Any New Year’s resolutions you have set for your business will be well-supported with a website audit. Reviewing necessary repairs and improvements could be the leveling-up you desire. Keep reading to understand how you can start your new year right with an audit of your website.
What is a website audit?
A website audit is an examination of the performance of your website. An audit can help you determine whether or not your website is optimized for the amount of traffic you are expecting to have in the new year.
In layman’s terms, a website audit is like going to a doctor to prepare yourself for a marathon. You check to see if your body is prepared for it. Or you receive suggestions on what you need to get in shape and make a plan.
What should a website audit include?
A full website audit should include marketing and sales goals, data analytics, UI/UX design, and evaluation of the CMS to see if it’s currently working with your needs and goals, usability, consistency, accessibility, content, security, and other technical aspects.
For the purpose of this article, we will concentrate on the importance of evaluating the technical aspects of a WordPress website audit, such as security, performance, coding standards, vulnerabilities, speed, and checking the most updated versions of plugins, themes, and WordPress.
Technical Evaluation
Why is a technical evaluation important? What’s in it for the business?
A technical evaluation is important because if the website has aspects that do not function properly, your users (audience/clients) may not be able to achieve their main objective of visiting your website. They will leave, and you want your company to stand out among your competitors.
How long does a technical evaluation take?
We know that time is money, so it is essential to highlight that a technical website audit usually takes between 2-4 weeks, depending on the size and complexity of your website. It will usually start with diagnosing your site, which includes scanning your URL to detect any viruses and malware, which is any malicious code that allows unauthorized access to your site, that hackers might have installed.
What does a website audit entail?
A website audit from WebDevStudios means we examine or look within all your posts, pages, and comments for malicious codes or URLs and create a report. This gives us more insight into your website’s performance, including technical SEO, page speed, user experience scored, and security.
Other items we look for during a website audit are:
- A diagnosis of your site’s health to analyze any critical information about your core configuration and even get more granular to the level of reviewing other technical aspects of your website, such as the theme you are currently using.
- An evaluation of the installed plugins and the media and determine if these are up to date and hurting your website’s speed.
- Reviewing the code to determine any errors within it.
Besides checking the items previously mentioned, it is vital to check the integrity of your files. The main objective of this is to detect any file changes in the operating system and web servers.
During this process, “fingerprints” of your site’s files are evaluated and then compared the files against WordPress original files to determine if any files have been changed.
Accessibility Matters
Accessibility is another important component of your website audit, an often overlooked element. Auditing accessibility matters because you want your website to be accessible to people with disabilities, like website visitors who are blind, have hearing problems, have cognitive impairments, and such. Make sure that people with different abilities can access your website.
When should you have a website audit?
Performing an audit is recommended when:
- Changing the website company that helps you maintain and support your website
- You are not obtaining leads from your website
- You are an eCommerce site and want to make sure that your client’s information is secured
- Your website is not ranking in search engines
Sometimes malicious code or files are encrypted or hidden, making it hard to be caught at first glance. Therefore you require professionals to ensure that any encrypted code is malicious or not without breaking your site.
Detecting issues at an early stage is very important. Doing so allows you to mitigate and limit any attack or damage. With a new year approaching, we suggest starting your 2023 off right with a website audit.
Take a moment to spot issues before they become a real threat to the security or functionality of your website. Contact WebDevStudios to schedule your next website audit.
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