What a website audit costs and what it covers

A website audit is an attempt to work out why a site is not doing the job it was built for. The price of that attempt varies more than the price of the site itself, from nothing to several thousand złoty, and the number on the invoice tells you very little about what you will receive. Here is what a good audit covers, how a generated report differs from one a person actually read, and where the real cost begins.

Three things worth remembering

1. 1.The audit itself does not have to cost anything. The cost starts with the fixing.
2. 2.A report listing a hundred issues in no particular order is worse than one that names three and tells you which to start with.
3. 3.If an audit leaves you unsure what to do on Monday morning, it was not an audit. It was a printout.

What an audit should cover

Search, technical and editorial. Does every page have its own title and description, is the site indexed at all, is it accidentally blocking itself, does the content answer what your customers actually search for. The most common problem I see is a site that looks good and answers no real query.

Security. Outdated plugins, no backups, an expiring certificate, an admin panel sitting at the default address, missing basic security headers. This is the part owners skip most often, right up until something happens that costs a week of work.

Speed. Not the score from a tool, but what is dragging it down: images uploaded at full size, scripts loading ahead of the content, fonts pulled from somewhere else. And the phone measured separately, because that is usually where the gap is widest.

Google Business Profile. For a local business the profile is often more important than the website. Does it exist, is it verified, are the hours right, are there photographs and reviews.

Brand and the first screen. After three seconds, is it clear what the business does, who it is for and what the visitor is meant to do next. That is not a matter of taste. It decides whether anybody stays.

Why audit prices vary so much

Three different things are sold under the same name.

A generated report. A tool crawls the site and produces a list. It costs little or nothing, because nobody spent time on it. The trouble is that the tool cannot tell an issue that is costing you customers from a warning you could safely ignore for five years.

A report a person read. Somebody looks at the same data, discards the noise, checks by hand what the tool cannot see, and orders the findings by how much money each one is costing. That is a few hours of work, and it is where the value sits.

An audit with implementation. The report plus the fixing. At that point the price is no longer about checking. It is about labour.

What it costs with me

I run the website and brand audit free, with no obligation. It covers search, security, speed, your Google Business presence and a brand consultation, and it ends with written recommendations in the order worth tackling them.

Implementation is the paid part. From 2,000 to 6,000 PLN, quoted after the audit, depending on scope and the number of pages. Large, many page sites sit towards the top of that range. I do the fixes on WordPress, on custom code or on whatever the site already runs, so there is no need to change platform along the way.

If the site is not to rust again after the repair, ongoing care starts at 500 PLN a month: updates, a monthly search and security check, and small changes.

What belongs in the report

A good report can be read without a translator and leaves you with decisions:

• •findings ordered by financial impact, not alphabetically
• •one sentence per finding on what happens if you leave it alone
• •a clear split between what you can do yourself and what needs a developer
• •an estimate of effort, even a rough one
• •what to check again in three months.

Red flags

• •The report is a tool export with no commentary.
• •A hundred findings with no priority and no sense of urgency.
• •A promise of first place in Google. Nobody can promise that.
• •A quote for the repair given before anybody looked at the site.
• •A condition that fixing it requires moving the site to the supplier's platform.

What to do after the audit, in this order

1. 1.Fix security. It is the only item that can cost you the whole site.
2. 2.Fix whatever is blocking search, starting with missing titles and descriptions.
3. 3.Fix speed on the phone, usually beginning with images.
4. 4.Only then move on to content and design.
5. 5.Set a reminder for three months and check the same things again.

When an audit is not worth it

If the site is eight years old, runs on an unmaintained platform and cannot sensibly be edited, the audit will only confirm what you already know. In that case it is more honest to price a new site and compare the two numbers. I have written separately about what drives the price of a new website. How much a business website costs

If you would like to start by finding out what state your site is genuinely in, my audit is free and ends with written recommendations. No obligation, and no condition that I am the one who implements them.