Nerds and Words

audit

Website audit – what are you doing wrong?

A website audit – what it is, what we do to assess a website to the bone, and how rewriting your website can change your business. This is what we talk about here, so let’s get down to it.

 

Firstly, what does an audit do?

Basically, our job is to judge your website. We do this with:

  • a content audit;
  • an SEO audit.

The SEO audit is slightly more technical and it’s about how optimized your website is to be on top of Google searches. We’ll talk mostly about content here – but you can read more on SEO here if we’ve got you interested.

 

Content audit is strictly about the experience a user has on your website. Here are a few things we are focusing on when running a website audit:

  • grammar and spelling;
  • wording that is straightforward and easy to understand;
  • relevant information;
  • a suitable and consistent tone of voice;
  • how soon we feel like leaving the website.

 

Surely, the process varies depending on the business, but the general rule is this:

„Do I understand what your business can do for me?”

Speaking from our auditing experience, the most common mistake people make when writing their own website copy is that they write it for themselves. Either because they are overly passionate about their work, or because they simply cannot put on their client’s shoes – the outcome is the same. The content is bulky, academic, difficult to understand, irrelevant. Less is more!

 

Now that we know what content auditing does, let’s see what are some things you can do to turn a boring website into an attractive one.

Help your users understand in an instant what they’re looking for on your website

As our friend, Einstein, used to say: If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough”. That goes for your business, too. If you can’t define your products and services in just a few words, on the first page of your website, then you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, either.

More than half of the users (55%) spend less than 15 seconds on a website page – so forget about the elevator pitch, your homepage needs to be a quarter of a minute pitch.

 

Speak about you, but for them

Truth is nobody cares about how many awards you have won or how many years of experience you have – what matters is how this will help your client get products or services of the highest quality. Therefore, everything you want to say about yourself, say it in reference to your role as a provider.

This is just one of the main rules of copywriting. If you want to know 5 more, just as important, here is a fine article about this.

 

Tell them clearly what they need to do

In all our years of doing website auditing and rewriting, we’ve noticed something that keeps coming up: many businesses simply do not provide clear instructions. You may have original, compelling, concise content – but it is all for nothing if people can’t understand what they must do before leaving your web page. To put it in marketing lingo, you need a call to action.

There are tons of ways that you can use to stimulate people to interact with your brand – here are 31 of them. Just remember that “neither too much nor too little” is a sure rule to follow when including CTAs on your website.

 

So, we hope you now have a better idea about what an audit does, why it is important and how you can improve your website content.

Of course, if this list of tips (which, to be clear, is the short version) seems a little overwhelming, don’t worry – this is why we’re here.

Write to us right now, so we can see what your website looks like and how we can make it extraordinary.