Site Audits 2 - How to conduct an audit

— Published March 1st, 2005  |  by David Moore

In the previous article in this series, we looked at the basics of site audits, including why they're useful and the different approaches to auditing.

This time, we'll look in more detail in how to conduct a site audit, using the 'light' version of our auditing tool as a guide.

First, spend some time looking through the site you are to be auditing, noting any points that strike you initially - these can help when you come to the formal evaluation.

Then turn to the audit template (we've provided one for you below). Its criteria are divided into three main categories - content, functionality and design.

Work through the site, judging it on each of the criteria, making comments in the space provided, and ultimately giving it a mark out of five for each. Three represents an average implementation of this criterion, zero a complete absence of the criterion (for example, no search feature at all), and five a superlative implementation.

To guide you through the criteria used in this light audit (there are many more in the full audit tool we use), here's a description of the sorts of questions we're asking ourselves when we review sites using this tool:

Content

Relevance

Is it clear who this site is aimed at? Who are the audience groups? Does the content reflect the user type? (for example, is it targeted towards a general audience, but uses technical vocabulary or internal jargon)?

Web-friendly format

Is content optimised for digital delivery – including short sentences and paragraphs. Clear headings and sub headings to support scanning. Are links self-explanatory?

Accuracy

Are there mistakes in spelling, punctuation or grammar. Are there broken links?

Appropriate file formats & metadata

Many sites make use of Adobe Acrobat files (PDFs) for publications and reports. These present problems for users, who can't browse or search the information easily, and often find it hard to establish the contents of a report without having to download the file. Clear summaries help, with information on file format and size. Ideally HTML versions of documents should be included as an alternative to the PDF file.

Customer Service Information

Is organisation contact information easy to find? Are there multiple methods of contact (phone, fax, e-mail)? Is there a search function within the contact information that helps steer you to the right information? Are there FAQs or specific Help sections?

Organisational and Offering Information

Is it clear what the organisation does? Is it easy to find information on duties and services, key people, employment opportunities, structure?

Legal

Are security, privacy and terms of use policies easy to find, clear and do they build trust is the user?

Functionality

Search

Is basic search functionality accessible from every page? Is it clearly marked? Are there advanced search features that allow searching by multiple parameters. Are the results relevant, and do they give a page summary (not just the title), and other details: relevancy ratings, date, location in the site, document type information. Are the results sortable?

Transactional

Does the site offer a number of things to do on the site, including features that make the site easier to use? Is it missing any crucial functionality or can you suggest functionality that would add value to the site? Appropriate functionality could include printable versions of pages, email a friend options, email newsletter /alert subscriptions or RSS feeds for news, page rankings, downloadable forms (or better, online applications and tracking), information sharing (comment features or discussion boards), and ecommerce features.

Usability

Are users informed about what is going on with the site at all times? When an error does occur, does the site provide a helpful error message to the user. Are the objects, actions, and options a user will need at any point in plain view? Are there different ways of getting to the same place, based on context (for example main navigation, quick links from the homepage, and related links from other pages)?

Design

Navigation

Is it easy to navigate the site? Do you know where you have come from and are going? Do you ever get lost? Links should be intuitive links and self-explanatory (avoiding the common mistake of labelling links 'click here').

The site shouldn't launch additional browser windows, and the navigation should be consistent – a visitor should always being able to see the main sections, and able to see all sublevel options with a section

Information Architecture

Is information organised and arranged in a logical manner? Is information placed where you would expect to find it? There should be a logical structure that reflects user needs not the organisation's structure.

Graphic Design

Is the site visually pleasing? Does the site make the best use of the space available? Are you constantly scrolling down for content on overlong pages? There should be appropriate use of graphics (to illustrate not decorate).

Accessibility

Is the site accessible to people with disabilities? We run a Bobby test but also consider 'usable accessibility' – alternative text, sufficient colour contrast, variable text size and page width, and alternatives to any scripts or image maps.

Quick to download

Ideally, pages should take no more than 10 seconds to download on a dial-up connection, and can be improved by using optimised HTML/XHTML files, images and PDFs.

User Orientation

The user should at all times know where they are and where they came from A bread-crumb trail or 'You are here' indicator can help in this, but the navigation should also reflect location. Finally, a comprehensive site map offers another way to give assistance.

Once you've evaluated the site, add up the scores for each category. To reflect the larger number of content criteria, the approach we use applies a weighting to the Content score by doubling its importance in the final percentage.

The comments you make are as important as the scoring, but the numbers do act as a useful guide when comparing sites, and they also clearly highlight the areas that need the most attention.

The aim of the audit is to provide a snapshot of the site's performance. In the final part of this series, we'll look at creating recommendations based on the audit, and also benchmarking your site against other related sites.