A comprehensive website audit is the cornerstone of digital excellence, revealing critical insights that drive performance, enhance user experience, and secure your online assets. For organizations leveraging powerful Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) like Sitecore or robust collaboration systems like SharePoint, a generic checklist simply won't suffice. You need a nuanced, platform-aware approach that accounts for the specific architecture and advanced capabilities inherent in your technology stack. A standard audit might miss the performance implications of complex personalization rules in Sitecore XP or the unique security configurations required for a SharePoint intranet.
This guide provides a detailed website audit checklist meticulously crafted for these sophisticated environments. We move beyond surface-level checks to offer deep, actionable steps that address the unique challenges and opportunities of your platform. Whether you're fine-tuning a Sitecore XM Cloud implementation, optimizing content delivery with Sitecore Content Hub, or ensuring your SharePoint solution is both compliant and user-friendly, this checklist provides the framework for a thorough evaluation.
We will cover eight critical areas, from technical SEO and site performance to security, user experience, and content architecture. Following this structured website audit checklist will empower your team to identify issues, capitalize on platform-specific features, and transform your digital presence into a high-performing, secure, and engaging asset. Let's dive into the foundational checks that separate top-tier digital experiences from the rest, ensuring your investment in Sitecore or SharePoint delivers maximum impact and return.
1. Technical SEO & Site Performance: The Sitecore & SharePoint Foundation
The very first step in any comprehensive website audit checklist is evaluating the technical foundation. This isn't just about speed; it's about ensuring search engines can efficiently crawl, understand, and index your content. For enterprise platforms like Sitecore and SharePoint, this process requires a specialized approach that goes beyond standard performance metrics.
For websites built on Sitecore, technical performance is deeply tied to its component-based architecture and publishing mechanisms. A proper audit must assess Sitecore-specific elements, such as the performance of individual renderings, caching strategies (HTML, data, and item), and the health of your Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration, ideally with Sitecore Experience Edge. Similarly, for SharePoint environments, the focus shifts to server response times, search service performance, and ensuring that large document libraries or complex web parts aren't degrading the user experience.
This foundational check is critical because it directly impacts both user experience and search engine rankings. A slow, poorly configured site will frustrate users and be penalized by search algorithms.
Why Technical Performance Matters
The impact of site speed on business outcomes is well-documented. For instance, optimizing rendering hosts and caching in a Sitecore XM Cloud environment can drastically improve Time to First Byte (TTFB). A Kogifi client, by optimizing their Sitecore caching strategy, slashed their average page load time from 5.2 seconds to a swift 1.8 seconds. This optimization led to a significant 25% drop in their bounce rate, demonstrating the direct correlation between platform-specific tuning and business results.
This infographic summarizes the core performance metrics you should be tracking.
Focusing on these three pillars ensures your website is fast, stable, and provides an excellent experience on any device, directly impacting your SEO and user engagement.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To get started, here are some platform-specific tips to include in your audit:
- Leverage Platform-Specific Tools: Use Sitecore's built-in performance counters and diagnostic logs to pinpoint bottlenecks. For SharePoint, regularly audit the Large List Query Throttling settings to prevent performance degradation from extensive document libraries.
- Optimize Assets: Minimize CSS, JavaScript, and HTML files. Sitecore's asset optimization features can bundle and minify these resources automatically, which is a core feature for efficient delivery.
- Implement a CDN: Utilize a CDN like Sitecore Experience Edge or Azure CDN for faster global delivery of assets, especially for the Sitecore media library. This is crucial for reaching a geographically diverse audience with a composable DXP.
- Configure Caching: Enable browser caching and GZIP compression on your web server (typically IIS for these platforms). Fine-tuning Sitecore's HTML output cache is one of the most effective ways to boost performance.
2. On-Page SEO & Content Quality
After establishing a solid technical foundation, the next critical component of any website audit checklist is the quality and optimization of your on-page content. This involves a deep analysis of how well individual pages are structured to meet user intent and communicate their purpose to search engines. For powerful content management systems like Sitecore and SharePoint, this extends beyond simple keyword placement to a strategic review of how content is created, managed, and presented.
