Monthly Archives: September 2022

A personal website is your chance to showcase your personality and credentials in an engaging format. But without strong personal website examples to guide you, you may not know how to get started or what will work best for your personal branding.

In this post, we’ll cover the best examples of personal websites we’ve seen — including resume websites, portfolios, blogs, and demo websites.

Why create a personal website?

Here’s the thing about resumes and cover letters: No matter how unique you try to make your own, for the most part, they tend to read dry. And there’s a good reason for it: It’s supposed to be a single, no-frills page that documents your work experience. And while being concise is good, there’s very little opportunity to convey your uniqueness, or for your personality to shine through at all for that matter.

While a resume is a sole, largely unchanging document, a personal website can be customized and updated according to what you’re working on, or what you want to emphasize. It’s both fluid and current.

In addition, 80% of businesses say a personal website is important when evaluating job candidates. Recruiters are looking you up online, and a personal website that tells the story you want to tell can make all the difference between you and a competing candidate.

If you’re thinking about creating a personal website of your very own, check out the examples below that hit the nail on the head. Inspired by a particular type of website?

Click one of the following links to jump to that section of this article:

Personal Resume Websites
Personal Portfolios
Personal Blogs
Personal Demo Websites

Personal Resume Websites

Whether you create a single-page site or a larger portfolio, the web resume serves as a more personalized option for sharing information and demonstrating your technological skills — and it can be used by all types of jobseekers.

Even if you have very little work experience, you can leverage a website to build a better picture of your capabilities and yourself as a candidate, while leaning on your traditional resume to provide the basic background information.

1. Gary Sheng

Unlike a standard resume document, Sheng’s website makes it easy for him to include logos and clickable links that allow his software engineering and web development skills to shine.

We love that visitors can choose to scroll down his page to view all of the website’s categories (“About Me,” “My Passion,” etc.), or jump to a specific page using the top navigation.

The “My System” section reads like a company mission statement, and this personal touch helps humanize his work and make him more memorable.

2. Brandon Johnson

Johnson’s incredible resume must be seen to be believed. Beautiful images of planets help to complement his planetary science background, and animations make his resume more of an experience than a document.

In terms of design, the textured, multi-layered background adds greater depth to the two-dimensional page in a way that evokes feelings of space and the planetary systems, which Johnson’s work focuses on.

3. Quinton Harris

Harris’ resume uses photos to tell his personal story — and it reads kind of like a cool, digital scrapbook. It covers all the bases of a resume — and then some — by discussing his educational background, work experience, and skills in a highly visual way.

Not to mention, the copy is fantastic. It’s clear that Harris took the time to carefully choose the right words to describe each step of his personal and professional journey.

4. Rubens Cantuni

Rubens Cantuni’s resume website hits all the right notes: First, it showcases what he does with a playful GIF showing the word “CIAO” getting edited point-by-point, just as it would in a design tool. Second, it summarizes Cantuni’s key strengths in a personable summary. Third, it lists his experience in a user-friendly collapsible format, so if you want to read more, you can click each individual role. He then leads into his book and portfolio.

At every step, you get to appreciate Cantuni’s strong sense of design, user-first thinking, and sharp business acumen. The designer ends with a call-to-action for visitors to reach out to him. He also prompts recruiters to inquire about his work by mentioning that he can only share certain pieces of his work privately. On your own site, you can leverage projects with non-disclosure agreements as “gated content.”

5. Martine Myrup

Martine Myrup’s website comes up twice on this list — first, as one of the best resume websites, and second, as one of the best portfolio websites we’ve ever seen. As a practicing artist, Myrup must emphasize visuals in her website’s design. But she also includes an HTML curriculum vitae for potential employers and other interested parties to see her degrees, exhibitions, awards, and publications.

The CV is formatted in a way that is clear and easy-to-scan, with bold headings separating each section and dates on the left-hand side. While artists’ CVs are formatted differently than professional CVs, Myrup’s formatting would work in virtually any field with some adjustments.

6. Taylor Vowell

Taylor Vowell’s resume website is an excellent example of how to introduce yourself in a personable way while highlighting your professional experience. He begins with a summary about his personal life: “I am a father of 3, an avid comic and sports card collector, and a huge Avs and Broncos fan.” That draws readers in immediately and gives them a way to break the ice when they reach out to Vowell.

Later down the page, he includes his experience in a carousel with cards for each of his employers. If you’re interested in seeing more of his experience, you can click to the next card, or you can keep scrolling to see his skills in marketing, product design, and technology, as well his strengths and recommendations. This is a strong resume website that ends with a compelling, eye-catching call-to-action.

7. Johannes Schüchner

Johannes Schüchner’s film resume website is an example that demonstrates how to showcase your creativity and personality while still highlighting your most important professional achievements. While the resume is in German, you can still get an understanding of the actor’s key strengths.

At the bottom, casting directors have an option to download a PDF version of Schüchner’s film credits and theater work. This website shows that you can tastefully break the rules on your own site, so long as you remain mindful of your target audience.

8. José Rocha

José Rocha is a designer who uses delightful parallax effects on his site to engage viewers and visitors. He introduces himself as a full-stack designer, covers his key strength areas, and then invites readers to scroll through his experience in a concise, interactive section.

At the top is a transparent navigation bar with his contact information, allowing website visitors to get in contact with him promptly if they want to. At the bottom is a formal form where people can submit an inquiry.

9. Hugo Bazin

Hugo Bazin is a product designer whose resume website combines friendliness with engaging user design. On the top left-hand corner, he includes a sticky button to download his resume in PDF format, but if you’re interested in getting an overview, you can scroll down to the “Experience” section, where you can see his current and previous employers.

Throughout the copy, Bazin uses emojis to showcase his personality, but he’s selective. He keeps emojis out of the “Experience” section of the webpage, where it’s essential to maintain a serious, professional tone.

