A Website Audit Checklist That Starts With Your Customers

We've written before about why most website audits miss the point. That piece ended on three questions: who are your most important customers, does your site match how you actually sell, and what is a visitor worth? This checklist is how we answer them.

It works from two sides. One is your business: who your customers are and how each one moves through your site. The other is everyone else: what people actually type when they're looking for what you do. Most of what's worth fixing sits where those two don't meet.

It won't give you a score. It'll give you a short list of what to fix first. There's also a version you can tick off as you go.

The two sides

Your customers and their journeys

Start with your customers. Write a short persona for each kind of person you serve, then check that each one has a place to land, at minimum a page written for them.

That page has a job: qualify or disqualify, fast. The right person should read the top of it and think "that's me," and the wrong one should know to move on.

From there, each layer is an invitation to learn more. The next layer helps them confirm you're the right fit before they ever get in touch. By the second or third layer, give something away for free, like a guide, a worked example or a calculator, so they leave better off even if they never contact you.

Navigation that follows the journeys

Your journeys decide how the site is organised. Check that every page has more than one way in and more than one way onward, so someone who lands on a blog post can find their pillar page, and someone on a pillar page can go deeper. Navigation that follows the journeys lets people choose how far to go.

What people actually search for

Now look at it from the other side. Find out what people actually search for when they need what you do, and how often. They'll often use different words from you.

Ideally, one page does both jobs: it's a persona's landing point, and it answers a common search. Sometimes a search deserves its own page or article. Either way, it has to be genuinely useful to that searcher, not a rewrite of what the big marketing blogs already say.

Not sure what you rank for, or which pages you're missing? We can run an SEO audit for you.

Choosing which searches to go after

You won't win every search, so pick your battles. Weigh how many people search for a phrase against how hard it is to rank for. The best targets are longer, more specific phrases with steady demand and little competition.

For one of our own articles, we passed on "business process mapping," which gets far more searches but is dominated by software companies, and went for "workflow mapping," a smaller phrase we could actually win.

What the page does

Copy and design

Check that each journey is addressed in clear, concise language. Then look at how the page carries it. People scan more than they read, and they take in images and short headings almost without noticing, so design does as much work as the words.

Watch for pages and sections that were added over time without fitting the whole, and long walls of text with nothing to break them up. Then ask the bigger question. You've hired good people and set up your space to show the quality of what you deliver. Does your site carry that through, or does it feel like a mismatch?

Proof and pricing

If you have social proof, like reviews, testimonials or client logos, put some of it in the top third of the page. That's what people expect now.

If you can give a starting price, give one. It qualifies people in both directions. Someone on a much smaller budget knows before either of you spends time on a call, and someone who expects to pay for quality sees a number that reassures them rather than makes them wonder what's missing.

The plumbing

The technical basics

A few basics still matter. Use headings properly, one main heading per page and clear subheadings that match what people search for. Check that pages load quickly, and that everything works well on a phone.

The end of the journey

Then go through it yourself. Book the call, request the quote, start the trial, whatever your main next step is. It should feel as easy as booking on Airbnb or buying on Amazon. Third-party tools are fine, as long as the handoff is smooth and nobody has to stop and think.

Then follow what happens after. Who gets the enquiry, how quickly, and what should the customer expect to hear back? All of that should be decided, not guessed.

Measurement

Make sure some analytics are running on the site. Privacy-friendly options exist that don't need a cookie banner. Connect Google Search Console too, and check it against the searches you're going after, so you can see whether you're actually showing up.

Then keep looking. None of this works if it's set up and forgotten. Someone needs time on the calendar to review it regularly.

Ownership

Finally, can the people who need to update your site actually do it? And when they do, does it still look like one site? The answer usually isn't more freedom or less. It's a set of building blocks and styles that everyone works within. We've written more about that in Every Project Starts with a Style Guide.

Putting it in order

Once you've been through the list, put what you've found in order.

Critical: anything that blocks someone who's ready to act. Unclear entry points to your sales process, or a booking or checkout step that's clunky or broken.

High: gaps that cost you customers you never see. Missing pages for a type of customer, searches you should show up for and don't, or a site that doesn't match the quality of your work.

Medium: real problems that can wait, like a slow page or a missing testimonial.

Most of this you can do yourself in an afternoon. If you'd rather walk through it with us, that's how every project starts, before anyone talks about scope. Tell us about your business, or see how we price the work that follows.