In a Sitecore environment, on-page SEO is intertwined with how content components and data sources are configured. An audit must examine how fields for meta titles, descriptions, and H1 tags are used within templates and renderings, a fundamental aspect of Sitecore's content modeling. For SharePoint, the focus might be on optimizing the content within publishing pages, news articles, and document metadata to ensure they are discoverable through both internal and external search.
This element is crucial because high-quality, well-optimized content is the primary reason users and search engines visit your site. It directly answers user queries, establishes authority, and drives organic traffic.
Why On-Page SEO Matters
The correlation between high-quality content and search engine performance is undeniable. For a Sitecore-powered enterprise, optimizing on-page elements within its componentized architecture can lead to significant gains. A manufacturing client, for instance, refined its product page templates to include schema markup and more descriptive content, resulting in a 30% increase in qualified organic leads within three months. This demonstrates how platform-specific optimizations, such as leveraging Sitecore's flexible data templates, directly translate to business results. For a detailed breakdown of specific content and on-page elements to review, refer to this complete on-page SEO checklist.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To improve your on-page SEO, here are some platform-specific tips to include in your audit:
- Enforce SEO Fields: In Sitecore, ensure your base page templates include mandatory, non-negotiable fields for meta titles, descriptions, and Open Graph tags. Use validation rules to enforce character limits and best practices.
- Optimize for User Intent: Write compelling meta descriptions that act as a mini-advertisement in the SERPs to improve click-through rates. Focus on answering the user's core question in the first paragraph.
- Leverage Internal Linking: Use Sitecore's rich text editor to add relevant internal links, distributing page authority and guiding users to other valuable content. In SharePoint, link related documents and pages to create a cohesive information architecture.
- Update and Refresh Content: Use analytics to identify pages with declining traffic. Schedule quarterly reviews to update outdated statistics, add new information, and keep content fresh and relevant. This is a powerful signal to search engines.
Learn more about implementing a strong SEO strategy for your platform.
3. User Experience (UX) & Accessibility
Beyond technical prowess, a crucial part of any website audit checklist is evaluating how people actually interact with your site. User Experience (UX) and accessibility auditing ensures your digital presence is intuitive, efficient, and usable by everyone, including individuals with disabilities. For platforms like Sitecore, which often power complex, content-rich experiences, a well-structured UX and accessible design are non-negotiable for retaining users and complying with legal standards.
An audit in this area examines everything from navigation clarity and call-to-action effectiveness to compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). For SharePoint intranets and portals, this means ensuring document libraries are easy to navigate and web parts are accessible via keyboard and screen readers. Neglecting this step not only alienates a significant portion of your potential audience but can also lead to severe legal and financial repercussions.
This check is vital because it moves the focus from machine-readability to human-centric design, which is the ultimate goal of any successful digital platform. For a deeper dive into this topic, explore our comprehensive user experience audit checklist.
Why UX & Accessibility Matter
The business case for inclusive design is clear and has direct legal implications. In the Sitecore ecosystem, personalizing components for different user segments is a core strength, often managed through Sitecore Personalize. However, this personalization is only effective if the underlying components are accessible. An accessible foundation ensures that every user, regardless of ability or the assistive technology they use, can benefit from the tailored experiences you create. This commitment to inclusivity builds brand trust and expands your market reach.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To get started, here are some platform-specific tips to include in your UX and accessibility audit:
- Use Automated Scanning Tools: Integrate tools like WAVE or axe DevTools into your development pipeline to catch common accessibility issues early. These can be run against Sitecore page renderings and SharePoint web parts.
- Conduct Manual Testing: Test with actual screen readers like NVDA, JAWS, or VoiceOver. Ensure all interactive Sitecore components and SharePoint forms are fully operable using only a keyboard.
