Most guides on website analysis tools will tell you that there are only a few things to consider if you want to check the performance of your site:
- SEO Audits
- Website speed test
- Competitor analysis
- Website traffic
They aren’t wrong per se, but these factors only tell you part of your performance story.
The rest of the information that you want comes from understanding your visitors, users and customers. This way, you can make sure that they find what they are looking for on your optimised site, stay on it, use it, and return.
That is where this post comes in! Read below to familiarise yourself with the website analysis tools you need, to optimise your website and get the best results.
The Traditions
Website analysis is the process of testing and analysis a website’s performance relative to SEO, speed, competition and traffic.
Every site would benefit from some website analysis because it would help improve it – increase speed, rank higher in searches, better traffic for more conversions.
The points mentioned above are the essential website analysis tools used, so let’s have a quick look at them and what they mean.
- SEO auditing tools
These take a few forms, but the most common include:
- On-page SEO audits: helps check your website for technical issues that could affect SEO performance like missing tags or broken links.
- Website search engine ranking analysis: shows where your website appears for specific keywords on search engines like Google and how your website performs in different locations.
- Backlink website analysis: Helps find out which pages link to your website. This feature also helps link-building campaigns.
- Website speed analysis
Two central problems with slow-loading websites: 1. Users don’t like it, 2. Nor do search engines.
It is a good idea to gather data about web page speed and then use it to make it faster. This also diagnoses why it is slow, and testing on different devices would give you more ways to optimise the website.
By analysing metrics like page size, load time, HTTP requests and more, you can increase your site’s speed and give your users a faster experience.
- Website analysis – competition
Every online business has competitors who have similar products and services.
The competitive analysis identifies and analyses competitors’ practices and quantifies the potential threats and identifies opportunities that can give your business leverage.
Manual research is a bit time consuming, but would give you some information for easy initial comparison. Specialised website analysis tools can help with insights into competitor popularity and customer feedback.
- Website traffic analysis
Analysing traffic helps you track the volume and activity of users on your website and find the most successful pages and traffic generation strategies.
Knowing where traffic originates from, which sources convert better and where potential customers are lost will help you invest resources accordingly to improve the experience.
Google Analytics is a popular choice for traditional website analysis tools, but other alternatives may be more specialised for what you need.
Beyond Traditional – A User-Based Website Analysis
From the information above we can see that hard and fast data is optimal for making improvements based on data to maximise traffic.
There is a caveat – this data doesn’t give you a clear competitive advantage because your competitors are using these tools too!
Unique leverage that you could have is your users’ feedback!
Finding out how they got to your website, their aim, their experience and what is working for them will give you a holistic image of your website.
Answering questions like:
- Where do people struggle on your website before leaving?
- How do people interact with page elements?
- What goes unnoticed on your website?
- What is their end goal for visiting your website?
You’ll be able to optimise your website not just for technical reasons but also for optimal customer experience.
Conclusion
Combining these website analysis tools and ideas will help you pinpoint the key factors that lead people to your website, the challenges they encounter and how to improve upon everything.
Author Bio:
Kornelija Dedelaite is a writer and researcher at Deepak shukla who lives in London. When she is not writing, she can be found clutching onto her camera or planning her next big trip abroad.
