How to Prepare for a Web Experience Audit

Most marketing teams don't do much preparation before a website audit. They hand over the URL, share login credentials for analytics, and wait for the findings.

That works. The audit will still surface issues and produce recommendations. But teams that prepare well get more out of the engagement, faster. The findings are more specific, the prioritization is more accurate, and the recommendations connect more directly to the business goals that actually matter.

Preparation isn’t a lot of work. Most of it is gathering things that already exist. Here’s what to pull together before the audit starts.

What good preparation looks like

The goal of preparation is to give the auditor the context they need to interpret what they’re seeing in the data. Behavioral data shows what visitors are doing. Your context explains why it matters.

A 40% drop-off rate on the pricing page means something different if you’re a high-ACV enterprise product (where pricing is expected to be opaque) versus a self-serve product (where price transparency is a selling point). The auditor can see the behavior; you know the business context that makes it meaningful or unremarkable.

The more context you provide upfront, the less time the engagement spends on orientation and the more it spends on finding things worth fixing.

The preparation checklist

1. Access to analytics

Grant view access to Google Analytics (or your analytics platform) for the auditor before the engagement starts. This avoids the back-and-forth of sharing screenshots instead of live data.

What to ensure they can see:

• Traffic by page (so they can identify which pages matter most)
• Conversion goals and events (form submissions, demo requests, trial signups)
• Traffic sources (organic, paid, direct, referral)
• Device breakdown (desktop vs. mobile)
• At least three to six months of data, ideally a year

If you don’t have goals or events set up in analytics, say so. That’s a finding in itself, and an auditor who knows upfront won’t spend time looking for data that doesn’t exist.

2. Access to behavioral data tools

If you have heatmap or session recording tools (Hotjar, CrazyEgg, Microsoft Clarity, FullStory, LogRocket, or similar), share access. These tools show where visitors click, how far they scroll, and where they abandon forms.

If you don’t have any behavioral data tools installed, mention this. Installing a free tool like CrazyEgg before the audit starts gives the auditor richer data to work with, even if you only have a few weeks of recordings.

3. Your conversion goals and current numbers

Write down the specific actions you want visitors to take on the site, and your current performance on each. Be as specific as possible.

Examples:

• Contact form submissions: 12 per month, approximately 2% of visitors to the contact page
• Demo requests: 8 per month from the pricing page CTA
• Trial signups: 45 per month from the homepage and feature pages

If you don’t know these numbers, an auditor can help you find them in your analytics. But if you do know them, sharing them upfront sets a baseline that makes the post-audit impact of changes measurable.

4. Your pipeline and revenue context

What does a lead from the website actually mean to your business? Specifically:

• Average contract value
• Typical lead-to-opportunity conversion rate
• Typical opportunity-to-customer conversion rate
• Average sales cycle length

This context turns a conversion rate improvement into a revenue number. If the auditor knows that 1 additional form submission per week translates to roughly $200,000 in annualized pipeline, they can prioritize recommendations accordingly.

You don’t need precise figures. Reasonable estimates are fine.

5. Your target buyer

Describe who you’re trying to reach. Job title, company type, company stage, the specific problem they’re trying to solve. The more specific the better.

If you have customer research, buyer personas, or ICP documentation, share it. If you don’t, write three to five sentences describing the person who should be filling out your contact form. Who are they, what’s their job, what problem are they trying to solve, and what would make them trust you with it?

This context shapes which pages the auditor prioritizes and how they evaluate whether the messaging is hitting the right notes.

6. Your most important pages

List the five to ten pages that matter most to your conversion goals. Usually this includes:

• Homepage
• Pricing page
• Contact or demo request page
• Key feature or product pages
• Any landing pages running paid traffic

If you’re running paid campaigns, share the landing page URLs. A page that receives significant paid traffic and underperforms on conversion is worth extra scrutiny.

7. Recent changes you’ve made

Note any significant changes to the site in the past six to twelve months. New hero copy, a redesigned pricing page, a contact form that was simplified, a navigation restructure. Any of these can show up in behavioral data and are easier to interpret if the auditor knows they happened.

If you’ve run any A/B tests, share the results, even if they were inconclusive. Tests that didn’t produce clear winners still tell you something about what your visitors respond to.

8. Current problems you’ve already noticed

Don’t hold this back. If you know the contact page has a form abandonment problem, say so. If sales has been complaining that inbound leads are low quality, mention it. If the pricing page consistently confuses prospects in sales calls, that’s relevant context.

The auditor will find many things on their own. But things you’ve already noticed but haven’t had time to investigate are worth mentioning upfront, because they often point to problems the data will confirm.

9. Things that are off-limits or non-negotiable

Every company has constraints. Some pages are owned by a different team. Some elements are tied to a brand standard that won’t change. Some functionality is limited by the current tech stack.

If there are things the audit shouldn’t bother recommending because they can’t be changed, say so. It focuses the engagement on what’s actually actionable.

10. Your CMS and tech stack

Basic information about your website’s technical setup: what CMS you’re using (Contentful, WordPress, Webflow, HubSpot, etc.), what A/B testing tools you have access to, what analytics platforms you’re using.

This affects what recommendations are realistic to implement and how long implementation will take.

What you don’t need to prepare

You don’t need to have everything figured out before the audit starts. You don’t need a perfect analytics setup, a fully documented ICP, or a long list of test hypotheses. An auditor who requires all of that before starting is limiting the engagement to companies that already have sophisticated operations.

What you’re preparing is context, not answers. The audit’s job is to find the answers. Your job is to give the auditor the right frame for interpreting what they find.

What happens after you share this information

At the start of a well-run audit engagement, the auditor will review what you’ve shared, identify any gaps in the data, and ask clarifying questions. This typically takes a few days before the substantive analysis begins.

If there are significant gaps (no behavioral data, no conversion tracking, unclear goals), a good auditor will flag them early rather than presenting findings that can’t be meaningfully evaluated.

The quality of the final deliverable is directly related to the quality of the data and context going in. Preparation on your end isn’t extra work. It’s the fastest way to get findings you can actually act on.

Takeaway

Preparing for a website audit is not complicated. It’s mostly gathering things that already exist and writing down context that’s in your head.

The teams that do this preparation well get audits that are more specific, more relevant to their actual business goals, and faster to act on. The teams that don’t spend the first week of an engagement on orientation.

If you’re ready to start or want to talk through what an audit would cover for your company, the Web Experience Audit page has everything you need to know.

FAQ

Common questions