KEY TAKEAWAYS:
Discover how to evaluate your website’s essential information.
Learn how to test your website’s accuracy.
Know how to audit your website’s features to test the UX from a customer’s viewpoint.
New to website audits? No worries! Here’s a checklist to guide you through auditing your own website to improve the UX, increase conversions, and enhance SEO.
1. Finding Essential Information
Contact Info and Store Hours
Can customers easily find your business’s contact info on your website? It’s important to make sure your contact info is clearly visible when you’re viewing your website via a smartphone, especially your phone number or a push to call button. Next, check your website to ensure that your hours of operation are both easy to find and accurate.
Main Navigation
Review the main navigation on your site. Are dropdowns organized well? Do you have too many options on your dropdowns so that it looks cluttered? Do some web pages that you recently uploaded need to be added to your dropdown so they’re more accessible? We recommend having just 6-7 categories in your main navigation.
Not everyone will take the same path through your website. So, it’s a good idea to have key pages or collections linked in multiple areas.
When organizing and decluttering your main navigation, it can be helpful to refer to your site’s data. Which pages are people clicking on? Which ones are they not clicking on? Do you need to drive more traffic to a new service or product that you’re offering? Do you need to promote a special event you’re hosting and want that information in a more prominent place on your site?
Products and Filters
Evaluate your product listings. Are all products in your inventory current? Are the descriptions accurate? If you’ve had a recent sale, confirm that the sale price is no longer showing on your website. You’ll also want to check that certain functions on your product listings are working. For instance, ensure that the “add to cart” button actually puts that item in the cart, especially if your online sales are inconsistent.
Test out your website’s product filters. Put yourself in the customer’s position. Can you filter products by the criteria you want? Are there some criteria that you should add to the filtering tool? For instance, maybe a customer wants to sort your inventory by size not just clothing type and style.
Ensure that special collections are spotlighted on your website. For example, maybe you have a collection of on-sale items you want to highlight to customers. You could link to this page within a promotional banner on your website’s main page, as well as include it as a dropdown in your main navigation.
Services
If you’re a service-based business, you’ll want to inspect your website’s service listings. Is it easy to find out what services you offer? Are all services listed? Is pricing information listed for each service and if so, are these prices up to date? If not, why? Should they be added?
If you offer quotes for services, is it easy for that person to quickly request a quote or consultation from your business? If you have a book online tool, is it located in a visible place like the header and/or on the page for the service they’re wanting to book? It’s helpful to put these types of calls to action in multiple places since different customers will navigate your website in different ways.
Sales and Events
Give your business’s sales and events a prominent place on your website, like in a banner or slider on your home page. You can also link to this under a promotion/events tab in the main navigation.
Important Policies
Make sure that essential policies are clearly stated on your website. A good place for this is in the footer, under an “about us” section. Essential policies include the “privacy policy” (which all businesses collecting user info – even just email addresses – should have), “shipping,” “return policy,” and “terms of service.” Consider any vendors you work with or partnerships you have and if they require disclosure of any additional policies, such as a “cookies policy.”
Social Links
Check the social links on your website. Is it easy for people to connect with you via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter? Or do they have to dig to find this information? Users are conditioned to look for these links in the header or footer of your website via the platforms’ logos. Also consider removing links for any social platforms you’re no longer actively using, as there’s no need to drive attention to them.
2. Test Site Accuracy
- If the phone number listed on your website is a call tracking number that forwards customer calls to your business phone number, try calling the number yourself. Does it forward your call to the right number?
- Click through everything in your navigation to verify that each item links to the right page. And confirm that offers are up to date and that no outdated promotions are still showing on your website’s footer.
- Evaluate your website to ensure that any promotional or seasonal imagery is current. If anything is outdated, replace it. For instance, you’ll want to take down information about an event that happened a few days ago.
3. Test the Checkout Process and Site Speed
The Checkout Process
Another key element of a website audit is to test purchases. Pretend you’re a customer and try adding products to your cart. Is it easy to add more items to your cart? Can you quickly view your cart?
You’ll also want to test that your store’s abandoned cart emails are triggering. So, after you’ve added an item to your cart and begun the checkout process (i.e., added your email address), leave the website and see if that email hits your inbox.
Walk through the purchase completion steps. If your business has an in-store or curbside pickup option, is it easy to find and request during the checkout process? Once a purchase is made, do you receive an order confirmation as the customer and a purchase notification as the store?
Site Speed
Web page loading speed is an important factor Google considers when ranking your website in search results. A fast load speed is a huge reason why people will choose to explore your website rather than a competitor’s. Navigate to the tool PageSpeed Insights and type in your website to discover how fast (or slow) your web pages are loading.
Web page loading speed is an important factor Google considers when ranking your website in search results. A fast load speed is a huge reason why people will choose to explore your website rather than a competitor’s.
4. Other Website Features to Test
Online Forms
Inspect your online forms to confirm that they are showing up on the right pages. Then test out your forms from a customer’s viewpoint for functionality. Ensure that your company is notified when a form is submitted. And make sure that the person gets a confirmation message and is directed to a “thank you” page after they contact you if necessary. Note that thank you pages help you easily track form submissions and their sources.
Chat Tools
Test out your business’s chat tool by pretending you’re a customer. Do you receive a response quickly? Was the agent or chatbot logical and did they answer your questions?
Videos
Videos are excellent for engaging your customers and giving them an interactive experience when they visit your website. It’s essential that videos work and are appearing in the right place. Also, if your videos are loading directly in your website, consider moving them to YouTube or Vimeo and embedding them to improve site speed.
Appointment Scheduling Tools
If your website has an online booking tool, put yourself in a customer’s shoes and try to book an appointment. Are you able to select a certain time slot, a specific service, and see time slots that aren’t available to reserve? Do you get a confirmation email once you’ve booked the appointment? From your store’s perspective, are you getting notified when someone books an appointment? Are appointments syncing to the calendar tool you use so that you don’t miss an appointment or double book yourself?
Need Help with a Website Audit or Upgrade?
Don’t hesitate to contact us at Technology Therapy® Group! We’re here to make managing and updating your business’s website as stress-free as possible. And make sure to check out the following on-demand training sessions to grow your website (and web forms) know-how.
