In the world of marketing, your website is a vital tool for promoting your business and communicating your brand message. A website tells customers what you do and how to find a solution to their problem. A website can take orders for products, act as a 24/7 media channel or simply provide directions to your nearest office. However you use your website, its an important piece of your marketing mix. We are very busy people. We attend team meetings, go to trade shows, travel to clients, plan, schedule and maybe have time for quick lunch. Due to our busy work week and focus on getting things done, we tend to overlook the health of one of the most fundamental tools we have as marketers, our website.
If you haven’t made any major changes to your website in the past couple years or simply want a second opinion on how you’re doing, it may be time for a website audit. A website audit is a deep review of several best practices in technical, content and promotional aspects of online marketing. Typically, these are performed by a digital agency or an outside industry expert. An audit can take anywhere from a couple weeks to a month or more depending on the size of your business. Below are five benefits of a professional website audit that can make a big impact on leads and sales.
1. Gain Expertise
While your internal team is doing a great job with marketing campaigns, they may not be specialized in some areas of user experience strategy, search marketing or social media. Having an agency or consultant evaluate your website can be a great way to find gaps in your program. There may be things that have simply been overlooked or put on the back burner. An expert point of view will highlight these areas and give you specific ways to fix.
2. Help Setting Priorities
An audit will sometimes uncover dozens of areas in need of improvement. How do you prioritize those fixes? A good audit will help you do this. An expert can tell you which improvements will have the biggest impact on leads and sales.
3. Help Verifying a Google Penalty
Your company website has seen its organic visitors drop 40% in the past six months. You’re think it was a Google Penalty but you’re not sure. Having an expert complete an audit will help verify if and which penalty impacted your website. Find this out before making drastic changes.
4. Making the Case for a Redesign
Your company website is over 6 years old. Trying to convince your boss it’s time to redesign the website? An audit may be just what you need to help build the case for a complete redesign of your site. Rather than spending the next several months applying band aids to your old site with little return, a fresh start may be the best investment.
5. Gain New Ideas and Strategy
Your team has been doing generally the same activities for the last couple years. An audit will help you refocus your efforts and propose new ideas. New ideas may be just what your team needs to take it to the next level.
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