Site Audits 3 - Benchmarking and recommendations

— Published March 22nd, 2005  |  by David Moore

In the previous two months we've looked at why you should carry out a site audit, and how best to do it. This month, we conclude the series by exploring how to make best use of the information you've gained from the audit.

Recommendations

The audit should have highlighted a range of issues, but not all the problems are as important as each other, or as easy to fix. To pin down this information, first examine each problem to determine:

• the number of people affected (a minor problem on the homepage is more important than the same problem deep in the site)
• the severity of the problem (if it drastically affects even a small number of visitors' experience of the site, then it's probably worth fixing)

From this, you can establish a hierarchy of problems. Now you need to think about the recommendations for their solution. How would you fix the most serious problems, and what resources (time, people and skills) will be required?

Asking how difficult the problem will be to fix (is it a simple tweak to a stylesheet, or a major rebuild?) is the final step towards drawing up a prioritised list of recommendations that you can start to implement. We often just use two categories:

• Priority 1 - work to be done immediately, either because of the importance of the problem, or because of how easy it is to fix
• Priority 2 - longer-term redevelopment work (most often requiring major restructuring or rebuilding), or minor unimportant fixes that can wait

Once the work on either category has been done, it might well be worth conducting another audit, to check the level of improvement you've achieved.

Benchmarking

So far, we've talked about conducting audits on only site at a time. But sites don't exist in a vacuum, and it's often very useful to audit your own site in conjunction with two or three of your competitors. The statistical data collected in an audit makes a comparative approach very effective.

Comparing the scores for the different categories (combined with the related comments) allows you to carry out a version of the standard business school SWOT analysis: looking at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Where are you strong, where are you outperformed, where could you clearly differentiate yourselves, and what do you need to be wary of?

Good benchmarking should also produce some valuable recommendations.

Conclusion

The tendency in site redevelopment is to assume that we all know what problems we're trying to fix, so let's just get on and fix them. In reality, this is rarely the case.

A structured audit process like the one we've outlined over the last few months is a valuable tool in developing a solid road map for site improvement.