Website Analysis: do it in 6 simple questions

Have you ever wondered if your website is performing as it should? Do you want to thoroughly evaluate it for improvement but don’t know where to start or what to focus on?

These are legitimate questions, especially because a company’s website is one of its primary assets on the World Wide Web: it is crucial for building credibility and revenue over time. It’s your “digital showcase,” the first impression you make to potential clients.

Analyze your website by answering these 6 simple questions and you’ll be able to clearly and thoroughly define strengths to build on and areas for improvement.

1. Is the website indexed in search engines?

This is a crucial question for anyone with a web presence, especially for those doing business online. Search engines like Google are the primary access point for information worldwide: when we search for something online, we enter keywords and rely on Google to display the most relevant and authoritative pages.

That’s why it’s important for your website to appear among the top results when someone searches for topics or products related to your business. This way, you can capture a significant portion of potential customers when they express interest.

How can you determine if your website has the right visibility in Google search results?

• Try searching with your brand name and your product or service. If your site appears among the top 5-10 results, it’s a good start, but there’s room for improvement. Some SEO strategies can further index your site.
• To dive deeper and keep track of indexing, you can connect your site to Google Search Console. This tool helps you see how many and which pages are indexed, any errors or warnings to address and more.

PS: If your site isn’t visible on Google, even when using the “site:www.yourwebsite.com” command in the search bar, you may have indexing issues to investigate. For example, some pages might have “noindex” tags, or there may be improperly configured 301 redirects that exclude them from search results.

2. Does the site offer interesting content?

Unfortunately, it’s not enough for a website to be technically sound and properly indexed; it also needs to provide high-quality content that people find useful, interesting and engaging. Otherwise, they’ll leave after just a few seconds. For example:

• Pages shouldn’t have overly long and heavy texts that are difficult to read, nor should they be too short and lacking in information. Good content strikes a balance: it explores the topic thoroughly but in a smooth and relevant manner.
• Depending on the topic, it can be helpful to include multimedia elements like images, infographics, videos or links to other pages. These make the reading experience more enjoyable and help users better understand the message.

A great way to identify content gaps is to compare your site with those of major competitors. See how they structure information, which topics they delve into and what multimedia formats they use.

Tools like SEOZoom can assist in keyword research and finding user-relevant topics, but they also allow you to check if your site has been linked on other websites, blogs, or online channels. The more inbound backlinks you receive from reliable and high-quality sources, the better your chances of ranking higher for even competitive keywords.

3. Does the site attract and engage users?

Having a well-indexed site with good content is only half the battle; the other half is ensuring that it generates traffic. In other words, you need visitors who are interested in what you offer and who stay on your site, browsing multiple pages and taking relevant actions.

There are many useful tools, such as Google Analytics, that can track user traffic on your website in detail. For example, you can analyze:

• The number of sessions and page views: If these numbers are consistently increasing, it means your content is effective and convinces people to return.
• The average session duration: Indicates how long users stay on your site before exiting. The longer it is, the more interesting your content appears.
• The bounce rate: The percentage of visitors who leave the site after viewing only one page. Having a small bounce rate is normal, but if the majority of users bounce, it likely means your content isn’t meeting their expectations.

4. Does the site load quickly?

Today’s web users are demanding (and a bit impatient, let’s admit it!). They want to find the information they’re looking for immediately, without waiting for pages, images or videos to load.

This is why website speed is crucial, both for user satisfaction and search engine rankings. Statistically, after just 3 seconds of waiting, 1 out of 2 people will abandon a page that hasn’t loaded!

Furthermore, Google has stated that it considers loading speed an important signal for determining, when content is equal, which site is better than the other.

How can you easily check your website’s loading speed?

• Google provides PageSpeed Insights, a free tool for evaluating one or more pages of your site. By entering the URL, the tool provides specific scores on performance and loading speed, along with suggestions for optimization.

5. Is the site user-friendly?

Until now, we’ve mainly focused on technical aspects: indexing, content, performance. But the ultimate test for a website is how easily a visitor can achieve their goals within its pages.

For example, one of the most significant challenges is Layout Shift, the annoying shifting or bouncing of elements while a page loads. Or using text that’s too small, colors with insufficient contrast, or buttons placed in unintuitive locations. Not to mention the various potential barriers for people with motor or visual disabilities.

In short, User Experience determines whether users can smoothly and pleasantly navigate various sections, find the information they’re looking for, make a purchase, proceed to contact you — or if they get lost, bored, annoyed and ultimately abandon the site.

There are some useful tools for identifying these issues:

• The “Accessibility” section of PageSpeed Insights, mentioned earlier.
• Hotjar, a tracking tool that records user movements on pages (such as clicks, taps and scrolls) to highlight areas where they encounter difficulties.

6. Is the site shared on other channels?

In addition to all these fundamental points, there’s one last aspect not to underestimate: promotion on other digital communication channels. No matter how “perfect” a website may be, it will remain somewhat isolated if its existence isn’t shared.

Here are some ideas for promoting your website on other marketing channels:

• Share content through social media like Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.
• Send a company newsletter with links to pages or articles.
• Plan PPC campaigns with Google Ads to promote specific sections.

As professionals in integrated digital communication, Antartika specializes in Integreation Marketing: an innovative method of promoting your company by strengthening your online presence, not only by optimizing the site for all the aspects mentioned earlier, but also by implementing a strategy across different channels and coordinating the message on multiple fronts.

To assess whether your website is functioning correctly, if it can achieve its intended goals and how it can be improved, we start with the Integreation Launch: an in-depth consultation for your company that includes three brainstorming sessions guided by our experts with all your key decision-makers.

From this process, you’ll gain greater awareness of your website’s actual status and marketing activities, on which we can develop a concrete and actionable strategic plan.

If you want to professionally evaluate your website and use Digital Marketing tools in an integrated strategy, contact us for a free consultation and to know more about our working method!