordPress Websites include a free 404 to 301 redirect integration. - Conversion Optimization
Analyze your website’s conversion funnels and user pathways. Optimize landing pages, call-to-action buttons, and forms to improve conversion rates. Monitor and adjust your strategies based on analytical data. If you are spending money on lead generation through social media management or ads, Google Ads, billboards, or any other form of marketing and you are not monitoring your Bounce Rates, Engagement, Time on Page, CTR, and website traffic, you’re essentially shooting a shotgun at a target and hoping the spread shot works. We do not recommend this approach. You, or hire Stingray Branding, should be actively monitoring the results of your marketing and identifying breakdowns in your conversion funnel to improve your ROI from what you are doing. All websites should have Google Analytics & Google Search Console installed at a bare minimum. - Analytics and Tracking
Ensure that your website integrates with an analytics platform such as Google Analytics. Audit your current tracking implementation to track website traffic, user behavior, and conversions accurately. - Accessibility Compliance
Evaluate your website’s accessibility compliance to ensure it caters to users with disabilities. Address any barriers identified in the audit, such as alt text for images, correct label associations, and keyboard navigation compatibility. Accessibility doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. This is a factor that continues to grow in importance for SEO. For some, the larger risk of not paying attention to this is the opportunity for lawsuits for not being compliant. If your website is not complaint, reach out to us today to enroll in our low-cost accessibility service.
Auditing your website regularly is crucial to maintaining its performance, security, and user experience. By following the top 10 things to audit on your website for 2024 outlined in this blog, you can stay ahead in the ever-changing digital landscape and provide your visitors with a seamless online experience. Remember, a well-audited website is an investment in your online success. Your website is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week representation of your business. Our team can help you ensure that your website is optimized to turn visitors into customers, capitalizing on every opportunity you get.
