Your website is almost always the most important part of your digital marketing mix. It’s the only bit of digital real estate that you actually ‘own’, you are in complete control of it, and there is no excuse for it to be shoddy. You only get one chance to make a first impression, after all.

So what’s your website like?

And what would a checklist for a digital marketing audit even look like? It depends to certain extent on why people visit your website. Everyone’s website is different and you need to apply your own experience to create the ideal audit. Fortunately for you, I have found that a really easy way to organise your thinking around this is the Value Proposition Canvas

First: imagine the most important person who is going to visit your website today. They might be the person who spends the most money, or the person who needs what you’ve got the most. Or a super-talented person looking for a new job.

Then, imagine the most important things they want to do on your website. Then put these jobs in order from most important to least important. This is called ‘Jobs to be done’.

This important person’s list of jobs to be done might look something like this:

  • Get your phone number
  • Get your email address
  • Make an appointment
  • Find out if you might be a suitable supplier for them
  • Find out why you are so special
  • Buy something
  • Browse your products
  • Find out your address
  • See your opening hours
  • Find out how much you cost
  • Find out where they can buy your products
  • Order a replacement part
  • Find out the answer to an important question
  • Ask for a job

OK, that’s a good list.

Next: try to come up with some wins that you could give them while they are on your website. Think about how you might ‘surprise and delight’ them while they get their work done.

E.g.

  • Make them laugh
  • Give them a discount
  • Greet them by their name
  • Offer them something valuable for free
  • Give them something valuable they can’t get anywhere else
  • Give them some gossip

OK, there are some good wins there. I would certainly be happy even if I only got one or two of those.

Now, the bit that we all dread… think about what might be really painful for them about visiting your website.

Think about what you hate about browsing websites. Stuff like this:

  • Slow to load
  • Difficult to find in search engines
  • Hard domain name to type in
  • Difficult to find what you are looking for
  • Confusing navigation
  • Hard to use on a mobile device
  • Warnings about security issues
  • Annoying pop-ups that get in the way and don’t add much value
  • Text that is hard to read
  • Inconsistent pricing
  • Incomplete contact information
  • Confusing branding, e.g. logos that keep changing, making your wonder if you’re still on the same website.
  • Videos that automatically start playing with loud music (Wow, I really hate that!)

I’m sure all of these are familiar to anyone who has spent any time at all looking at websites.

Now we have the basis for a pretty thorough digital marketing audit, and that’s only taken us about 15 to 20 minutes to work up a checklist.

The next part is to step through your website and see how many of the above you can tick off. Get someone else to do it, too. Compare notes, and very quickly you should have a good list to take to your web developer to start making those overdue much-needed improvements to your website. 

Have fun and good luck! And if you need any help with any of this stuff, talk to us. Even better, visit our website and tell us how we can improve it for you!