Website Performance Audit: What to Check and Why It Matters

How well is your website actually performing? Many business owners assume their site is fine because it loads on their computer—but there's much more to website performance than basic functionality. A comprehensive audit reveals issues you might not know exist and opportunities for improvement that could transform your online results.

Think of a website audit like a health checkup. You might feel fine, but underlying issues could be silently affecting your wellbeing. The same applies to your website: problems with speed, security, or SEO could be costing you visitors and customers without you ever realizing it.

Why Performance Audits Matter

Regular audits catch problems before they cost you real money and opportunities. In today's competitive online landscape, a poorly performing website doesn't just frustrate visitors—it actively drives them to your competitors.

The Real Cost of Poor Performance

Consider these statistics: studies consistently show that 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than three seconds to load. Every additional second of load time can reduce conversions by up to 7%. For an e-commerce site doing $100,000 in monthly revenue, that's potentially $7,000 lost for every second of delay.

But it's not just about speed. Performance encompasses everything from how your site appears on mobile devices to whether search engines can properly crawl and index your content. A comprehensive audit examines all these factors.

Search Engine Implications

Google has made it abundantly clear that performance matters for rankings. Core Web Vitals—Google's specific performance metrics—are now official ranking factors. Sites that perform poorly don't just frustrate users; they get buried in search results while faster competitors climb higher.

This creates a compounding problem: poor performance leads to lower rankings, which leads to less traffic, which means fewer opportunities to convert visitors into customers. Breaking this cycle starts with understanding exactly where your site stands.

Speed and Loading Performance

Time is everything online. Your visitors won't wait, and search engines know it.

Key Speed Metrics to Track

Time to First Byte (TTFB) measures how quickly your server responds to requests. A slow TTFB often indicates hosting problems or server-side inefficiencies. Aim for under 200 milliseconds.

First Contentful Paint (FCP) tracks when the first content appears on screen. This is the visitor's first visual feedback that something is happening. Target under 1.8 seconds.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures when the main content finishes loading. This is one of Google's Core Web Vitals and should occur within 2.5 seconds of page load.

Time to Interactive (TTI) indicates when the page becomes fully interactive. Visitors get frustrated when they can see content but can't click buttons or fill forms. Keep this under 3.8 seconds.

Tools for Speed Testing

Several free tools can measure your site's speed:

• Google PageSpeed Insights: Provides both mobile and desktop scores with specific recommendations
• GTmetrix: Offers detailed waterfall charts showing exactly what's loading and when
• WebPageTest: Allows testing from different locations and connection speeds
• Chrome DevTools: Built into your browser for real-time performance analysis

Run tests from multiple tools, as each provides slightly different insights. Test your homepage, but also key landing pages and your slowest-loading content.

Common Speed Killers

Unoptimized images are the most common culprit. Large image files that haven't been compressed or properly sized can add megabytes to page weight. Modern formats like WebP can reduce image sizes by 25-35% compared to JPEG without visible quality loss.

Too many HTTP requests slow loading as browsers fetch each resource. Every script, stylesheet, and image requires a separate request. Combining files, using sprites, and eliminating unnecessary resources reduces this overhead.

Render-blocking resources prevent the page from displaying until they load. JavaScript and CSS files in the document head can block rendering entirely. Moving scripts to the footer or using async/defer attributes helps.

Poor hosting underlies many speed problems. Cheap shared hosting means your site competes with hundreds of others for server resources. Quality hosting provides dedicated resources and faster response times.

Mobile Responsiveness

With over 60% of web traffic coming from mobile devices, mobile performance isn't optional—it's essential. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning the mobile version of your site is what gets evaluated for rankings.

What to Test on Mobile

Layout adaptation ensures content reflows properly for different screen sizes. Text should be readable without zooming. Images should scale appropriately. Nothing should extend beyond the screen edges, forcing horizontal scrolling.

Touch targets need adequate size for fingers. Buttons and links should be at least 44x44 pixels with sufficient spacing between them. Nothing frustrates mobile users more than trying to tap a tiny link and hitting the wrong one.

Form usability becomes critical on smaller screens. Input fields should be large enough to tap easily. Appropriate keyboard types should appear for different inputs—numeric keyboards for phone numbers, email keyboards for email addresses.

Navigation functionality must work smoothly. Hamburger menus should open and close reliably. Dropdowns need to function with touch. The entire navigation experience should feel native to mobile.

Real Device Testing

Emulators and browser tools help, but nothing replaces testing on actual devices. Borrow phones from friends and family to test on different screen sizes, operating systems, and browsers. You'll often discover issues that emulators miss.

Pay special attention to older or lower-powered devices. Your site might feel snappy on the latest iPhone but sluggish on a three-year-old Android phone—and plenty of your potential customers use older devices.

SEO Technical Health

Even a beautifully designed, lightning-fast website won't attract visitors if search engines can't find and index it properly. Technical SEO forms the foundation of your search visibility.

Crawlability and Indexation

Check for crawl errors in Google Search Console. These indicate pages Google tried to access but couldn't. Common causes include broken links, server errors, and misconfigured redirects. Each crawl error represents content that won't appear in search results.

Verify indexation status by searching "site:yourdomain.com" in Google. Compare the number of results to the number of pages you expect to be indexed. Large discrepancies indicate indexing problems.

Review your robots.txt file to ensure you're not accidentally blocking important content. A misconfigured robots.txt can prevent entire sections of your site from being crawled.

Submit an XML sitemap through Search Console if you haven't already. Sitemaps help search engines discover and understand your content structure. Update them whenever you add or remove significant content.

On-Page SEO Elements

Title tags should be unique, descriptive, and under 60 characters. Each page needs its own title that accurately reflects its content and includes relevant keywords.