10. Christian Kaisermann

Christian Kaisermann’s resume website employs unique visuals to keep viewers on the page and showcase his strong coding skills. On the upper right-hand side, you have the option to switch from channel to channel, like you would on an old TV. He also only includes two paragraphs of copy on the homepage, showing that remaining brief is key if you want visitors to focus on your website’s design.

On the bottom left-hand corner, users can access Kaisermann’s crawlable HTML resume, email, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can also activate “Space Mode,” which brings up a remote control to change the channels — very cool!

Best Practices for Resume Websites

Code your resume so it can be crawled by search engines.
Offer a button to download your resume in PDF so the hiring manager can add it to your file.
Keep branding consistent between the website and document versions: Use similar fonts, colors, and images so you’re easy to recognize.
Be creative and authentic to yourself. Think about the colors, images, and media you want to be a part of your story that you couldn’t include in a document resume.

Personal Portfolios

Building an online portfolio is a highly useful personal branding and marketing tool if your work experience and skill set call for content creation. In fact, photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, writers, and content marketers can all use web portfolios to show off their skills in a more user-friendly way than a resume or hard copy portfolio.

11. Seán Halpin

Halpin’s portfolio is short, sweet, and to the point, which is authentic to his voice and personal branding outlined on the site. Instead of a lot of copy, Halpin presents large thumbnail cards so that his projects speak for themselves and allow the user to delve deeper if one catches their eye.

12. Tony D’Orio

It’s important to keep the design of your visual portfolio simple to let images capture visitors’ attention, and D’Orio accomplishes this by featuring bold photographs front-and-center on his website. His logo and navigation menu are clear and don’t distract from his work. And he makes it easy for potential customers to download his work free of charge.

Want to give it a try? Click on the hamburger menu in the top left corner, then select + Create a PDF to select as many images as you’d like to download.

Once you open the PDF, you’ll notice that it comes fully equipped with D’Orio’s business card as the cover … just in case you need it.

13. Verena Michelitsch

When you’re a designer, not one pixel on your personal website should go unused. Verena Michelitsch’s portfolio, shown above, is covered end to end in artwork. From her extensive library of work, she chose to exhibit multiple colors, styles, and dimensions so visitors can see just how much range she has as a designer. It’s a perfect example of the classic adage, “show, don’t tell.”

14. Gari Cruze

Cruze is a copywriter. But by turning his website into a portfolio featuring images from different campaigns he’s worked on, he makes visitors want to keep clicking to learn more about him. Also, there’s a great CTA at the top of the page that leads visitors to his latest blog post.

His site’s humorous copy — specifically in the “17 Random Things” and “Oh Yes, They’re Talking” sections — serves to show off his skills, while making himself more memorable as well. These pages also include his contact information on the right-hand side, making it easy to reach out and connect at any point:

15. Melanie Daveid

Daveid’s website is a great example of “less is more.”

This developer’s portfolio features clear, well-branded imagery of campaigns and apps that Daveid worked on, and she shows off her coding skills when you click through to see the specifics of her work.

While it might seem overly minimal to only include just a few examples of her work, Daveid did her portfolio a service by including her best, most noteworthy campaigns. At the end of the day, it’s better to have fewer examples of excellence in your portfolio than many examples of mediocrity.

16. The Beast Is Back

Christopher Lee’s portfolio is busy and colorful in a way that works. When you read more about Lee on his easily navigable site, you realize that such a fun and vibrant homepage is perfect for an illustrator and toy designer.

Known by his brand name, “The Beast Is Back,” Lee’s web portfolio highlights eye-catching designs with recognizable brands, such as Target and Mario, along with links to purchase his work. This is another gallery-style portfolio with pops of color that make it fun and give it personality, thus making it more memorable.

17. Daniel Grindrod

This freelance videographer is another example of a simple but sleek portfolio, allowing his potential clients to browse deeper into his “Work” and “Stills” sections. The opening video on the homepage — as shown on the still image above — also ensures his site visitors know that he’s actively creating beautiful work.

18. Byron McNally

In his portfolio, Byron McNally doesn’t immediately include his work but rather a photo of himself, which immediately fosters a connection between him and website visitors. This minimal website design also invites users to continue engaging with the website’s content and see some of his recent film, commercial, and music productions.

19. Martine Myrup

Martine Myrup was also in our list of best resume websites, but her portfolio is worth a mention, too. With its muted colors and creative use of typography, it immediately conveys her artistic vision and aesthetic. The page also includes a sticky bright green button prompting you to check out her CV. As you scroll down the page, you can see a preview of her work and click on the one that most interests you, then get in contact with her using the email at the bottom.

20. Davide Perozzi

Davide Perozzi uses his website to showcase his strong design skills and creative typography, as well as his previous work. When you hover over each item in his portfolio, an image preview pops up, giving you the opportunity to check out more. The website uses scrolling effects and bold text to keep viewers engaged.

Best Practices for Portfolio Websites

Use mainly visuals. Even if you’re showcasing your written work, using logos or other branding is more eye-catching for your visitors.
Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Your personality, style, and sense of humor could be what sets you apart from other sites!
Organization is key. If your portfolio is full of photos, logos, and other images, make sure it’s easy for visitors to navigate to where they can contact you.
Brand yourself. Choose a logo or icon to make your information easily identifiable.

Personal Blogs

Consistently publishing on a blog is a great way to attract attention on social media and search engines — and drive traffic to your site. Blogging is a smart way to give your work a personality, chronicle your experiences, and stretch your writing muscles. You might write a personal blog if you’re a writer by trade, but virtually anyone can benefit from adding a blog to their site and providing useful content for their audience.

21. The Everywhereist

This blog looks a bit busier, but its consistent branding helps visitors easily navigate the site. The travel blog uses globe iconography to move visitors around the site, making it easy to explore sections beyond the blog.