- Provide Text Alternatives: Ensure all images and non-text content within the Sitecore Media Library and SharePoint document libraries have descriptive alternative text (alt text). This is critical for screen reader users.
- Implement "Skip to Content" Links: For complex page layouts built with Sitecore's Experience Editor or SharePoint's web parts, a "skip to main content" link is essential for improving the experience for keyboard-only users.
- Check Color Contrast: Use a contrast checker to ensure text and background colors meet WCAG AA standards. This is especially important for branded components where corporate colors might not have been designed with accessibility in mind.
4. Security & Privacy Compliance
Beyond performance and content, a critical part of any modern website audit checklist is a thorough review of security and privacy. This audit examines how well your site protects user data and adheres to global regulations like GDPR and CCPA. For enterprise platforms like Sitecore, which manage vast amounts of customer data through its Experience Platform (xDB), and SharePoint, which often stores sensitive internal documents, this is not just a best practice, it is a legal and ethical necessity.
A security and privacy audit involves evaluating everything from SSL/TLS implementation and secure authentication protocols to the accuracy of your privacy policy and the functionality of cookie consent mechanisms, such as those managed through Sitecore's Consent Management framework. The goal is to identify vulnerabilities that could lead to data breaches and ensure transparent data handling practices. Neglecting this step can result in catastrophic financial penalties, loss of customer trust, and severe damage to your brand's reputation.
This check is essential because it builds user confidence and protects the business from significant legal risks. In an era of heightened data privacy awareness, a secure and compliant website is a key differentiator.
Why Security & Privacy Matter
The financial and reputational costs of security failures are staggering. Proactive compliance builds trust. For organizations using Sitecore's Customer Data Platform (CDP), demonstrating robust security controls is paramount for maintaining customer trust and ensuring regulatory adherence. Similarly, service organizations often follow a detailed SOC 2 compliance checklist to provide a structured framework for ensuring data is handled securely, which is a key selling point for enterprise clients.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To get started, here are some platform-specific tips to include in your security audit:
- Audit Platform Configurations: For Sitecore, regularly review security roles and permissions to enforce the principle of least privilege, especially for access to xDB. In SharePoint, audit sharing permissions and external access policies to prevent unauthorized data exposure from document libraries.
- Implement Security Headers: Configure your web server (IIS) to send security headers like Content Security Policy (CSP), HSTS, and X-Frame-Options to protect against common attacks like cross-site scripting (XSS) and clickjacking.
- Manage Dependencies: Keep your Sitecore and SharePoint instances, along with all modules, plugins, and .NET dependencies, patched and up-to-date. Outdated components are a primary vector for attacks.
- Secure Data Collection: Ensure all forms, especially those in Sitecore connected to WFFM or Sitecore Forms, transmit data over HTTPS and have anti-forgery tokens enabled to prevent Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) attacks. To learn more, explore these website security best practices.
5. Analytics & Conversion Tracking
A critical part of any comprehensive website audit checklist is verifying the integrity of your analytics and conversion tracking. Without accurate data, strategic decisions are based on guesswork. This step ensures that your data collection is precise, comprehensive, and ultimately actionable, allowing you to measure ROI and understand user behavior.
For enterprise platforms like Sitecore, this audit is more than just checking a Google Analytics tag. It involves verifying that Sitecore's xDB (Experience Database) is correctly capturing user interactions, goals are triggered accurately within personalization rules, and Experience Analytics reports reflect true user journeys. In a SharePoint environment, the focus might be on tracking document downloads, search query success rates, and engagement with specific web parts to measure internal communication effectiveness.
This audit is foundational for data-driven decision-making. Accurate tracking allows you to connect marketing efforts to business outcomes, optimize user paths, and justify digital investments.
