Digital Audit is an evaluation of the digital tools of your brand. It helps you revise which tools are still aligned to your strategies. You shall find that some of the tools you have need to be removed while some others need alterations or updates.   

Digital audit forms a base for the upcoming plans and campaigns of your brand. It helps you to transform your digital tools such as the website, social media accounts, content, emails, and technology in an effective way.  

The term “Digital Audit” may seem like an easy and small task, but it is a vast concept with several aspects and steps. In this blog, you shall have an in-depth understanding of how Digital Audit helps your business grow and expand in the correct direction.  

Beginning with the several steps included in the process of Digital Audit followed by its purposes, structuring, and other related concepts.  

What Are the Key Areas that A Digital Audit Covers?  

A digital audit covers various key areas. All these areas include the usage of digital tools in an organization. It is necessary to know about each of these key areas for an effective digital audit. Your goal must be to find the loopholes in all the digital assets of a company and improve them all. 

The key areas of the digital audit include:  

• Website Audit: The audit of the performance and programming of your website.  

• Social Media Audit: The social media accounts of a brand are audited to know about their activities.  

• Content Audit: Audit of the tone and type of the content of your digital tools.  

• SEO Audit: The auditing of SEO tools and technologies that your brand is using.  

• Data Audit: The audit of data tells if your data is accurate as per the objectives of the organization.  

• Email Marketing Audit: The email marketing of your organization is audited as it is an important aspect of building a brand reputation.  

What are The Purposes of Digital Audit?  

Every activity of an organization has a certain purpose. The purpose or the results desired provides you with the pathway to conduct all the activities. Digital Audit is done with certain purposes that need to be mindful of during the entire process. Some of these purposes are mentioned below. 

• Spot gaps or weaknesses in digital efforts: Digital Audit helps you to estimate the potential of your digital tools. You compare the actual performance of your digital tools with the highest estimation of their capacity. This would help you to make better use of these tools and increase the effectiveness and efficiency of your brand.  

• Improve ROI: You invest a lot while acquiring and functioning the digital tools. Digital tools of an organization may include its website, social media, content, or data. If you use all these tools to the best of your potential, it will improve productivity and improve the ROI (Return on Investment) of your brand, further increasing profitability.   

• Realign digital activities with business goals: Digital Audit helps you keep your digital aligned with the business goals. It helps you to sync all the aspects of digital and work towards a common goal. Unity of Direction, in this case, brings harmony and productivity to the organization.  

• Get insights for a stronger digital strategy: When you do a digital audit for your brand, you understand where your strategies can be improved. It helps you to find the areas of improvement and work on these loopholes to make it work better.  

What is the process of Digital Audit?  

Digital Audit follows a procedure. It is necessary to move step-by-step to get better results. This includes an audit of each digital tool and improvisation of all the needed aspects. You shall learn about the process and following these will improve the working of your institution. 

1. Define Objectives: If you are doing a digital audit, you must know the objectives that your brand is seeking to achieve. This would help you to set the parameters around which your digital tools are to be audited.  

2. Evaluating Existing Digital Assets: At this step, you need to evaluate the digital assets existing within your organization. This would help you to understand if your tools are aligned with the requirements of the objectives and make any required changes.  

3. Analyze Website Performance: You need to analyze the efficiency of your website. You need to know the traffic on your website and the user responses to it. Optimize the website and make all necessary changes as per the objectives you have set.   

4. Review Social Media Channels: After the analysis of the website, you also need to review the working of your social media accounts. The review includes the frequency at which you are posting, the tone, and the type of content you are posting. You also need to know if the posts are receiving positive, neutral, or negative comments to understand if a product needs alterations.  

5. Evaluate SEO and Paid Ads: Digital audit includes the evaluation of how your SEO techniques and paid Ads work for the productivity of the brand. Look at the previous campaigns and measure if your Seo and paid tools still hold the same effectiveness or if it needs to be upgraded.  

6. Assess Email Marketing: This step includes the assessment of your email marketing. You need to check the open rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribe to get an idea of its work.   

7. Check Technology: You are in the era of rapid technological updates. At this point, you need to move along with the innovation. Outdated technology can harm your effectiveness. In a digital audit, you check the technology that your digital tools are using.  

8. Create Report: After all the above analysis, you need to make a report of the observations. The report includes all the necessary changes that need to be made. It should also mention the observations, and the end results you need to achieve through the required changes.  

9. Make Recommendations: Now you recommend the priorities. You need to know what your long-term updates are, and which ones are for the short-term. This would help you make further decisions and actions in the organization. It provides you the clarity and direction of work.  

10. Follow up and Monitor: Now you need to follow up on the newly updated digital tools and monitor the betterment your organization is getting. Also, ensure to monitor the areas of improvement to get them corrected before the next plan.  

What Are the Other Related Concepts?  

Digital Audit is affected by several other concepts like the type of organization, structure, and functioning of the institute, age, reputation of the brand, and policies of the company. All these concepts are crucial to be understood for a successful digital audit. 

Some of these related concepts include:  

Administrators  

In some organizations, they use administrating systems instead of login systems for managing the digital. It has both positive and negative effects that can be considered. If you use administrator concepts, you provide direct access to the employees who are managing your digital. The positive results of this may include saving time instead of logging in every time you need to work. On the other hand, the negative side is that if an employee exits the organization and still has access to your digital tools and accounts, it can be risky for your brand in the future.  

Existing Resources  

It’s important to know how many people are currently working on your channels and who they are. You need to note that if multiple employees are working on the same channel, their coordination is up to the mark. Note the duration of the time they are working on your channels per day and whether they are able to bring that much growth to the organization.  

If you find any deviations in this or if there are any areas of improvement, try to take the correct measures to resolve all the deviations.  

Chain of Command  

It is important in a digital audit to know the unity of command your organization is following. You should know who is answerable to whom and who is accountable for what. This will make things easier when it comes to handling any emergency. If something goes wrong in the organization, you will not have to disturb the entire organization if you know who was responsible for it. These things are easy to tackle if unity of command is clearly mentioned in the organization. It results in smooth functioning and increases operational efficiency.   

History  

Another aspect that affects digital audit is the history of the digital that your organization acquires. It would help you understand the flow of social media and customer engagement on your website. Historical data helps you to identify the position that you acquire in the market and industry. This helps you estimate the scope of expansion after making all the necessary modifications is your digital.  

Research  

Research is one of the key elements that impact the digital audit of a company. If you have not done any research, you will not be able to understand what the areas of improvement are in your digital. You shall not be able to compare them with the latest technologies and trends without research. So, it is important to do research before starting the digital audit. This will help you understand the requirements and set better objectives.  

Conclusion  

Digital Audit is an important need of every institute in this era of social media and networking. It is the process of assessing all your digital tools. Your digital must be up to date and the technology used must be the latest. You should do the digital audit before the formation and implementation of new plans to get better outcomes from them.