A website evaluation has many names. Website audit, website review or website evaluations are all names people use to describe the process of going through your website and looking at its current state to decide what it needs to be successful. These evaluations can play a huge role in the speed of your success.
So why a website evaluation? In this online world, your website is your digital storefront. Sending someone to an outdated, poor-performing website is like sending someone to a run-down building and convincing them to choose you for your products or services. It will be more difficult to convince them of your professionalism and authority with a presentation like that.
It is important that your website represents you in the best light. If your website is high-performing and aesthetically pleasing, it will make you and your business appear to be more credible and can gain you more customers or clients.
A website evaluation is a process where all of the different parts of your website are gone through to look for what’s not working and where improvements are needed. There are different parts to a website and it is important that they are all performing well to get the results that you want.
First, we will need to look at the design of your website. Does it match your brand? Is it modern and clean? Are the photos taken professionally? These factors are necessary for your website to represent you in the best light. If the website appears to be outdated, the user may go to the next business that appears to be more professional and provide a better service and experience.
Along with design, a website’s usability is also a piece of your website that might need to be addressed. Is the site responsive? Are all of the links working and going to the right place? If a user lands on a pretty website, but functions terribly, they will also go somewhere else. It is important that the website loads quickly, links go where they promise, the screen is responsive and clickable and much, much more.
Once we have the website looking great, matching your branding and working great, we will need to send traffic to it.
One of the best ways to get traffic is through organic traffic. While this takes some time (especially if your brand new), it is worth it. To get organic traffic, you need a search engine optimization (SEO) audit.
An SEO audit can be broken into different parts: off page and on page. First, we will start with the on page. The pages on your website must be optimized for certain keywords and search phrases. If you don’t know what those are, a little research can give you a huge list of them.
Once there is a list of keywords and search phrases to go after, this audit can provide a strategy to decide which page will be optimized for which search. I often tell my clients, to get the best results the fastest, the pages on your website need to be intentional and to serve a specific purpose. Once every page has a purpose, you will know how to optimize it and whether it is performing well.
There is more to come for the basic breakdown of SEO, but for now, know that this part of a website evaluation is incredibly important to the success of your website. It is not the only way to get traffic, but it is the cheapest way in comparison. If your website is only receiving paid traffic, you will always be paying the bill to keep your website going and cost-per-click platforms only become more expensive as time goes on.
If it has been some time since your website has been looked at by a professional, or it has never been looked at by a professional, it is probably a good idea to get it evaluated. Trends in the marketing world change constantly, so what worked a year ago probably won’t work now. It’s important that you are able to stay up-to-date to be sure your website’s performance is on track to be able to beat your competitors.
Pricing for a website evaluation can vary by a lot. It can be anywhere from $500 to thousands of dollars. If you go through an agency, it will be the highest depending on the size and experience of the agency.
There are many factors that can determine the cost of your website evaluation. While it is probably most dependent on the experience and expertise of the person performing the evaluation, other factors could be the size and age of the website. Shopping around could be a good idea, but be sure to take the person’s experience into consideration before making decisions on finding the cheapest deal. This is an area where knowledge and talent truly matters.
This is somewhat dependent on your knowledge and skillset with your website. If you are not very knowledgeable or skilled at maintaining your site, website evaluations should be done somewhat often.
If you have a great website maintenance plan in place and those tasks are being kept up with, every year or other year is probably a good time for an audit. You want to be sure your website is continuously going in the right direction. Along with many factors, each year there are many updates and new trends that you will need to implement as they come about and a yearly audit will keep you up-to-date with those.
To be clear, a yearly audit does not mean you can abandon your websites needs every other day of the year. You will not have results without a solid maintenance plan that is consistently being executed.
If you feel your website is in need of an evaluation, contact me for a quote and to learn more about the process. We can get together and do full or partial audits that fit your current needs and get your website in a good place to perform well. With your website evaluation, I can craft a solid and easy maintenance plan to help you understand your next steps to keep your site in a good place until your next audit.
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