How to Audit Your Website Client Experience for 2022?

03 February 2022

The web client is like a doorway to the customer journey that works as a business face and allows you to connect with the target audience. According to PCMag, a web client refers to a browser on a user’s device that will support extensive services or application functionalities.

There are two sides to any website or web application in layman’s terms, client-side and server-side. The web client relates to a client-side component of your website with which a user interacts for data access and other functions.

These components perform operations that are available only on the client-side like, user input and others where server-side functionality is not needed.

But, why is website audit important for the web client experience?

It’s all about customer experience(CX), and a web client is at the forefront of providing it. According to a report, 80% of customers expressed that the experience is as important as the product from a brand.

So, improving the web client experience for your customers can help your brand, and that is where website audit comes into play. It allows you to find critical issues with your website that affect the CX.

Here, we will discuss different aspects of website auditing and tips to improve the web client experience.

Identifying the pain points

Knowing different touchpoints where users interact with your web client and auditing them for errors can help you improve the CX. The first step towards website audit is to understand the traffic that comes to your website, what type of audience visits, and the different pain points for them become vital to understand the issues with CX.

Take an example of an eCommerce website that loads the checkout page slowly and has issues with the payments due to higher Cumulative Layout Shift(CLS). It is a metric that Google measures to evaluate web page experience. CLS score measures how individual layout shifts for sudden web page changes like accidental clicks.

Such issues with your website can be tracked through cart abandonment rates. It is a crucial indicator to a vital pain point like a higher CLS, which needs to be below 0.1 seconds. Similarly, it would help if you tracked several other key metrics to improve the web client experience, which requires effective website auditing.

Monitoring the KPIs

Several critical KPIs is essential for your website audit that can impact the customer experience like,

• Bounce rates
• Average session duration
• User dwell time
• Page per session
• Scroll depth

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is a metric that measures the average number of users who leave your site without taking any action. Such actions can be anything from clicking on a Call to Action button, downloading the content, or even filling a web form.

A user bounces if your website cannot engage them through a landing page, and the visit ends with a single visit. The higher the bounce rate, the lower the quality of your website, which cannot generate enough engagement only to amplify the user churn rate.

Average session duration

One of the critical aspects of web client experience is how much time a user spends on your website. You can track average session duration through tools like Google Analytics to know how much an average user spends on your website. A single session is when a user visits your website and leaves after browsing, or there is no activity for 30 minutes.

User dwell time 

A user’s dwell time is different from your average session duration as it measures the time spent by a user that comes through Search Engine Result Pages or SERP. The time spent is between visiting your website and getting back to the SERP.

Page per session 

Pages per session allow you to calculate how many pages a user visits during a single session. It helps you understand the issues with different pages on your website and know critical touchpoints where users have bad CX.

Scroll depth

Scroll depth allows you to track users’ scrolling behaviour on your website. You can track scrolling behaviour through scroll depth triggers activated through the Google Tag Manager. Tracking scroll depth can also help you improve the user interface design for an enhanced scrolling experience.

Redesigning the experience

Once you have the data and insights into different KPIs of web client experience, you will have to think about redesigning various aspects of the website for improved CX. For example, if there is an issue with the vertical scrolling design, you can choose a horizontal scroll design. However, everything depends on the execution of the design strategy for your website.

Similarly, having a mobile-friendly website is also essential for the enhanced web client experience. According to Statista, mobile devices account for 54.8% of the total traffic to any website making responsive and mobile-friendly design necessary. However, if you consider revamping or improving your website design, security is an aspect that you need to address.

Secure web client

Securing the web client experience is one of the essential aspects which you need to consider during website auditing. According to Forbes, 65% of consumers will buy from a brand that can provide a positive customer experience for a long time. This shows why you would not like to risk your website’s security and negatively impact the CX.

One way to ensure a secure web client experience is to use encryption-based security. For example, you can use Secure Socket Layer or SSL-based encryptions to secure your websites. It ensures that the communication between the user’s device and browser stays anonymous to a hacker.

There are two ways to get SSL certification. One is to buy SSL certificate from leading Certificate Authorities or CA. The other involves choosing a hosting service with built-in certification. The former seems to be a better option considering the hosting services offer a basic SSL certification.

Conclusion

Website auditing is key to your web client experience, and there are several ways to ensure that you don’t miss out on providing excellent CX. This will help you improve your business’s agility and adapt the web client to the changes in customers’ behaviour. However, choosing which approach for your website to enhance the web client experience depends on your target audience and specific business requirements.