Why Analytics & Tracking Matter
The power of data-driven optimization is proven. In the Sitecore ecosystem, accurate tracking is the engine behind its powerful personalization capabilities. By correctly tracking user goals and events, marketers can build sophisticated personalization rules that deliver relevant content, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. A misconfigured analytics setup renders these powerful features, often orchestrated through Sitecore Personalize, useless. Learn more about how to improve website conversion rates through data-backed strategies.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To ensure your analytics foundation is solid, integrate these platform-specific actions into your audit:
- Verify Sitecore xDB Integration: Confirm that contact and interaction data is being written to the Experience Database. Use tools like the Sitecore Experience Explorer to inspect contact profiles and validate that goals and events are being associated correctly.
- Audit Sitecore Goals and Events: Systematically test every goal and page event defined in the Sitecore Marketing Control Panel. Ensure they fire under the correct conditions and that their associated engagement value points are logical.
- Leverage Google Tag Manager: For both platforms, use Google Tag Manager (GTM) to manage marketing and analytics tags. This centralizes control, simplifies deployment, and reduces reliance on developer resources for tag updates.
- Establish UTM Naming Conventions: Create and enforce a strict, documented UTM parameter naming convention for all marketing campaigns. This ensures clean, reportable data in your analytics platform and prevents campaign data fragmentation.
- Set Up Filtered Views: In your analytics platform, create views that exclude internal traffic from your company and agency IP addresses. This provides a more accurate picture of genuine customer behavior.
6. Broken Links & Technical Errors
A crucial part of any website audit checklist involves hunting down and eliminating broken links and technical errors. These issues, such as 404 "not found" errors, server errors, and convoluted redirect chains, create a fragmented user journey and signal poor quality to search engines. For enterprise systems like Sitecore and SharePoint, these errors can arise from content migrations, URL structure changes, or expired content, making regular checks essential.
In a Sitecore environment, broken links can be particularly pervasive due to the platform’s component-based nature and complex item relationships. A deleted media item or a page moved without a proper redirect can create dozens of broken links across the site. Similarly, in SharePoint, deleted documents or misconfigured list views can lead to dead ends that frustrate users and diminish the platform's utility as a central information hub.
Fixing these errors is not just about housekeeping; it's about preserving link equity, optimizing your crawl budget, and ensuring every visitor has a seamless experience. A site riddled with broken links appears neglected and untrustworthy, which directly impacts brand perception and SEO performance.
Why Fixing Errors Matters
The negative impact of broken links is clear. They interrupt user flow, leading to higher bounce rates and lost conversions. From an SEO perspective, they waste valuable crawl budget as search engine bots follow links that lead nowhere. Systematically addressing these technical flaws is a high-impact activity that boosts organic visibility and maintains the integrity of your Sitecore content tree.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To get started, here are some platform-specific tips to include in your audit:
- Utilize Sitecore's Tools: Leverage the "Links" database in Sitecore to run reports on item relationships and identify broken links programmatically. For more advanced needs, the Sitecore PowerShell Extensions (SPE) module can be used to script powerful reports that find and even fix broken links across your entire content tree.
- Monitor SharePoint Health: Use SharePoint's built-in Health Analyzer to identify configuration issues, broken search sources, or server errors. Regularly check for broken links within document libraries and navigation menus, especially after site reorganizations.
- Implement 301 Redirects: Use the Sitecore Redirect Manager module or a similar tool to create and manage 301 redirects for permanently moved or deleted content. This ensures you pass link equity from old URLs to new ones and prevent users from hitting 404 pages.
- Create a Custom 404 Page: Design a helpful and user-friendly 404 page in Sitecore that includes a search bar, key navigation links, and a clear message. A good 404 page can help retain users who would otherwise leave your site.
- Automate Crawls: Schedule monthly site crawls using tools like Screaming Frog or the SEMrush Site Audit tool to proactively identify 4xx and 5xx server errors, broken links (internal and external), and redirect chains before they impact users.
7. Mobile Optimization & Responsive Design
Auditing for mobile optimization is no longer optional; it's a fundamental requirement for digital success. This part of your website audit checklist examines how your site performs on mobile devices, from smartphones to tablets. With Google's mobile-first indexing, the mobile version of your site is the primary one for ranking purposes. For platforms like Sitecore, this means ensuring your component-based architecture renders flawlessly across all viewports.