Meta descriptions don't directly affect rankings but influence click-through rates from search results. Write compelling descriptions under 160 characters that encourage clicks.

Heading structure should follow a logical hierarchy. Use one H1 per page for the main title, then H2s for major sections, H3s for subsections, and so on. Don't skip levels or use headings purely for styling.

Internal linking helps search engines understand your site structure and distributes authority between pages. Each page should link to related content, and important pages should receive more internal links. Learn more about creating effective website navigation.

Security Assessment

Security isn't just about protecting data—it affects SEO, user trust, and your ability to do business online. A security breach can devastate your reputation and take months to recover from.

SSL and HTTPS

Verify HTTPS works correctly across your entire site. Check that the padlock appears in browsers and that no "mixed content" warnings appear. Mixed content occurs when secure pages load insecure resources, undermining the security of the whole page.

Check certificate expiration to avoid embarrassing and traffic-killing lapses. Set calendar reminders or use monitoring tools that alert you before certificates expire.

Ensure proper redirects so that HTTP requests redirect to HTTPS. Visitors and search engines should never access insecure versions of your pages.

Software and Updates

Audit your CMS version and ensure you're running the latest stable release. Outdated content management systems are prime targets for hackers exploiting known vulnerabilities.

Review all plugins and themes for available updates. Third-party code is often the weakest link in website security. Remove any plugins you're not actively using—they're just additional attack surface.

Check for known vulnerabilities using security scanning tools. Services like Sucuri or Wordfence can scan your site for malware, backdoors, and other security issues.

Backup Verification

Confirm backups are running on schedule. Many site owners assume backups happen automatically but never verify until they need one.

Test restoration periodically. A backup is worthless if you can't restore from it. At least once a year, practice restoring your site from backup in a test environment.

Store backups off-site so a server failure doesn't take out both your site and your backups. Cloud storage or separate hosting locations provide essential redundancy.

User Experience Evaluation

Technical metrics matter, but ultimately your site exists for human visitors. User experience evaluation examines how real people interact with your site and where they encounter friction.

Navigation and Information Architecture

Test user journeys by attempting to complete common tasks. Can visitors find your contact information within three clicks? Can they locate specific products or services? Can they understand what you offer within seconds of arriving?

Check for broken links throughout your site. Broken links frustrate visitors and signal neglect to search engines. Tools like Screaming Frog or online broken link checkers can scan your entire site quickly.

Evaluate your site search if you have one. Search for common terms your visitors might use. Do relevant results appear? A poor search experience drives visitors away.

Form Functionality

Submit test entries through every form on your site. Verify that submissions arrive where they should and that confirmation messages display correctly. A broken contact form means lost leads you'll never know about.

Check email notifications to ensure they're delivered and not landing in spam folders. Test from different email providers, as deliverability can vary.

Review error handling by intentionally submitting invalid data. Error messages should be helpful and specific, guiding users toward successful submission rather than simply stating "invalid input."

Cross-Browser Testing

Test in major browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. Each browser renders pages slightly differently, and issues that don't appear in your preferred browser might be glaringly obvious in others.

Don't forget mobile browsers which can behave differently from their desktop counterparts. Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android both have unique quirks worth testing for.

Content and Conversion Analysis

Your website exists to achieve business goals. Content and conversion analysis examines whether your site actually accomplishes what it's supposed to.

Traffic and Engagement Patterns

Review traffic sources to understand where visitors come from. Is organic search driving traffic, or are you dependent on paid advertising? Diversified traffic sources provide stability.

Identify top-performing pages and understand why they succeed. What can you learn from your most popular content that could improve underperforming pages?

Analyze bounce rates page by page. High bounce rates on key landing pages indicate disconnect between visitor expectations and page content. Some pages naturally have high bounce rates (blog posts visitors read and leave), while others (service pages) shouldn't.

Track user flow through your site. Where do visitors go after landing? Where do they drop off? Understanding these patterns reveals optimization opportunities.

Conversion Tracking

Verify goal tracking is properly configured in your analytics. You can't improve what you don't measure. Every important action—form submissions, purchases, phone calls—should be tracked.

Calculate conversion rates for key actions. What percentage of visitors contact you? What percentage make purchases? These baseline numbers are essential for measuring improvement.

Identify conversion barriers by analyzing where visitors abandon processes. If many users start your contact form but don't finish, the form itself might be the problem. Check out our guide on creating forms that actually get completed.

Creating Your Action Plan

An audit is only valuable if you act on the findings. Prioritize issues based on impact and effort required.

Critical Issues First

Address anything that's actively breaking your site or putting visitors at risk:

• Security vulnerabilities
• Completely broken functionality
• Major mobile usability problems
• Severe speed issues

Quick Wins Second

Some improvements deliver significant impact with minimal effort:

• Image optimization
• Meta description updates
• Broken link fixes
• Basic caching implementation

Strategic Improvements Ongoing

Larger projects require planning and resources:

• Platform migrations
• Major redesigns
• Content overhauls
• Infrastructure upgrades

Make Audits Regular

A single audit helps, but regular audits prevent problems from accumulating. Schedule quarterly reviews of key metrics and annual comprehensive audits. This proactive approach catches issues early when they're easier to fix.

Professional Audit Services

At Getwebbed, we offer comprehensive website audits that examine every aspect of your site's performance, security, and effectiveness. We provide clear reports with prioritized recommendations—not just a list of problems, but a roadmap for improvement.

Our audits include hands-on testing, not just automated scans. We look at your site the way your visitors do, identifying friction points that tools miss. And we can help implement improvements, from quick fixes to major overhauls.

Whether your site needs minor tune-ups or significant intervention, understanding its current state is the essential first step.

Contact us today for a free consultation and let's discover how your website can perform better!