How to Analyse a Website

Knowing how to analyse a website and its data is an aspect of web design and web development that is often forgotten or treated as unimportant. However, a good business and, by extension, its website, will only be successful and efficient through the testing and evaluation of all its processes. This article will therefore highlight how to analyse a website and how this critical analysis of the website can lead to greater growth and performance.

Website analysis, as the name suggests, is an analytical process undertaken to test and review the performance of a website through gathered data from factors such as search engine optimisation (SEO), user experience, website speed, traffic and consumer behaviour. Your website can often be the first brand touchpoint your customer may interact with, so enhancing user experience and ensuring that every element of your website encourages your customer to come back is vital to the success of your business. This can only be achieved through the critical analysis of a website and its data.

1. Define the focus of your analysis
   The process of analysing your entire website and all its elements can be a huge task. Doing this large-scale analysis on a regular basis may prove to be a waste of resources or simply not possible. Therefore, it is essential to set out a goal each time you carry out a website analysis. For example, say you recently noticed a drop in page rankings for one of your webpages that has continued to perform well. Now you are aware of what to analyse and how to collect the data.
   
   
   
2. Create a benchmark
   Identifying an ideal instance or a benchmark for your website analysis will help guide you and ensure you are working towards the right direction. For example, in the case of page rankings, perhaps your benchmark is to appear within the top two search results. Collecting and analysing your data with this goal in mind will help you judge the gap that exists and how to fix it.
   
   
   
3. Outline the methodology
   The methodology of your analysis will determine how you are actually going to conduct the analysis, how the data will be collected and how this data will then be evaluated. For example, if you analysed a competitor’s website, remember to outline how you identified which competitors to analyse. This could be based on geographic location, specific blog content that is relevant to your field, or they could be your direct business competitor. Including information on how this competitor data is also evaluated will provide deeper insight.
   
   
   
4. Collect the data
   Once you have determined how to analyse the website, it's time to collect the data. A good place to begin is by conducting a site audit and running a quality assurance test. This can be done by using a range of software platforms and tools such as Google Analytics, Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush, among others. Make sure that all the data collected is in similar formats for better and more uniform evaluation.
   
   
   
5. Analyse the data and review it
   This is a crucial stage in conducting a critical analysis of a website. Analysing the gathered data to ascertain the performance of the various elements of the website. It is important to identify what is functioning efficiently, what is not working at all, what needs to improve and finally, what new ideas can be introduced to catapult the website and business to higher levels of success.
   
   
   
6. Make it a regular habit
   The most important stage in the website and data analysis process is to conduct it on a periodic basis. This will ensure your website is relevant to the audience and provides the best user experience possible. It will also help ensure that implemented changes are performing as expected and will help identify further adjustments that might need to be made. This approach will make sure growth is at the centre of your business and website ideology, in turn ensuring that your business continues to succeed and run as efficiently as possible.

The ultimate benefits of conducting a regular website and data analysis are threefold – to increase traffic, in order to increase conversions and finally, to increase revenue as a result. This may not always be the norm, but conventionally most businesses and their websites operate on this pattern. However, there are numerous other advantages of a website analysis as well, and they are as follows -

A highly efficient and successful website will be one that balances the strategic and technical components. The technical components include the site speed, the navigation, functioning links and the site architecture. In comparison, the strategic components include the objectives of the business and the objectives of the website itself; what customer need or pain point will the website solve?

The technical aspects must ultimately align and ensure the successful achievement of the strategic aspects, such as the website and business objectives. For example, if the goal of the website is to increase sales in order to increase the revenue of the business, the technical components, such as site speed and navigation to ensure purchasing through just a few clicks is easy, form the foundation of achieving this goal. As the nature of a website is highly dynamic, this critical analysis of the website must be conducted on a periodic basis in order to constantly measure and ascertain the performance and alignment of the strategic and technical elements.

Search Engine Optimisation is a collection of processes that are designed to improve and optimise the positioning and appearance of webpages in organic search results. The process of SEO will typically encompass keyword research, link building, page optimisation, site audits, reporting and rank tracking, among others. A good place to begin is as follows -

Backlink analysis:

This will enable you to discover and evaluate internal and external pages that link to your website. A backlink analysis, in certain cases, will also allow you to compare your backlink profile with that of a competitor. Most SEO platforms such as Moz, Ahrefs, and Semrush will have these features.

On-page SEO:

This aspect analyses your website and will help review common technical problems that may affect the website's performance on search engines. Google search console is a great tool for how to analyse your website's on-page SEO.

SERP ranking:

This analysis will show you the various pages your website is ranking for, the keywords you are targeting and their position on search engines such as Google and Bing. Depending on the tool you use, your results may slightly vary. For example, a platform like SERPchecker will evaluate your website's performance based on a specific keyword you have chosen. In comparison, a platform like Ahrefs will show you the various keywords your pages are ranking for.

Search engine crawlers, as well as users, enjoy fast websites. Periodically analysing your website speed in accordance with page load times is crucial for not just SEO performance but also to attract and keep customers engaged. There is nothing more frustrating that a slow website! Improvements can be made on common elements that affect loading speed such as large images, inefficient code and too many plugins. Google PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom are common efficient tools to utilise. It would be advantageous to consider the various devices your audience would use; with mobile devices quickly taking over, a responsive website is highly recommended!

The user experience of your website is an element that can be vastly different from any of your competitors. This aspect, therefore, is a combination of the human element of preference and behaviour along with the technical aspects of navigation, function and design. Developing good UI and UX will reinforce your brand image and ensure your audience returns to your website.

As mentioned previously, analysing a competitor’s website is a necessity to evaluate the strategic direction of your own website and business. It is important to keep an eye on what relevant leaders within each market are carrying out. This will help establish whether you are performing on par with your competitors or if there are gaps in the market that your competitor is filling, but you aren’t.

Examining organic traffic and customer demographics is always a great place to begin. Conducting an entire competitor analysis every single time you run a website analysis may prove to be a cumbersome process and a waste of resources, so it might be advantageous to instead conduct this aspect on an occasional basis. Just remember not to overlook it completely!

Conducting a critical analysis of a website with all the technical aspects like SEO, site speed, site architecture and competitor evaluation is vital. However, what is often overlooked is that this alone will not help achieve a competitive edge. This is because of the basic fact that your competitors are conducting the very same analysis with the same platforms and tools.

Identifying the truly unique element will help you stand apart. This element is understanding your audience. Understanding their perspective and paying special attention to what will create a great experience for them is key! Using behaviour analytics tools such heat maps will provide knowledge on the traffic coming into your website and how people are subsequently interacting with your website, such as, where they are clicking the most, what they are spending the most time on and even how far they scroll on your website.

We hope that this comprehensive guide has provided you with information that can assist you with how to analyse a website and better understand your audience.

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