The audit involves a deep dive into responsive design implementation, mobile page speed, touch-friendly navigation, and correct viewport configuration. For a Sitecore XP or XM Cloud environment, this also includes verifying that personalization rules and A/B tests function as intended on mobile, delivering a consistent and context-aware experience regardless of the device. A failure in mobile usability directly translates to lost traffic and revenue.
Why Mobile Performance Matters
The business case for mobile optimization is undeniable. In the Sitecore ecosystem, a retail client who implemented responsive images using Sitecore's Digital Asset Management (DAM) capabilities saw their mobile page load times improve by 40%, which directly contributed to a 15% increase in mobile conversions. This shows that a mobile-first approach is a direct driver of user engagement and business growth.
This infographic summarizes the key areas of mobile optimization to focus on during your audit.
Focusing on these three pillars ensures your website is accessible, fast, and user-friendly on any device, which is critical for capturing and retaining the modern, on-the-go user.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To ensure your enterprise platform is fully optimized for mobile, include these specific checks in your audit:
- Test on Real Devices: While emulators are useful, nothing beats testing on actual physical devices. This helps you identify issues with touch target accuracy and gesture-based interactions that simulators often miss.
- Utilize Responsive Image Handling: Leverage Sitecore's built-in support for responsive images. Use the
srcsetandsizesattributes in your renderings to serve appropriately scaled images for different screen sizes, drastically reducing mobile load times. - Audit Mobile Core Web Vitals: Use Google Search Console to monitor your Core Web Vitals scores specifically for mobile users. A common issue in Sitecore is Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) caused by dynamically loaded components; ensure placeholders are used to prevent this.
- Optimize Touch Targets: Ensure all buttons, links, and form fields are large enough to be easily tapped with a finger. The minimum recommended size is 48x48 CSS pixels. This is a crucial step in any website audit checklist for usability.
8. Content Audit & Information Architecture
Beyond technical performance, the heart of any website is its content and how it's organized. A content audit systematically reviews every piece of content on your site, from blog posts to product descriptions, to assess its quality, relevance, and performance. This is paired with an evaluation of the information architecture (IA), ensuring users can find what they need intuitively.
For platforms like Sitecore, which often manage vast libraries of content components and assets via products like Sitecore Content Hub, this part of the website audit checklist is crucial. An audit involves mapping content items, identifying redundancies, and assessing how the IA aligns with user journeys defined in Sitecore Experience Platform (XP). In SharePoint, this process focuses on ensuring document libraries, team sites, and intranet portals are structured logically, preventing information silos and improving employee productivity.
A well-executed content and IA audit ensures your website delivers value, meets user needs efficiently, and prevents content bloat that can harm both user experience and SEO.
Why Content & IA Matter
Effective content organization directly impacts user engagement and conversions. It's not just about deleting content; it's about strategic consolidation and improvement. By pruning redundant, outdated, and trivial (ROT) content, you concentrate your SEO authority on the pages that matter most, making your site more valuable to both users and search engines. A strong IA, especially one managed within Sitecore's structured content model, reduces bounce rates and increases time on site, signaling to search algorithms that your site is a quality resource.
Actionable Tips for Sitecore & SharePoint
To start your content audit and IA review, here are some platform-specific tips:
- Create a Content Inventory: Use a tool like the Sitecore PowerShell Extensions to export a complete inventory of all content items, including URLs, templates, and metadata. For SharePoint, use its reporting features to catalog all documents and pages.
- Apply ROT Analysis: Systematically review your inventory and categorize each piece of content as Redundant, Outdated, or Trivial. This framework helps you make clear decisions on what to keep, update, or remove.
- Validate Your IA: Use card sorting exercises to understand how users naturally group your content. This data can validate or challenge your existing site structure. In Sitecore, this can inform how you structure your content tree and navigation components.