Owned by writer Geraldine DeRuiter, this blog also features a “Best Of” section that allows new visitors to learn about what the blog covers to get acclimated. The color scheme is warm, neutral, and free of excess clutter that could distract from the content.

22. Side Hustle Nation

Side Hustle Nation is the business blog of Nick Loper, an advisor whose website offers tons of valuable financial advice for individual business owners. His homepage, shown above, sets a lighthearted yet passionate tone for his readers. It suggests you’ll get friendly content all committed to a single goal: financial freedom. The green call to action, “Start Here,” helps first-time visitors know exactly how to navigate his website.

On Nick’s blog page, you’ll see content that shows readers how Nick, himself, creates content that helps his business grow. These content types give people a peek behind the curtain of your operation, showing them you practice what you preach and that your insight is tried and true.

23. fifty coffees

The website fifty coffees chronicles the author’s series of coffee meetings in search of her next job opportunity, and it does a great job of using photography and visuals to assist in the telling of her lengthy stories.

The best part? Each post ends with numbered takeaways from her meetings for ease of reading comprehension. The high-quality photography used to complement the stories is like icing on the cake.

24. Minimalist Baker

I’m not highlighting Dana’s food blog just because the food looks delicious and I’m hungry. Her blog uses a simple white background to let her food photography pop, unique branding to make her memorable, and mini-bio to personalize her website.

25. Mr. Money Mustache

Mr. Money Mustache might take on an old-school, Gangs of New York-style facade, but his blog design — and the advice the blog offers — couldn’t be more fresh (he also doesn’t really look like that).

This financial blog is a funny, browsable website that offers sound insight into money management for the layperson. While his personal stories help support the legitimacy of his advice, the navigation links surrounding his logo make it easy to jump right into his content without any prior context around his brand.

26. Marco Feng

Marco Feng’s travel blog is colorful, unique, and informative. When you arrive at the site, you can immediately jump in to the blog post that draws your attention the most, or explore by destination. Our favorite part of the site is the scrolling banner at the top that provides social proof: As a reader, you’d be joining 3 million others. Leveraging your audience size will help you look more authoritative and establish your site as a go-to.

27. Miramono

Miramono is a unique photography blog created by Fernando Puente, where he curates a “selection of photographers he deeeeply loves.” In it, he includes interviews, essays, and photo selections. At the bottom is an eye-catching graphic prompting viewers to subscribe. We love the simplicity of the website’s design, as well as its unique value proposition.

28. Beamaker

This blog combines engaging visual design with user-friendliness. Since Japanese is written vertically, the home page includes a series of vertical cards, each for a different blog post. You can then click on each card to expand a specific post. The writer divides his musings into three categories: Make, Think, and Jumble. He discusses his personal life at home as well as his life at work, epitomizing what a personal blog should contain.

29. Salt in Our Hair

Salt in Our Hair is a travel blog with exceptional user design. The bloggers, Nick and Hannah, introduce themselves on the welcome screen. Users then have the option of choosing a specific destination to read about or finding a specific topic using the menu up top.

30. Daniel See

Daniel See uses the blog section of his website to share his thoughts on design. As a designer, he uses his subject-matter expertise to write blog posts about creative processes. He also prompts readers to submit their feedback and ideas by including a button to “let him know your thoughts.”

Best Practices for Blogs

Keep your site simple and clutter-free to avoid additional distractions beyond blog posts.
Publish often. Those who prioritize marketing efforts are 13x more likely to see positive ROI.
Experiment with different blog styles, such as lists, interviews, graphics, and bullets.
Employ visuals to break up text and add context to your discussion.

Personal Demo Websites

Another cool way to promote yourself and your skills is to create a personal website that doubles as a demonstration of your coding, design, illustration, or developer skills. These sites can be interactive and animated in a way that provides information about you and also shows hiring managers why they should work with you. This is a great website option for technical and artistic content creators such as developers, animators, UX designers, website content managers, and illustrators.

31. Albino Tonnina

Tonnina is showcasing advanced and complicated web development skills, but the images and storytelling methods he uses are simple and easy to understand. In the process, you get a demo of the depth of his animation and coding experience.

32. Robby Leonardi

Leonardi’s incredible demo website uses animation and web development skills to turn his portfolio and resume into a video game for site visitors. The whimsical branding and unique way of sharing information ensure that his site is memorable to visitors.

33. Samuel Reed

Reed uses his page as a start-to-finish demo of how to code a website. His website starts as a blank white page and ends as a fully interactive site that visitors can watch him code themselves. The cool factor makes this website memorable, and it makes his skills extremely marketable.

34. Renaud Rohlinger

Renaud Rohlinger’s demo site does a great job of showing his 3D design chops, and it takes it a step further by telling visitors all about him and his passions. It’s the perfect balance of a demo and a mini-portfolio.

Plus, we love the video he includes as the background, as well as the parallax effects that activate as you scroll down the page.

35. Enric Moreu

Enric Moreu showcases his 3D design skills by creating an interactive 3D resume. As users scroll, the page smoothly takes them through Moreu’s spoken languages, coding languages, skills, and work experiences. It’s engaging, light on text, and visually striking.

36. Mariah Weathersby

Mariah Weathersby has coded a striking “playable” resume that pays homage to old-school games and showcases her strong design skills. If you love experiencing nostalgia, this demo website will reel you in. If you only want the resume, you have the option of downloading a text-based version — a win-win.

37. Isaac Fayemi

Isaac Fayemi’s demo website is subtle and striking at the same time. Rather than loading the page with excessive graphics, he has created a 3D version of his head that follows your cursor as you move around. You have two options: To find out more about him or check out more of his work. This demo website is a stellar example of how to keep it simple while still delighting the senses.

Best Practices for Demo Websites

Brand yourself and use consistent logos and colors to identify your name and your skills amongst the bevy of visuals.
Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too many visuals at once — especially if your demo is animated. Be sure to keep imagery easy to understand so visitors aren’t bombarded when they visit your site.

