Is it built properly?
Fewer surprises: a site that works for every visitor and doesn’t break when it’s updated.
Quality & standards, in plain terms.
Sound familiar?
If any of these ring true, this part of the audit is where to start.
- Your developer describes updates as “risky”
- You found out the contact form had stopped working from a customer
- The site looks broken on someone’s phone, but fine on yours
- Nobody can tell you what half the plugins do
- Small text changes take days, or cost more than they should
- Old pages and links lead to “page not found”
Fewer surprises: a site that works for every visitor and doesn’t break when it’s updated.
Most of the problems that cost small businesses money aren’t dramatic. A contact form that quietly stopped sending, a page that breaks on one model of phone, an update that takes the layout with it. Visitors rarely tell you about any of this. They simply leave, and you never see the enquiry you lost.
Quality problems also make every future change more expensive. When a site is built on a tangle of overlapping plugins and one-off fixes, a simple edit becomes a risky job, so it gets put off. Over time the site drifts out of date, and the cost of catching up grows.
A site built properly is cheaper to own. Updates go smoothly, changes take hours instead of days, and a new developer can pick up the work without starting from scratch. That’s the difference between a website that’s an asset and one that’s a liability you’re nervous to touch.
Accessibility belongs here too. Roughly one in five Canadians aged 15 and over has a disability, according to Statistics Canada’s 2017 Canadian Survey on Disability. A site that can’t be used with a keyboard or a screen reader turns those customers away, and in Ontario the AODA already requires WCAG 2.0 AA websites from organizations with 50 or more employees.
What happens, step by step.
Senior-led from start to finish. We’ve completed hundreds of WordPress audits, and every finding is checked by hand, not just copied from a tool.
- Inventory everything
We list your theme, every plugin and any custom code, then check each for necessity, quality, update history and overlap with the others.
- Review the build
We review the theme and custom code against WordPress coding standards, looking for fragile shortcuts that make updates risky.
- Test like a visitor
We click through key pages and every form on real phones, tablets and the main browsers, and crawl the site for broken links and redirect loops.
- Check accessibility
We combine automated checkers such as axe and WAVE with manual keyboard and screen reader testing against WCAG 2.1 AA.
- Rank and explain
Every issue is written up in plain language and ranked by its effect on your customers and how much effort it takes to fix.
And what fixing it changes.
Typical patterns from WordPress audits, not any one client’s site.
Dozens of active plugins, several unused or doing the same job
Remove, consolidate and replace with a few well-supported ones
Faster pages, smoother updates and fewer security holes
A contact form silently failing to deliver email
Fix email delivery and add monitoring so failures alert us
Enquiries reach you again, and you’ll know if they ever stop
Theme edited directly, so updates overwrite changes
Move customizations into a child theme or custom plugin
Updates can be applied safely without losing work
Buttons and menus that can’t be used with a keyboard
Fix focus states, labels and contrast to WCAG 2.1 AA
More people can use the site, and less legal exposure
What you get
- Plain-language reportWith a one-page summary for decision-makers
- Priorities, rankedEvery issue by business impact and effort to fix
- A fixed quoteFor the fixes, with no obligation to go ahead
- A walkthrough callWe take you through it and answer your questions
Questions owners ask
Is this just a list of nitpicks about code?
No. We only report what affects your visitors, your costs or your risk, and we explain each issue in terms of what it means for the business. Purely cosmetic code preferences stay out of the report.
Will my site go down during the audit?
No. The audit is read-only: we look, measure and test, but we don’t change anything on your live site. Anything heavier, such as load testing, is agreed with you first and run at a quiet time or against a copy of the site.
Do you need my logins?
Not to start. A lot can be checked from the outside, the way a visitor or Google sees your site. For the full picture we ask for a WordPress admin account and, ideally, read access to your hosting. We’ll walk you through creating a separate account for us, so you never share your own password.
How long does it take, and what does it cost?
It depends on the size and complexity of your site. After a quick look we give you a fixed quote and a timeline up front, so you know both before anything starts. There’s no obligation to go ahead with any fixes afterwards.
What if we already have a developer?
That’s fine. The report is written so your own developer can act on it, and we’re happy to talk it through with them. Many owners use an audit as an independent second opinion.