Guide
A website audit is a structured review of a site that produces a clear judgement, findings ordered by consequence, the evidence behind each one, its honest limitations, the strengths worth keeping and a single sensible next move. It is not a long list of faults, and it is not a score. Below is exactly what belongs in one.
The short answer
A great website review is judged by whether you can act on it, not by how much it contains. The six parts below are what turn a pile of observations into a decision. GreatInternet builds every review around them, using automation to collect the public evidence and a reviewer to decide what the evidence means.
01
The report opens with a single, plain judgement about the site as it stands, written so anyone can understand it without a technical background. It says what the website does well before it says what gets in the way, because a review that only lists problems is easy to dismiss and hard to act on. The judgement is calibrated: it uses levels such as Strong, Sound, Needs attention and At risk only where the evidence supports the level.
02
The heart of the report is a set of findings, each one a specific observation about a page or a journey. They are ordered by the consequence for a real visitor, not by how many were found or how easy they are to spot. A single issue on the main path to signing up matters more than a dozen cosmetic notes on a page few people reach, and the ordering reflects that.
03
Each finding keeps its evidence attached: the page it was seen on, what was observed and, where it helps, the exact wording or behaviour. Nothing is asserted without something you can check for yourself. Where a cause can only be inferred rather than seen directly, the report separates the observed behaviour from the suggested reason, so you are never asked to trust a guess dressed up as a fact.
04
A useful review is honest about what it can and cannot see from the public pages alone. The evidence sits on every finding, so you can weigh how directly it supports the claim yourself, and the report names its own limits: the things that would need analytics, customer research or access to the source before anyone could be sure. Where the evidence is thin, the finding says so and what would strengthen it; where the site’s behaviour cannot be separated from the review’s own tooling, the candidate is withheld rather than presented as a certainty.
05
A review that only points at faults will push you to change things that already work. So the report names the strongest existing pages and patterns and marks them as benchmarks to preserve. Part of the value of an outside view is telling you what to leave alone, which is often the cheapest and safest improvement of all.
06
The report ends with a clear recommendation about where to start, chosen for the balance of consequence and effort rather than the length of the list. The aim is a document you can act on the same day, not a backlog that sits unread. If a deeper level of detail would help, the report says so and shows what the next tier would add for your specific site.
What it is not
A useful audit avoids absolute claims it cannot support. It does not declare a site right or wrong, and it does not promise an outcome. It describes what a thoughtful outsider notices on the public pages, how sure that view is, and what a sensible team would do next. That restraint is the point: the report is meant to help you decide before you spend money, especially when several plausible problems are competing for your attention.
It also protects what already works. The strongest page or pattern on your site is an asset, and an outside review that names it saves you from changing the very thing your visitors rely on. Knowing what to leave alone is as valuable as knowing what to fix.
Common questions
Start with a free review of the public site. It returns the judgement, the top findings and the strengths to protect. Go deeper only when the report is useful.