Developing a Personal Website

Regardless of the type of personal website you’re building, there’s plenty of inspiration above on how to convey personality while connecting with your audience. Keeping the above tips in mind, remember to design for your audience’s experience, and most importantly, have fun.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

The term “metaverse” may have been coined back in 1992, but it could hold new and adventurous opportunities for both consumers and even brands that engage with them.

The only problem is many of us aren’t too sure what the metaverse actually is. Who is using it? Why do they use it? Which of the seemingly infinite metaverses are worth including in your marketing strategy? And how can the metaverse help marketers navigate data privacy regulations?

To get some clarity, we surveyed over 1,000 consumers in the U.S. to learn about their takes, preferences, and behaviors around today’s biggest trends.

In that survey, 8% of participants said they’d ever visited a metaverse. But that’s not the full story. Keep reading to learn why the metaverse might not be a passing trend.

What Consumers Think About the Metaverse [New Data]

The Metaverse is New to Many — but Still Growing

Today 33%, or one-third, of our total survey-takers don’t quite get the concept of the metaverse. Still, 40% understand it and 30% think more brands should leverage it.

While only a small percentage of people have stepped into the metaverse, half of those that have did so in the past three months.

On top of that, these early adopters aren’t just popping in once to check it out – they’re actually invested in these virtual worlds. Of those who have ever used the metaverse:

64% own virtual currency in the metaverse
61% own virtual items that can be bought and sold in the metaverse
55% own land that can be bought and sold in the metaverse

How the Metaverse Intersects With Consumers’ Real Lives

We also asked those who have ever done metaverse-related activities (visited a metaverse, played online games, attended virtual events, or bought virtual items/NFTs) about how these intersect with their “real” lives, which produced some surprising results:

60% say their virtual items are just as important as their real-life possessions
54% say their online relationships are just as important as in-person relationships
51% say they can more easily be their authentic self in virtual worlds than in-person
40% say they understand the concept of the metaverse
33% say the metaverse is the future of technology

Who’s using the Metaverse?

Our research shows that opinions on the metaverse differ sharply by age group.

At the moment, Gen Z and Millennials are the most excited about exploring the metaverse, with around 15% of them having visited a metaverse at some point.

Gen Z and Millennials are also more likely than any other generation to have done metaverse-related activities, other than buying crypto (likely due to Gen Z having less disposable income):

40% of Gen Z/Millennials have played an online game
28% of Gen Z/Millennials have used a VR headset
22% of Gen Z/Millennials have bought virtual items other than NFTs or crypto, like a skin in a video game
18% of Gen Z/Millennials have attended a virtual reality event
23% of Gen Z/Millennials have bought cryptocurrency

So now that we know Gen Z and Millennials are the primary users of the metaverse and related technology, let’s take a look at why people go to the metaverse in the first place.

What Do People Do In the Metaverse?

Why People Visit the Metaverse

The most popular reasons for visiting the metaverse are to play games, hang out with friends, work a virtual job, and for virtual meetings and events.

Keep in mind the metaverse is all about empowering users to create their own experiences. As people continue innovating in virtual worlds, the number of activities and use cases will likely grow.

What motivates metaverse regulars?

Because the metaverse itself is loosely defined, to some extent it’s up to the users to shape its future. And those users are invested, with over 50% owning virtual currency, land, and items that can be bought and sold in the metaverse.

Additionally, with 31% of metaverse users saying they log on to earn virtual currency or work a virtual job, it’s important to touch on another selling point of the metaverse – users can earn currency by playing games or working virtual jobs.

We asked the general population whether they would be more likely to use a platform if they got virtual currency as an incentive, and 27% say they would. This number jumps up to 36% for Gen Z and 40% for Millennials.

On top of that, 60% of those who have ever used the metaverse say they would be more likely to use a platform if they got paid in virtual currency.

Offering incentives for using a platform can also help address a problem many marketers are currently struggling with – gathering consumer data in a way that provides value to both parties.

The Most Visited Metaverses

The Sandbox, Meta’s Horizon Worlds, and VRChat are the most visited, followed by Axie Infinity, Decentraland, and Illuvium. Keep in mind that many of these worlds are in early development, and some aren’t even accessible to the public yet.

Data Privacy and the Metaverse

Currently, many platforms like social media track, analyze, and sell personal data, but the user gets nothing in return. In response to this, privacy protections are being developed by governments and corporations alike to give consumers more power over their data.

This means offering incentives for people to not only spend time on your platform but also share their data will become more important in the future.

So let’s take a closer look at how consumers currently think of data privacy, and whether they think the metaverse has the potential to tip the scales in their favor.

Consumers are unified in their demands for ownership over their personal information. Our survey found that:

80% of consumers agree that data privacy is a human right
80% of consumers agree that they should have complete control over how companies use their data
79% of consumers say they are concerned about how companies use their data

On the other hand, when it comes to the metaverse, 53% of those who have ever used it say they trust how data on their activities in virtual worlds will be stored and used, while 29% distrust it. This is quite fascinating as many metaverses are decentralized, built on relatively emerging blockchain technology, and still a mystery to many — even when they’ve visited them a few times.

What’s Next for the Metaverse?

So you might be wondering what to expect next for the metaverse, and in all honesty, nobody knows.

We’ll keep running our Consumer Trends Survey regularly, to stay up to date on all the latest trends, from the metaverse to social media, workplace trends, and much more.

In the meantime, check out our State of Consumer Trends Report which includes the full results of our survey, as well as the downloadable PDF below. 

Did you know that it only takes a tenth of a second to make a first impression? So when you meet someone for the first time, you need to be on your game from the very beginning — but do you know exactly how to make a good first impression?

Whether you’re meeting new connections, team members, potential employers, or customers, here is alist of tips to help you put your best foot forward and make a great first impression.

