Analyze website: How to audit your website | Decareto

Created 28. December 2022

When users arrive at a website, the user experience starts right on the home page: If the home page is not attractively designed, users are overwhelmed by content or can't find their way around, they will leave the site again. An attractive web design, relevant content and clear navigation are just a few of the factors that influence the length of time visitors spend on the site. 

You can find out whether your website meets all the requirements of visitors and also of search engines by analyzing your website. In this article we will explain how this works and which criteria need to be analyzed.

How to analyze a website?

You can analyze a website with useful analysis tools. Up to a certain point, you can check your own website by yourself, however, analysis tools give complete results, assessing not only the design of a website, but also the technical data.

Moreover, in addition to the information about web analytics and possible errors on your website, these tools also provide tips on how to fix them. Some operators of the tools also help you with the process of fixing errors.

When using these tools, please make sure that they are DSGVO compliant. Some analytics or tracking tools like Google Analytics, for example, are not privacy compliant as it collects users' personal data and transfers it to the US - this is not legally compliant according to the GDPR.

Why should one perform website analytics?

One should perform website analytics as trends and regulations are constantly changing and it is important to optimize websites regularly accordingly. Additionally, you will get an insight into the technical data and information of your website and learn about the needs of your customers.

Another advantage of website analysis is that you can also understand if your marketing strategy is successful or if it needs to be optimized again. Based on the traffic, you can see what users read through the most, how long they stay on your website and whether they come back. Accordingly, you can adjust your website.

If you want to do the analytics yourself, you need to be familiar with all web design topics and the content of the GDPR and be able to design your website accordingly. However, we advise you to optimize only superficial details yourself and let analytics tools take care of all other checks.

What are websites analyzed according to?

Websites are analyzed according to the following criteria:

  1. Navigation
  2. User-friendliness
  3. Contents
  4. Design
  5. DSGVO conformity
  6. Responsive web design
  7. Accessibility
  8. Search engine optimization
  9. Performance
  10. Traffic & Conversion Rate

Navigation

Simple website navigation is important so that visitors stay longer on the website in question. If a website is complicated to use or unclear, visitors will quickly leave without even looking at the content.

For this reason, the menu and the corresponding subpages must be easy to find and easy to understand. Make sure that you do not use too many menu items in the navigation and that the design of the menu is also displayed in a structured way in the mobile version .

User-friendliness

A website should always be built and designed for the benefit of users. For this reason, website owners should do everything to make visitors feel comfortable on their website. The main factors contributing to this are the aforementioned navigation, a design that matches the company, a smoothly functioning website, an attractive web design and a clearly recognizable search function.

Only if users can easily find exactly the content they are looking for after just a few seconds will they be happy to interact with the website, stay there longer, come back if necessary and, in the best case, benefit from your services or buy your products.

Content

When it comes to the content (media and content) of your website, you should not overdo it. Do not integrate too much continuous text or too much media content. When it comes to articles, make sure you don't provide too much information at once, leaving enough paragraphs for better readability. Bring structure to your content by using sub-headings, make sure the content is accurate and that spelling and grammar are flawless.

On the one hand, a lot of media content with high resolution affects the performance of the website - it loads slower as a result. On the other hand, make sure that the photos and videos you provide are not pixelated or of poor sound quality - this looks unprofessional.  

Please, choose only the content that adds value to the visitors and decide against non-relevant content.

Design

The design also contributes to how long users stay on a website, because the design should represent the respective company. To persuade visitors to stay, the design must be appealing, it must fit the theme or the company, the colors must not be too flashy but also not too monotonous and fonts and colors must be easy to read.

DSGVO compliance

At the latest since the General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO) came into force in 2018, the correct collection and further processing of personal data and information on websites must be followed. Accordingly, personal data of users may not be collected without their consent. 

All information on the collection and further processing of data of any kind must be recorded in the privacy policy. Companies are generally responsible for handling all collected data and confidential information in a lawful and DSGVO-compliant manner.

Responsive web design

A Responsive web design is a web design that adapts to the user's screen size - from smartphones to smart TVs. Website owners, therefore, need to ensure that any web design content displays flawlessly and works smoothly on both a large computer screen and a small smartphone.

In the context of Responsive Web Design, the navigation, content, media content and typography are especially important.

Accessibility

With an accessible web design, or also called web accessibility, you primarily help people with mental or physical disabilities to make the content and all information of your website freely accessible for them as well.

Examples of accessible web design are: 

accessible content (e.g. versions in plain language)

accessible videos (e.g. with subtitles, audio descriptions, sign language)

accessible images (e.g. spoken descriptions of images)

accessible content (e.g. screen readers)

Search engine optimization (SEO)

If you want to generate more traffic on your website, you have to optimize your website according to the ranking factors of the search engines. If you have adjusted your website accordingly, it will rank higher, which will automatically bring more visitors to your website. 

Some of these ranking factors are keyword optimized content, user experience or usability, enough backlinks and responsive web design.

Performance 

Performance refers to how efficient your website is. For example, if your website loads slowly, visitors will become impatient and leave before they've even had a chance to view it. This also affects the usability and user experience of your website.

Traffic & Conversion Rate

By analyzing the traffic on your website, you can find out from where the visitors came to your website, how many users come to your website from other links (backlinks), how much organic traffic you have on your website and many other data.  

Based on this traffic, you can then check what the ratio is between the visitors to your website and the actual revenue generated. This is called the conversion rate. The conversion rate gives you an overview of whether you should make any optimizations to your website.

What is a website analysis?

A website analysis is the examination of a website with regard to technical data (performance, etc.), appearance (web design, etc.) and user behavior (conversion rate, etc.). With the help of this analysis you can detect errors on your website and optimize it.

What is the conclusion to the website analysis?

Conducting a website analysis on a regular basis is essential to keep your website up to date, to get to know the demands of your visitors and to respond to their needs and wishes. 

Of course, a simple web analysis is not enough; optimizations must also be carried out. The best way to find out which optimizations are needed for your website is to use analysis tools. These tools can not only analyze your website, but also help you solve the problems on your website.

Author: Eckhard Schneider

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