An audit is the right starting point when you know something is wrong with your website but not exactly what. Staff field the same questions by phone that the site already answers. Analytics show visitors bouncing between menu pages. Search inside the site returns three versions of the same policy. An audit separates the causes, which may be the grouping, the labels, the menus, the links or the content itself, and puts them in an order you can act on.

What the audit covers

We look at the structure from several angles, because each one shows different problems.

Content inventory. A crawl of the site produces a list of every reachable page with its address, title, depth and the number of internal links pointing to it. We add the content type and the owning team where we can tell. The inventory alone can be revealing, because it shows the size of the site as a visitor experiences it, not as the content system lists it.

Hierarchy and depth. We map the real hierarchy, which may differ from the one in the menu. Pages that sit five clicks from the home page, sections with a single page in them and sections with dozens of unrelated pages are all marked. The Australian Government Style Manual advises that writers "keep the hierarchy shallow", and while that advice is aimed at headings within documents, the same reasoning applies to sections within a site.

Labels. Menu items, section names and page titles are compared with the words your visitors use. Sources for those words include site search logs, support enquiries, and the way your audiences describe their own needs. Labels that use internal team names, acronyms or vague words such as "Resources" or "Solutions" are flagged with suggested alternatives.

Navigation consistency. WCAG 2.2 success criterion 3.2.3 asks for repeated navigation to keep its order from page to page. We check that menus, breadcrumbs and footers behave the same way across templates, and that more than one route exists to each page, as success criterion 2.4.5 Multiple Ways asks.

Internal links. We list pages with no internal links pointing to them, pages linked only from a single old news item, and links whose text gives no clue to the destination. Google's link guidance asks for anchor text that is "descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant", which is good advice for people as well.

Duplicates and overlaps. Pages that cover the same topic are grouped so you can decide which one should remain.

How the work runs

Kick-off. A call to agree the main audiences, the highest-priority tasks and any known problems. We ask for read-only analytics access if you are happy to share it.
Crawl and inventory. We crawl the public site and build the inventory spreadsheet.
Review. We work through the angles above and record each finding with a screenshot or example.
Staff input. Short interviews with two to four people who answer customer questions or publish content. They know where visitors get stuck.
Report and walkthrough. A written report, then a call to go through it and answer questions.

What you receive

A content inventory spreadsheet you can keep using.
A diagram of the current hierarchy as it really works.
A findings report in plain language. Each finding states the problem, where it occurs, why it matters, and a suggested fix.
A priority list that sorts fixes into "quick changes", "needs a decision" and "part of a larger restructure".
A short list of what we did not review and why.

What an audit cannot do

An audit describes structure; it does not prove how real visitors will behave with a new one. If a finding depends on how people think about your content, we will say that it should be tested, for example with a card sort or a tree test, before you commit to a change. An audit also does not rewrite content or fix technical faults, although we note obvious technical problems we come across, such as broken links or redirect chains.

What we need from you

The website address and any sections we should leave out.
A contact person who can answer questions within a few days.
Read-only access to analytics and search console, if available.
Two to four staff who can spare 30 minutes each for an interview.

After the audit

Some teams take the report and fix things themselves. Others ask us for the next step, which may be a navigation plan or a content restructure. Either path is fine. The report is written so that a different supplier, or your own staff, can act on it without us in the room.

If you want to look at your own structure first, the free hierarchy visualiser will draw an outline of your sections and count the levels.

Questions about this topic

Do we need analytics access for an audit?

It helps but is not required. Read-only access to your analytics and search console lets us see which pages people reach and how. Without it, we rely on the crawl, the content inventory and interviews with your staff.

Will the audit tell us what to build next?

It tells you what to fix and in which order. If the findings point to a new structure, the next step is a sitemap or navigation plan, which we can quote separately.

How many pages can you audit?

We inventory every page we can crawl. For very large sites we review templates and a sample of each content type in detail, and state the sample size in the report.

Information architecture audits