Arrive early.
Be empathetic.
Actively listen.
Be mindful of your body language and posture.
Modulate your pitch and tone of voice.
Choose your words wisely.
Dress the part.
Make eye contact.
Know your audience.
Come prepared.
Be authentic.
Put your phone away.
Make a connection.
Don’t forget to follow up.

14 Tips for Making a Good First Impression

1. Arrive Early.

Actor Billy Porter said it in his book Unprotected: A Memoir, “Fifteen minutes early is on time, on time is late, and late is unacceptable.”

Arriving a little early for a meeting shows your punctuality and gives you a little more time to ensure everything is in place. If you’re giving a presentation, arriving early gives you a moment to test the equipment you’re using. If you’re early to a job interview, you’ll have time to go over your elevator pitch to yourself, adjust your tie, or make sure your hair isn’t out of place.

2. Be Empathetic.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the same feelings as another person. It can help you come across as personable when it comes to first impressions. Of course, you want to be professional and not cross boundaries. However, showing that you understand the person or group you’re speaking to and that what they’re saying resonates with you will help you form a genuine connection.

To show empathy, ask questions with genuine curiosity and listen to understand — not just respond. And make a point to stay focused and engaged in the interaction.

3. Actively listen.

Most people don’t like repeating themselves or answering the same question multiple times — it makes them feel like they aren’t being listened to. You don’t want your first impression to be that you’re an inattentive listener, so practice active listening.

Active listening is giving the speaker your undivided attention and paying attention to what’s said and the intention behind it. Listen for opportunities to ask questions pertaining to the discussion. Asking the right questions shows you’re engaged — just don’t ask something the speaker already answered.

When was the last time you gave your website a checkup? Maybe you’ve never audited your website before, it’s been a while since you have, or you have a redesign planned for the future. Whatever the case, use this post as your go-to website audit checklist to make sure your website is primed for maximum SEO and conversion results.

Below, let’s learn what a website audit is, the different types of audits, why an auditis important, and how to use information from an audit to improve your SEO and conversions.

Before we dive into the things you should be keeping an eye out for as you’re auditing your website, let’s review some of the different types of audits you can perform. Here are a few common audits among marketers.

Types of Website Audits

There are several different types of website audits, such as:

1. Competitive Website Audit

A competitive website audit tracks your competitors and their online strategies to help you see what opportunities your brand could be missing out on. Essentially, a competitive audit allows you to see what’s working for other companies in your market, so you can incorporate those tactics into your own strategy.

Start by performing a SWOT analysis on a competitor’s website. In a SWOT analysis, you track the website’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. An example of a strength could be that their website is easier to navigate than yours. One weakness could be that their website has slower page loading times. Opportunities could be items or tools missing from their website that you can add to yours to give it an edge.

And finally, a threat could be that their website ranks higher in SERPs than your own, resulting in your site losing leads.

During this audit, you also need to consider the tools and software they are using to streamline their processes. This can help you discover new ways to run your site more efficiently and make it more accessible for consumers.

2. SEO Link Audit

This type of audit processes the links pointing to your website to find potential issues or opportunities in your backlink profile. By evaluating your links, this audit will help optimize your site to rank for your target keywords.

Link audits consider the URL source, domain, and anchor text to see if value and equity (called “link juice”) are being passed on to your page. This will gauge how much a link is helping or hurting your website’s visibility in SERPs. Links from well-respected websites are much more valuable than links from smaller, less well-known sites.

To perform an SEO link audit, start by gathering all of your link data. You can do this with Google Search Console by entering your domain and then clicking on “Links to Your Site” under “Search Traffic.”

From there, you can download the latest links and create a link audit spreadsheet. Afterward, you manually evaluate your links by paying attention to factors like anchor text, IP address, and page content.

You can also tools like Ahref’s backlink checker to take the guesswork out of analyzing the value of the links you gathered.

3. Lead Conversion Optimization Audit

A lead conversion optimization audit analyzes a website’s conversion issues and opportunities. In this audit, you’ll need to analyze how traffic is coming to your website and where it’s coming from. Google Analytics is an excellent tool for this step. Knowing where your traffic is coming from will help you better understand your audience’s behavior and will help you optimize your site’s content to suit their needs.

Speaking of content, you’ll also need to analyze the content on your website. Check if the content is helpful, informative, and up-to-date. Is the latest information about business uploaded to the site and easily visible? Does your content contain keywords and phrases to boost its ranking in SERPs? Outdated or irrelevant content can hurt conversions and hurt your SERPs ranking.

Other aspects of your website you need to observe are:

Forms — Do your forms collect enough information to contact a lead?
The checkout process — If you notice a lot of shopping cart abandonment, customers are likely having issues with the checkout process on your website.
Design and layout — Are CTAs clear and visible? Is the copy too small and difficult to read? Is the website easy to navigate?
Overall user experience — Are there any sources of frustration for visitors to your site?

Now you know a few different audits you can conduct to improve your website, so let’s discuss the perks of an audit.

4. Social Media Audit

Your brand’s online performance can also be impacted by social media. If your social media presence isn’t pushing more traffic to your website, then it’s time to conduct a social media audit.

To start the audit, create a list of all your company’s social media accounts. Do some extra digging to make sure you don’t miss any you’re not aware of — such as accounts started by a particular department. From there, go through each account to determine if they’re all consistent with the company’s branding by having the same images, logo, tone of voice, etc.

Then, you’ll need to evaluate each page’s performance. What kind of content performs the highest, and what kind performs the lowest? Are these pages being updated frequently? Use information from the evaluation to better understand your audience and optimize your social media to engage them.

Finally, you’ll be able to update your social media strategy to further delight your audience and attract them to your website.

5. SEO Website Audit

While an SEO link audit analyzes the links associated with your website, an SEO website audit evaluates all the factors that can impact your site’s performance in SERPs. This includes links but also extends to other aspects such as keyword usage, content, metadata, page speed, user journey, and video optimization.

