Website Design Audit Checklist Template

An audit of your website design involves conducting a comprehensive examination of its content, structure and functionality to identify any necessary improvements to enhance its user experience. Our checklist template can help you evaluate what changes need to be made immediately to your online presence and prioritize those which must take place over time.

This checklist requires access to your CMS, Google Search Console, a mobile device and some essential tools such as Semrush or the free tool Google Lighthouse.

1. User Experience

As part of your design audit, this initial phase examines what users want from your site. The aim is to make it as user-friendly as possible while encouraging visitors to complete specific actions, like making purchases or subscribing for regular subscriptions.

This could include anything from navigation and layout of pages to whether or not your site is mobile-friendly. When documenting any issue that impacts user experience (low, medium or high), and recommended improvements.

At this stage of your design audit, it is time to put on your appraiser hat, and evaluate how easy it is for visitors to recognize and diagnose issues that might cause them to leave your website. Error messages should be clear and helpful instead of obscure and confusing; product documentation must help customers complete desired tasks efficiently; getting these aspects right will reduce frustration, ambiguity and abandonment among customers.

2. Content

Content on your website is what drives search traffic, conversions and SEO efforts. A website audit will reveal any missed opportunities or misguided practices that might hinder these efforts; and help refocus content strategy towards users rather than search engines – thus helping avoid being lured by trendy SEO techniques.

Your website boasts relevant, up-to-date content that is logically organized according to Jakob Nielsen’s Inverted Pyramid principle and formatted using short paragraphs with white space and relevant pictures where applicable. Forms should be clearly labeled, contain minimal fields and optimized so they sync up seamlessly with CRM tools or marketing automation platforms; popups/live chat should only appear where it makes sense and only appear where needed.

This light audit provides all of the elements of a full website design audit but focuses solely on your primary business pages (home, about, products/services and contact). This initial examination can quickly catch any obvious mistakes or easy solutions prior to conducting your full site audit.

3. Design

Just as an appraiser examines a home before assessing its value, a website design audit involves placing yourself both Google’s and users’ shoes; as well as your regular work boots. You will examine site structure, pages audited, technical SEO efforts implemented (pop-ups/live chat), technical SEO strategies implemented as well as any pop-ups/live chat features or pop-unders.

An effective design audit is also the ideal opportunity to revamp outdated branding and strengthen search engine rankings. Utilizing tools such as Crazy Egg’s heatmaps can help identify any areas on your site where users may be getting lost, while UsabilityHub can perform click and navigation tests to assess whether or not your designs effectively conveying their messages.

This process can be made much simpler if you use the appropriate software solution that can perform an in-depth website audit quickly, generate reports for white labeling and presentation to clients – try SEOptimer now for free and see what it can do for you!

4. Technology

Even the most robust websites could use some extra TLC every now and then. Website audits provide you with the opportunity to reassess your content marketing arsenal and refine areas that require extra care on your site.

As Google’s search algorithms evolve, so too do its requirements for successful online presence. A website audit ensures that your site adheres to best practices and stays abreast of trending issues.

This website audit assessment assesses the hidden components of your site to detect errors or technical issues that could be hurting its SEO and conversion rates. This includes broken links, error codes, long page load times and duplicate content – which all serve to drive away visitors – broken security, mobile compatibility as well as keyword usage/distribution data to measure how optimized your website is for search engines.