Why is a site audit useless for 99% of small businesses?
This is a somewhat provocative article in which the most important part will be your comments, dear habrovchane. To begin, let's see what kind of audit and small business we are talking about.
My experience with regional and federal companies (and there have been several hundred of them in my career for almost 15 years) shows that despite the production volumes and the number of full-time employees, sales and marketing departments are either represented by 1-2 employees or by the business owners themselves.
The owner is often well versed in production, but does not understand sales. And marketers - quite the opposite. But everyone sees the problem of low sales in the site, so they order an audit. SEO, usability, technical, integrated. Which one No matter.
If the customer turns to an expert opinion, in most cases this is a signal that everything is already bad. And here it is not a site audit that is required, but an analysis of the situation in which the company finds itself. The site is just a "boiling point", because development and promotion are usually outsourced and it is impossible to control these processes 100%.
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That is, there are no visible problems on the part of the business owner of the enterprise (the machines work, people plow), and the developers and other SEOs are to blame. That is why the website audit is ordered.
What is the main problem with the obtained audits?
A cheap audit will not help. There will be no time for detailed analysis and the main content will be “water” or general phrases without arguments and examples.
Expensive and detailed documents, or there is no one to implement, or 90% of them contain something that will give only 10% of the result. This is not only expensive, but also long - from 2 weeks of work of a specialist (and we remember that everything is already bad). To delve into commas when your sales have risen - death is like.
Audits are largely about numbers, conversion, dynamics. The thing is that most small businesses get a very modest audience on their website. Therefore, it is important to study not the number of orders, calls, letters, and their content. The fewer customers you have, the higher the value of each of them. On the conversion here is generally useless to say, because “Attempts” of its increase by 3% -5% when the number of purchases is 100 per month is ridiculous.
The site and the enterprise often live their individual lives. Therefore, the expert sees only the picture, and what business processes go within the company, he does not know. In my opinion, the site is the image of the company on the Internet, so if everything is good inside, then the site will be more or less normal.
As a result, what the customer receives as a result of the analysis is not the final document, but only the assumptions and conclusions of the expert. Which, as I said above, often does not understand the client’s business and may receive an incorrect “introduction”. Therefore, for me, an audit is a long-term two-way consultation, and not “made, handed over and forgotten.”
Two main points:
The thought that I want to convey to business owners: in a situation when everything is bad, you do not need to choose between the types of audits - complex, usability, SEO and others.
You need to stop, look around and spend a couple of days analyzing where you are, where you want to come. And an expert will help to understand whether your expectations are real, and if so, what finances, terms and tools will be suitable for this.
Two days of analytics instead of running around and “routine” will not worsen anything. Just one fresh look from the outside will help to avoid collapse. And it will be relatively fast and inexpensive.
My experience with regional and federal companies (and there have been several hundred of them in my career for almost 15 years) shows that despite the production volumes and the number of full-time employees, sales and marketing departments are either represented by 1-2 employees or by the business owners themselves.
The owner is often well versed in production, but does not understand sales. And marketers - quite the opposite. But everyone sees the problem of low sales in the site, so they order an audit. SEO, usability, technical, integrated. Which one No matter.
If the customer turns to an expert opinion, in most cases this is a signal that everything is already bad. And here it is not a site audit that is required, but an analysis of the situation in which the company finds itself. The site is just a "boiling point", because development and promotion are usually outsourced and it is impossible to control these processes 100%.
')
That is, there are no visible problems on the part of the business owner of the enterprise (the machines work, people plow), and the developers and other SEOs are to blame. That is why the website audit is ordered.
What is the main problem with the obtained audits?
A cheap audit will not help. There will be no time for detailed analysis and the main content will be “water” or general phrases without arguments and examples.
Expensive and detailed documents, or there is no one to implement, or 90% of them contain something that will give only 10% of the result. This is not only expensive, but also long - from 2 weeks of work of a specialist (and we remember that everything is already bad). To delve into commas when your sales have risen - death is like.
Audits are largely about numbers, conversion, dynamics. The thing is that most small businesses get a very modest audience on their website. Therefore, it is important to study not the number of orders, calls, letters, and their content. The fewer customers you have, the higher the value of each of them. On the conversion here is generally useless to say, because “Attempts” of its increase by 3% -5% when the number of purchases is 100 per month is ridiculous.
The site and the enterprise often live their individual lives. Therefore, the expert sees only the picture, and what business processes go within the company, he does not know. In my opinion, the site is the image of the company on the Internet, so if everything is good inside, then the site will be more or less normal.
As a result, what the customer receives as a result of the analysis is not the final document, but only the assumptions and conclusions of the expert. Which, as I said above, often does not understand the client’s business and may receive an incorrect “introduction”. Therefore, for me, an audit is a long-term two-way consultation, and not “made, handed over and forgotten.”
Two main points:
- Unfulfilled expectations. The client sees the problem in the site and wants to get a magic pill, and as a result he sees a text of 30-40 pages, which is useless for him.
- The site is just one of the communication channels. And not always the most important. Often, you need a full analysis of the subject or an alternative solution, as a result of which you can get a quick result for sane money (for example, you can not tear your ass for the top 10, but advertise on sites that are already there).
The thought that I want to convey to business owners: in a situation when everything is bad, you do not need to choose between the types of audits - complex, usability, SEO and others.
You need to stop, look around and spend a couple of days analyzing where you are, where you want to come. And an expert will help to understand whether your expectations are real, and if so, what finances, terms and tools will be suitable for this.
Two days of analytics instead of running around and “routine” will not worsen anything. Just one fresh look from the outside will help to avoid collapse. And it will be relatively fast and inexpensive.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/337660/
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