It’s possible to conduct an SEO audit on your own but you’ll likely get more thorough answers in less time by employing an agency.

1. Website Performance Optimization

Website audits, like the ones mentioned above, usually evaluate a site for its content and technical performance.

As a result, an audit will give you a chance to inspect the robustness of your website’s technical framework and infrastructure. It will also evaluate how friendly your website is to search engines and determine how easy it is for users to navigate your website to find the content they are looking for.

2. Search Engine Optimization

With a website audit, you will be able to identify any missed SEO opportunities and remedy any misguided or poorly executed SEO pitfalls (e.g. keyword stuffing, exact match anchor text links, etc.) throughout the content of your website.

It will also allow you to re-focus your SEO efforts on users first and search engines second. This will safeguard you from constantly chasing changes to search ranking algorithms, meaning you won’t be applying misguided practices just to show up at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).

3. Conversion Rate Optimization

Website audits also enable you to re-evaluate the effectiveness of your website in terms of lead generation and conversion. As a result, you’ll be able to spot any previously overlooked opportunities to convert visitors into leads so you can add relevant CTAs, as well as identify deficiencies in your landing pages so you can optimize them to boost conversions.

4. Competitive Analysis

Conducting a website audit will allow you to compare your website to your competitor’s. You can analyze how well you’re ranking against competitors for keywords and determine potential new sources of revenue.

You can use tools, like HubSpot’s website grader, to perform an audit on your competitor’s websites to gather more insights. You can learn how your competitors are attracting visitors and see how they’re garnering conversions.

Ultimately, this will help you brainstorm new tactics and strategies for your site.

5. Identify Issues

Finally, a website audit finds issues that are hurting your SEO and conversions such as broken links, hidden content, and long page load speed times. Identifying these issues will help you address problems that are diverting traffic.

Assessing both the content and technical aspects of your website will open up opportunities to drastically improve the traffic and conversions your website generates.

Now that you know what a website audit is and why you should do one, let’s look at how to conduct one.

1. Run Your Website URL through a Site Audit Tool

Before you get started, you’ll need to find a website auditing tool that can help you analyze how your website is performing. When you use site audit software to run your site through, you can get specific recommendations and test how your page is performing.

2. Find Technical Errors

Technical errors like ones related to performance, SEO, mobile, and security, can negatively impact your customers’ experience on your website. If you’re noticing visitors aren’t staying on your site for long, or you’re seeing a lot of abandoned shopping carts — a website audit is a great way to find out why.

3. Identify SEO Problems

Now, you’ll want to look at SEO-related issues so you can improve your ranking on search engines. This will mean looking at meta descriptions, reviewing image alt text, and more.

4. Analyze Design and UX

How is this design working for your customers? Some software has heatmaps of what parts of your design draw the most attention and what users are reading. This type of analysis will let you know how the overall design and user experience are impacting your visitors.

5. Assess Website Content

A website audit will help you assess website content including blogs, website pages, etc. You’ll want to know how your current pages are stacking up. Ask yourself, “Is my content ranking well in search engines?” and “Is my on-page SEO and performance aligned with my traffic numbers?”

6. Generate a Checklist of All Site Issues and Recommended Fixes

Lastly, when you’re conducting a website audit, it’s important to have a place where you put a summary of all your findings. List out the site issues and recommended fixes, so that you can send that information to the appropriate teams.

Now let’s dive in even more specifically so you know what to be checking for in this website audit.

Assessments to Make When Auditing Your Website

But first, enter your website into HubSpot’s Website Grader — this will give you a general overview of your website’s strengths so you can gauge your focus on each of the assessments that follow in this article.

How’d you do? Got an idea of which website audit benefits you need the most? Here we go.

1. Website Performance Assessment

In the first part of your website audit, you should be focusing on how users navigate your website — from your homepage to blog posts, to landing pages, and any related content in between.

Make a list of the pages on your website and ask yourself the following questions to evaluate them for optimization opportunities:

Is Your Website Optimized for Maximum Usability?

The more visitors you can attract to your website, the more opportunities you’ll have to generate leads and, ultimately, customers. But only if your website performs well.

Just having a website does not guarantee results. As part of determining the overall efficiency of your website, your audit should check to make sure your site is designed with your visitors in mind.

The design and overall navigability of your website should correspond with what a person would come to the site to seek out, such as more information on a business-related topic, resources, product/pricing information, testimonials, etc. This will largely depend on your individual business.

The main goal here is to make it easy for people to get the information they’re looking for. As a result, you’ll likely see conversion rates improve on their own.

To audit your website for usability, consider the following:

Are all the main value propositions of our business easily accessible via our main navigations/menu items?
Do we have a simple yet intuitive website design and page layout? Make sure pages aren’t too cluttered; littered with ads, CTAs, or links; or void of internal links altogether.
Are your conversion paths and/or shopping cart or checkout processes intuitive? Are there a ton of distractions along the way that could be creating friction for your site visitors?

Consider doing some user testing with members of your target audience to ensure you’re effectively surfacing the content they’re looking for and that they find it easy to navigate to the parts of your website they’re interested in.

How Is Your Website’s Overall Speed?

Are there excessive page sizes or long page load and server response times? Does your site go down frequently? Site speed can be impacted when image files are too large or HTML and CSS needs to be cleaned up — all of which can drastically improve your site speed.

Ultimately, fast-loading and optimized pages will lead to higher visitor engagement, retention, and conversions. To quickly check a web page’s load time, download MozBar, a toolbar by Moz that you can attach to your browser for simple page analysis every time you visit a website.

2. SEO Assessment

Optimizing the performance of your website is crucial to holding onto visitors, but the above question isn’t the only one you should be asking. You should also audit the content you’re publishing to ensure it’s actually solving your visitors’ problems.

Is Your Website Content High Quality?

As you evaluate your content for quality, think about it from your target audience’s perspective. Did this information leave me satisfied? Did it answer all of my questions? Does it give me all the resources relevant to this topic? Do I know what to do next?

