A business owner knows their company so well that they no longer see what a new customer discovers in a few minutes. A useful audit retraces exactly that journey: searching for the business, looking at what it shows, comparing its competitors and trying to contact it like a real prospect.
Start by forgetting what you know about the business
The first bias to eliminate is that of the owner. They know their products, their long-standing customers, their references, their know-how and the reasons their salespeople win deals. They know that one page of the website is old, that a catalogue needs updating and that the photos date from a previous workshop.
The prospect knows none of this. They arrive with a question, a need or a partial specification. They open Google, type a few words describing their problem and look at the businesses that appear. They quickly compare their websites, photos, reviews, projects and apparent professionalism. They can leave a business in thirty seconds without ever explaining why.
That is the journey to audit. Not "do we like our website?", but "what does a prospect understand about us before even talking to anyone?".
Retrace the Google journey like a real prospect
The audit starts with the searches a potential customer would really make. It isn't just about checking whether the business appears for its own name: you need to test generic searches linked to the products, applications, trades and target regions.
The Google Business Profile is then examined as a real shop window: category, address, phone, opening hours, description, photos, products or services presented and how up to date it is. Reviews are analysed as much for their content as for their rating. A positive review that mentions responsiveness, build quality or the ability to meet deadlines is particularly valuable commercial proof. The business still needs to know how to use it elsewhere.
The same work is done on business directories, marketplaces and trade-specific platforms. Old information, a wrong phone number, a different address or a company name presented differently may seem trivial. Accumulated across several channels, however, these inconsistencies give an impression of a lack of control.
Put the website under the microscope, page by page
An industrial website must be analysed as a sales tool, not as a corporate brochure. The first question is blunt but essential: within five seconds, do you understand what the business does, for whom and with what added value? If the visitor has to read three paragraphs to understand the activity, the message is already too weak.
Then come the technical and commercial checks. Does the site load quickly? Is it really usable on mobile? Are the important pages accessible without searching? Are products presented with enough precision? Do the photos really show the know-how? Do the projects provide proof? Do certifications, references, industrial capabilities, figures or equipment strengthen credibility?
Each page must also have a purpose. A product page must help people understand and enquire. A projects page must reassure. An expertise page must demonstrate a skill. A contact page must make it easy to take action. Calls to action are therefore checked, as are forms: are they visible, simple enough, suited to the type of request and actually working? A form that works technically but asks for fifteen pieces of information before it can be sent can lose some of the prospects it was meant to convert.
Finally, all contact details are compared: phone, address, email, opening hours, legal notices and the information on the various channels. A business that shows three different phone numbers or two addresses depending on the page creates needless doubt.
Don't forget what lies beyond the website
A business's communication doesn't stop at its domain name. LinkedIn must be viewed the way a professional buyer would, trying to understand who is behind the business. Facebook can play a different role, in particular to show the life of the business, its projects or local activity. YouTube can become a great showcase of industrial know-how: a machine running, a manufacturing process, assembly, trials, a demonstration or a case study.
PDF catalogues are commercial items in their own right too. You check the references, the prices where shown, contact details, dates, links, photos and graphic consistency with the website. An old logo in a PDF downloaded from the website can undo part of the brand's modernisation work.
Even the elements considered secondary are observed: photo quality, documents sent to prospects, the presentation of quotes, email signatures, technical documents and the way salespeople present the business. The question is always the same: is the level of trust created by each contact consistent with the real quality of the business?
The mystery customer reveals what the materials don't say
Then there is a part that can't seriously be audited from a screen: the sales experience. A contact is therefore made as a prospect would. A phone call, an information request or a quote request depending on the context. You observe how long it takes to pick up, how the business introduces itself, its ability to understand the request, the quality of the answer and, above all, how long it takes to get back.
A business can invest thousands in Google Ads, rebuild its website and produce beautiful catalogues, only to lose the enquiry because nobody calls the prospect back within a reasonable time. Response time is a commercial metric here, not just an organisational question. The more potential suppliers the prospect has, the more speed of handling becomes a competitive advantage.
A campaign that generates enquiries but whose outcome nobody measures isn't a sales strategy: it's spending on visibility.
The mystery customer also checks what happens after the request: acknowledgement, qualification of the need, follow-up, hand-off to the right person and time to quote.
Look at competitors with exactly the same grid
The audit becomes really interesting when it is comparative. Direct competitors are put through the same tests: Google visibility, business profile, reviews, website, product presentation, proof, social media, downloadable documents, calls to action and ease of contact. You also observe their apparent positioning: are they more premium, more specialised, more technical, more accessible? Does their message highlight price, speed, local manufacturing, customisation, industrial capacity or service?
Customer reviews are particularly instructive. They show what the market spontaneously values and, above all, the recurring irritants. If customers always mention responsiveness, advice or meeting deadlines, these subjects become potential communication angles. Conversely, if a promise made by the business never appears in customer feedback, you have to ask whether it really is a differentiating advantage.
Finally, the comparison makes it possible to tell a communication problem from a real positioning problem. Sometimes the business is better than its competitors but shows it less well. That is then an immediate opportunity.
Check that advertising leads somewhere
Paid advertising deserves a separate audit, because it can amplify a good mechanism as much as a bad one. A Google or social campaign must be linked to a measurable goal: a call, a form, a quote request, a download, an appointment. So you need to check what happens after the click.
Does the ad lead to the right page? Does the page's message match the ad's? Can the prospect act immediately? Is the conversion tracked correctly? Are enquiries identified in the sales tool? Are campaigns optimised on real conversions or simply on clicks and impressions? A campaign that buys traffic without knowing how many qualified enquiries it produces can't have its return calculated. And a campaign that generates enquiries with no follow-up system leaves part of its investment on the table.
Turn findings into gains, not a list of faults
In almost every serious audit, the same situations come up: commercial content far better than its presentation, excellent customer reviews never used as proof, sections started then abandoned, photos that don't show the business's real level, or very professional communication on one channel and much less controlled on another. You also often find businesses investing in acquisition before securing conversion: they pay to bring prospects to a website that explains the offer badly, a form that doesn't work properly or a sales organisation that responds too late.
The goal, however, isn't to draw up a list of criticisms. You start from what the business has built, and each finding becomes an opportunity: proof to make better use of, a page to convert, information to align, a campaign to measure, a delay to reduce.
To make the audit usable, each action is assessed on three criteria: its potential commercial impact, the effort needed to carry it out and its urgency. A wrong phone number on several channels can thus come before a complete graphic redesign. A product page that already gets traffic can be optimised before creating ten new pages. An advertising campaign that can't be measured must be fixed before its budget is increased.
The final deliverable is therefore not a report destined for a drawer. It's a costed, prioritised action plan that separates what can wait from what can't. It shows where to invest, in what order and for what expected gain.
A good communication audit doesn't try to make a business look prettier. It tries to make what the prospect discovers finally match the real quality of the business.
And at ATARE?
That's exactly what we do when we audit a business: we retrace your future customers' journey, compare it with your competitors', and hand you a costed action plan ranked by priority, from quick fixes to in-depth projects. Discover our audits
