Website Audit

Whenever we start working on a project involving an existing site we like to perform a website audit as the first task. Performing an audit shows you what’s under the hood of your website. An audit gives us a ton of information about the performance, security, and general stability of the site.

Code Audit

Code reviews are meticulous examinations of some or all of the code running the site. These are often performed on custom plugins or themes but can be applied wherever there’s code. We’re looking for several things with a code audit. First, we want to make sure that the code is following best practices and that we don’t see any security vulnerabilities. Next, we’re looking for consistency and efficiency with the code. Additionally, we’re reviewing how the code is documented. Knowing that the next step is most likely changes to this code we want to be sure we can find our way around what’s there.

General Website Audit

Site reviews take a holistic approach where we look at the various components of the site and make sure they’re supporting one another. We want to understand the plugins and theme in play and look for any glaring issues. We’ll make recommendations to fix any problems we find as well as suggest possible points for improvement. We’re specifically looking for improvements to speed, security, and usability.

Other Audits

While these are the most common website audits that we perform regularly, it’s not an exhaustive list. We’ve completed form audits, database audits, and SEO audits for clients. Understanding the underlying functional components of the problem you’re trying to solve is the best way to go about making changes.

Website Audit Deliverables

When we complete any type of audit we make sure to provide a deliverable. Typically this is a PDF file documenting our findings and providing recommendations to fix problems, improve existing features, or to perform additional investigations. We think this is an important step in the auditing process. We never want a client to feel that we’re not making the best use of the time we quote for the audit.

Website Audit Document

This document makes us accountable for the investigation we undertook. Additionally, it frees our clients to pursue the recommendations that we provide in the best way for their situation. We’re always happy to make changes that are needed, but they may also have internal teams that can perform some basic tasks like removing a conflicting plugin. Finally, the audits can serve us as a discovery phase, providing the starting point for the development effort to come.

Because Knowing is Half the Battle

Taking the time to get more information is a great way to make informed decisions about the work that you’re doing and give you direction for those efforts.