Keep in mind quality content should appeal to the interests, needs, and problems of your buyer personas — be interesting and well-written, provide valuable, thorough, and detailed information about a particular topic; and leave the reader with next steps (such as calls-to-action, links to resources, etc.).

If you’re still not sure if your content is high quality, evaluate it with this checklist:” How to Tell if Your Marketing Content Is Actually Valuable.”

Is Your Website Search Engine Optimized?

Make sure all your web pages are following on-page SEO best practices. To audit your content for on-page SEO, conduct a keyword analysis in which you do the following:

Consult your analytics to review keyword performance. Which keywords are giving you the biggest gains in traffic and leads?
Assess how well you’re factoring keyword performance into your content strategy. How much relevant content are you adding to your website to target those keywords?
Review basic on-page SEO elements like URLs, page titles, meta description, and copy. Make sure keywords are included where relevant.

To help you conduct an on-page SEO audit of your content, read the “Step-by-Step Guide to Flawless On-Page SEO,” which also includes a free downloadable on-page SEO template to keep you on track.

3. Conversion Rate Assessment

While high-quality, search-engine-optimized content is a great way to boost your traffic numbers, it’s what happens once those visitors are on your website that really counts.

This is where optimized calls-to-action (CTAs), marketing offers, and landing pages play a major role in the performance of your website. Not only do they offer you opportunities to capture visitors’ information so you can follow up with leads, but they also keep your visitors engaged with your content and your brand.

To audit your website for maximum conversion potential, ask yourself the following questions:

How many marketing offers do I have in my content arsenal to gate behind landing pages?
Do I have a variety of marketing offers that appeal to all my different buyer personas?
Do I have any landing pages/conversion forms on my website to begin with?
How optimized are those landing pages?
Do I have conversion opportunities for visitors in varying stages of the funnel?
Am I using calls-to-action effectively? Am I missing opportunities to include calls to action on various pages of my website?

To learn more about CTA selection, check out our post, ” How to Select the Right CTA for Every Page on Your Website.”

4. Technical Assessment

Once you’ve addressed the three primary goals of a website audit, it’s time to loop in a developer or someone from your IT department for a technical evaluation. You could also hire an outside agency — just be sure to do your homework first.

Keep in mind that there may be some carry-over from the three assessments above — website performance, SEO, and conversion rate. The technical evaluation, however, addresses all three to maximize the user experience (UX).

Here’s what you should be looking for in the technical assessment stage of your website audit:

Is Your Website Design Responsive?

Does your website have a responsive design? Meaning, is it a mobile-friendly website? The usage of smartphones to access the internet is only growing. As a result, websites must be compatible with that growing demand.

For more on mobile compatibility, check out our “Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Mastering Mobile Marketing.”

Is Your Website Error Message Free?

Are response code errors popping up all over your website where there shouldn’t be any? Calling out 302-, 404-, and 500-level response codes can be useful to tell users that something’s wrong.

However, having this happen is also an indication that someone isn’t cleaning up broken links and, as a result, leading users to dead ends. Find those error messages and clean up your broken links. Tools like Google’s Webmaster Tools or Xenu’s Link Sleuth can be very helpful for this.

Are Your Website URLs Optimized?

Does your site have URLs of excessive length due to keyword stuffing? Do they contain session IDs and/or include tons of dynamic parameters? In some cases, these URLs are difficult for search engines to index and result in lower clickthrough rates from search results.

Does Your Website Have Too Much Flash or JavaScript?

Identify areas of your navigation that are entirely Flash or JavaScript. Search engines have challenges reading and accessing these, which could prevent your site from getting indexed.

Furthermore, these elements present problems from a usability perspective. Visitors are often looking for a very specific piece of information when visiting your site; if they have to sit through a 10-second visual introduction before they can find your hours of operation, you’re going to have a pretty frustrated visitor on your hands.

Is Your Site Structure Optimized for Search Engines?

We already talked about site structure as it relates to accessing content and usability for users, but it’s also important to make sure your site structure is optimal for search engines. If pages on your site are not internally linked to other pages on your site, those pages are less likely to be indexed.

Are You Defining How Your Web Pages Are Crawled and Indexed by Search Engines?

This can be done through various methods that include everything from robots files and tags to sitemaps. These measures are a way for you to guide search engines toward your website’s most useful content.

Robots Files or Tags

The robot meta tag lets you utilize a granular, page-specific approach to controlling how an individual page should be indexed and served to users in search results. These tags should sit in the <head> section of a given page.

The robots.txt file, on the other hand, is a text file that allows you to specify how you would like your site to be crawled. Before crawling a website, search engine crawlers will generally request the robots.txt file from a server. Within the robots.txt file, you can include sections for specific (or all) crawlers with instructions (“directives”) that let them know which parts should or should not be crawled.

Public and XML Sitemaps

Your website should also have public and XML Sitemap files. The public sitemap is one that users can access to review the pages of your site, like the index of a book.

The XML Sitemap is for search engines to review pages that get added to your site, all in one place. The usual location of a sitemap.xml file is www.domainname.com/sitemap.xml. The XML Sitemap is something every website should have; it offers an opportunity to tell Google and the other search engines what pages on your site you want to be crawled and indexed.

While search engines don’t guarantee they will abide by your sitemap, anecdotal evidence has proven time and time again that XML Sitemaps help provide insurance that your pages are found, and found faster — especially if your sitemap(s) dynamically update your new web pages.

Are You Defining Canonicalization of Content?

The canonicalization of your website content is the final major technical consideration to make. To gain more control over how your URLs appear in search results, and to minimize issues related to duplicate content, you need to pick a canonical (preferred) URL as the preferred version of the page.

You can indicate your preference to Google in a number of ways. One such way is to set the Canonical Tag (rel=”canonical”) in an HTTP header of a page. Be sure to have someone check that the Canonical Tag is properly implemented across the site by making sure it points to the correct page, and that every page doesn’t point to the homepage.

