Website Audit

A website audit's only job is to name what's costing conversions, in order of impact, with a specific fix for each. Most audits fail because they read like design critiques — "the navigation could feel cleaner" — instead of conversion diagnoses. The skill works through six dimensions in order of conversion impact: clarity, credibility, persuasion, friction, accessibility, technical. Clarity gets the heaviest weight because no amount of beautiful design rescues a page where a visitor can't tell what's on offer in five seconds.

The five-second test is the opening filter. If a stranger saw the page for five seconds and it disappeared, could they say what it's about, who it's for, and what to do next? Any "no" is a Priority 1 fix. From there the audit checks headline specificity, value proposition placement above the fold, navigation density, social proof presence and quality, authority signals, the I-feel-seen moment in the first scroll, objection handling, copy ratio of "you" to "we," form friction, CTA copy and placement, mobile experience at 375px, contrast ratios against WCAG AA, keyboard navigability, alt text, and load performance.

Every recommendation has the same shape: the problem, the impact with severity, the exact fix (including the rewrite if it's a copy issue), and a before-and-after example. "Improve the headline" isn't a recommendation. "Replace H1 'Empowering Leaders' with 'Coaching for First-Time Engineering Managers' because the current version is abstract and fails the five-second test" is. The output gets sorted into Priority 1 (fix now, biggest impact), Priority 2 (high-impact this week), and Priority 3 (polish and compound gains over time), so the user knows where to start and what can wait.

The audit acknowledges what's working before listing what isn't — partly because morale matters, mostly because change-for-change's-sake recommendations are how audits lose credibility. If the headline is strong, the audit says so and moves on. The closing scorecard rates all six dimensions 1-10 with a one-line summary, so the user can see at a glance which dimension is dragging the page down. Output is the full prioritised report ready to hand to a client or implement directly — the recommendations are written to be actioned without further consultation.