- Leverage Analytics: Identify low-performing content using Sitecore Analytics or SharePoint usage reports. Pages with high bounce rates, low time on page, or minimal traffic are prime candidates for review and optimization. Implement 301 redirects for any content you consolidate or remove to preserve link equity.
Website Audit Checklist Comparison
From Audit to Action: Elevating Your Digital Platform
You have successfully navigated the critical components of a comprehensive digital review, from the foundational elements of technical SEO to the nuanced details of user experience. This detailed website audit checklist is more than just a list of tasks; it is a strategic blueprint designed to diagnose the health of your digital platform and prescribe the most effective remedies for sustainable growth. Completing this audit is a commendable achievement, but the true transformation begins now, as you translate these findings into a concrete action plan.
The insights gathered are your roadmap to digital excellence. Each broken link, slow-loading page, or piece of underperforming content is not a failure but an opportunity. It's a chance to refine your strategy, enhance user satisfaction, and ultimately, drive better business outcomes. Think of the audit not as a final report card but as the first chapter in your platform's next evolutionary stage.
Transforming Insights into a Strategic Roadmap
The most significant challenge after any audit is avoiding "analysis paralysis." With a potentially long list of issues, knowing where to start can be overwhelming. The key is to move from a raw list of findings to a prioritized, actionable strategy.
1. Prioritize with an Impact vs. Effort Matrix:
Organize your findings into a simple four-quadrant matrix. Categorize each item based on its potential impact on your goals (e.g., SEO, conversions, user engagement) and the level of effort (time, resources, cost) required to implement the fix.
- Quick Wins (High Impact, Low Effort): These are your top priorities. This could include fixing critical 404 errors, updating title tags on key pages, or optimizing high-traffic images that are slowing down your site.
- Major Projects (High Impact, High Effort): These are strategic initiatives. For a Sitecore platform, this might involve implementing Sitecore Personalize to leverage the data from your audit or re-architecting a section of your SharePoint intranet for better content discovery.
- Fill-in Tasks (Low Impact, Low Effort): These are smaller tasks to be addressed when resources are available, such as fixing minor content formatting issues or updating old blog posts with new internal links.
- Reconsider (Low Impact, High Effort): These items should be questioned. Is the potential gain worth the significant investment? Perhaps there are more efficient alternatives.
2. Assign Ownership and Set Timelines:
An action plan without accountability is merely a wish list. For each prioritized task, assign a clear owner, whether it's an individual developer, a content creator, or an entire team. Attach realistic deadlines to create momentum and ensure progress is tracked effectively. This structured approach is vital for complex platforms like Sitecore and SharePoint, where changes can have cascading effects.
Key Takeaway: A successful audit concludes not with a document, but with a project plan. The value is unlocked when data-driven insights are converted into scheduled, assigned, and measurable actions that enhance your digital platform.
The Cyclical Nature of a Website Audit
Finally, it's crucial to understand that a website audit checklist is not a one-time event. Your digital ecosystem is in a constant state of flux. Search engine algorithms evolve, new technologies emerge, user expectations shift, and your own business goals change. What works today may be less effective tomorrow.
Embrace the audit as a cyclical process, an integral part of your ongoing digital strategy. Schedule regular audits, perhaps quarterly for a high-level review and annually for a deep-dive analysis. This continuous loop of Measure > Analyze > Act > Repeat ensures your Sitecore or SharePoint platform not only keeps pace with the digital landscape but becomes a leader within it. By consistently refining your website based on fresh data, you build a resilient, high-performing digital asset that delivers exceptional value to your audience and your organization for years to come.
Is your team equipped to translate a comprehensive audit into actionable improvements on a complex platform like Sitecore or SharePoint? The specialists at Kogifi possess deep expertise in conducting in-depth technical and strategic audits, providing a clear roadmap for maximizing your platform's capabilities. Let us help you transform your audit findings into a powerful engine for digital growth.