Website Auditing Checklist

Now, before you get started, you might consider using this basic website auditing checklist to ensure you review all the necessary elements of your site’s performance, SEO, mobile, and security issues.

Website Audit Example

To pull all this together, I decided to run a website audit on one of my favorite bloggers, Christina Galbato.

This website is performing well. SEO and Mobile are scoring very highly. The main areas for improvement for this site would be performance and security.

You might be asking yourself, “What does that mean?” Well, let’s dive in a little deeper.

In each section, the website grader will let you know what you’re doing well and what you could improve on. See the SEO section below.

Then, the grader gives overall recommendations to improve your site overall. As you can see in the example, you’ll see a table to compare your current site to the recommendations.

Conducting a Website Audit

It’s important to establish an audit framework early on. Ask yourself questions ideally centered around gauging “How am I doing?” These questions may also include things like, “How does this compare to others, especially my competitors?”

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

One of the most commonly used punctuation marks, an errant comma can be the difference between a complete sentence and a complete mess. In this post, we’ll explore seven comma rules that will keep your writing concise and coherent.

Before we dive in, what is a comma anyway? You can think of a comma as a lighter version of a period. While a period ends a sentence full-stop, a comma is a smaller, softer pause. It can separate words, clauses, or ideas within one sentence.

1. Two complete sentences can only be connected with a comma when using a coordinating conjunction.

A coordinating conjunction is a conjunction placed between words, phrases, clauses, or sentences of equal rank. English has seven main coordinating conjunctions — for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so — that can be used to weave together two complete sentences with a comma. You can use the mnemonic FANBOYS to remember them.

Both of the above thoughts are complete sentences. However, the lack of one of our FANBOYS after the comma results in a comma splice. The sentence is clunky without the presence of a coordinating conjunction to link the two complete thoughts in one sentence.

That’s more like it! “So” is the coordinating conjunction that links these two complete sentences together. Both thoughts could stand alone separated by a period, but our FANBOYS allow us to link them together with the help of a comma. The Grateful Dead is your favorite band? It makes sense that you traveled so far to see them.

2. Use a comma to link an incomplete sentence with a complete sentence.

An incomplete sentence doesn’t express a fully formed thought and can’t stand on its own. However, you can use a comma to link an incomplete sentence with a fully formed sentence that expounds upon and completes the thought. For example:

“Even though I had work in the morning” is an incomplete sentence. Ending it with a period makes it into a cliffhanger of an unfinished thought, but a comma can save the day.

The use of a comma and the following complete sentence “I traveled 3,500 miles to see the Grateful Dead in Copenhagen.” make this into a grammatically correct sentence. Something tells me you didn’t make it to work the next day, though!

3. Use the Oxford comma.

The Oxford comma is a controversial topic in the world of punctuation. There is great historical debate on whether the Oxford comma is necessary, but we here at HubSpot recommend using it for accuracy and clarity in your writing.

What is the Oxford comma?
The Oxford comma is the final comma in a list of things. For example: I need a stapler, some rye bread, and a gallon of glue.

I don’t know what you could be making, but that’s the proper use of an Oxford comma in a list of items. Here’s another example:

This sentence states that you watched a documentary about three distinct and influential New Yorkers. The Oxford comma makes it clear that these are three different people. If we omit the Oxford comma, things can get a little confusing:

Unless Babe Ruth lived a secret life of crime and thin-crust pizza, you can see how the absence of the Oxford comma in this sentence could confuse readers. While both versions of the sentence are technically correct, we recommend the Oxford comma to ensure your sentences are free of ambiguity.

4. Use a comma between two coordinate adjectives that describe the same noun.

Coordinate adjectives are two or more adjectives that describe the same noun. If you flip-flop your adjectives or pop an “and” in between them and the sentence still makes sense, then you’ve got coordinate adjectives. If you’re using coordinate adjectives, remember to separate them with a comma.

Psychedelic and spontaneous are coordinate adjectives because they together describe the noun, which is the music of the Grateful Dead. You can reverse the order or substitute the comma for an “and” and the sentence means the same thing. We recommend using a comma.

It’s subtle, but the sentence doesn’t flow correctly without a comma between psychedelic and spontaneous.

5. Use a comma (or pair of commas) to separate non-essential information in a sentence.

Although we appreciate the information, “in a quest for the perfect rack of ribs” is non-essential to the main point of the sentence, which is that my father-in-law spent way too much on his grill. You can use a single comma with the non-essential information at the beginning of the sentence, or a pair of commas to rope it off in the middle, but don’t forget your commas when adding extraneous detail.

Without commas to separate the non-essential information, the sentence is long-winded and grammatically incorrect. I’ll take a pair of commas with those ribs, please!

6. Make sure you place commas correctly when using quotes.

In general, you should use a comma to introduce quotes or dialogue in a sentence.

The reason we need a comma in this example is that the quoted material is syntactically independent, meaning it stands apart from the surrounding sentence. Don’t be rude! Introduce that mid-sentence quote with a comma.

However, as there often are in the English language, there are exceptions to this rule. If the quote blends into the surrounding sentence, often with the use of a conjunction, you can omit the comma.

No comma is necessary in this example because the quote blends into the sentence with the use of the conjunction “that.”

7. Put a comma before “while” to contrast two ideas.

If you are using “while” in a sentence to essentially mean “although” or “whereas,” remember to place a comma before it to keep the meaning of your sentence clear.

The use of “while” in this sentence allows us to contrast two BBQ ideologies.

Without the comma, the meaning of while technically changes to “simultaneously,” which doesn’t make sense in this context.

Additionally, if you are using “while” at the beginning of the sentence, you should place a comma at the end of the clause that it introduces.

The use of a comma after the clause that “while” introduces allows us to retain the meaning as “whereas” and contrast the two ideas.