Six situations where the audit changes the decision
An audit earns its keep when a decision is coming: to invest, to sign, to rebuild, to fix. Yours is probably below.
Working out why nothing is coming in
The site is live, it cost you time and money, and yet there are few visits, few enquiries, few sales. There are plenty of possible explanations: invisible to search engines, too slow on a phone, a contact journey that breaks, a message that fails to reassure. Each one calls for a different fix.
The audit cross-checks the 9 pillars to find where it stalls, puts a number on each finding, and tells what leaves you exposed from what can wait. You know where to start, and why.
Before a rebuild
Rebuild without measuring what exists and you risk paying twice: once to rebuild what worked, once to reproduce what failed. The audit establishes what the current site does well and should keep, what it does badly and should fix, and what is missing.
The report becomes part of the specification: measurable requirements to hold the quotes you receive up against. And after the rebuild, a second measurement under the same weighting puts a number on what the project actually delivered.
Checking what you pay for
You pay every month for your site (hosting, maintenance, search work) on the strength of reports you cannot check. That is normal enough: everyone has their own trade. It just deserves an outside look now and then.
The report establishes what is actually in place, with measurements behind it, and with no ties to whoever looks after it: we are not angling to take over the contract. Hand it on unchanged to your provider, because that is what it is written for: the summary to decide with, the page-by-page analysis to fix from.
Buying a site or a business
When a business is bought, its site is part of the asset, and sometimes it is almost the whole of it. Yet what you can visit in five minutes says nothing about what search engines make of it, what it depends on, or what the law already requires of it.
The audit gives you, before you sign, the real state of what you are buying: what can be fixed cheaply, what will cost, what weighs on the value. Dated, methodical leverage you can put in the file.
Raising funds, reassuring a partner
An investor, a commercial partner, a large account: all of them examine your online presence before committing, and some have it audited. Better to find out what they will see before they do.
The report gives a dated, signed and methodical picture: something to fix before the deadline, or to put in the file to show that you know where you stand. The logic of the scoring is public, and every score is justified.
Meeting your obligations
Legal notice, cookie information, personal data, accessibility: obligations already apply to your site, large or small. Most of the failures we record are oversights rather than choices.
The report records, point by point, what your site displays and what is missing against what the law requires. It checks what is public, not your internal documents, and it is neither a certificate nor legal advice: it gives you the factual list to act on, with your adviser if need be.
Not seeing your situation?
Send us two lines about what you are trying to find out. We will tell you whether the audit answers it, and if it does not, we will say so.