Guide
What does a digital audit actually check?
By Nicholas Hartnell, StagHill Software — March 2026
A digital audit looks at how your business appears online and finds the problems you don't know you have. Not a sales pitch dressed up as a report. An honest assessment of what's working, what's broken, and what it's costing you.
Here's what ours covers.
The six areas we check
1. Your website
How fast does it load? Does it work on phones? Can people find what they need? We run it through the same tools Google uses to rank you and test it on real devices. A slow website doesn't just annoy visitors — Google pushes you down the search results for it.
2. Your Google visibility
We search for what your customers would search for and see where you appear. Page 1? Page 5? Not at all? We check your Google Business Profile, your SEO basics (title tags, meta descriptions, headings), and compare you to whoever's outranking you.
3. Your security
Is your site running HTTPS? Are there known vulnerabilities in your platform? Is your admin login exposed to the internet? Are your security headers configured? Most small business websites have at least one security gap. We find them before someone else does.
4. Your GDPR compliance
Privacy policy, cookie consent, data retention, international transfers. We check whether your website meets UK GDPR requirements. Most don't. The fines are up to £17.5 million, but the more likely outcome is a customer complaint that triggers an ICO investigation.
5. Your competitors
We look at 2–3 of your direct competitors. Where do they rank? What does their website do better? What do they do worse? This isn't about copying them. It's about knowing what you're up against.
6. Your tech and suppliers
What are you paying for hosting, email, your domain, your booking system, your marketing agency? Is any of it redundant? Are you overpaying? We check every tool and supplier and flag anything that doesn't add up.
What you get back
A written report in PDF format. Plain English. Every issue we found, rated by priority: fix now, fix soon, or nice to have.
Each recommendation comes with a price. Some things you can fix yourself for free (we'll tell you how). Others we can build for you, with a fixed cost next to each one. Pick what matters. Ignore the rest.
Why would anyone do this for free?
Because it works. We did our first audit for a national driving school franchise and found £40K in annual waste, 3 security flaws, and 3 GDPR violations that nobody had spotted. The audit itself took a week.
Some businesses read the report and fix things themselves. Some ask us to help. Either way, they've got something useful. And if we do good work for free, people talk about it.
There's no catch. The audit is free. The report is yours. No follow-up calls, no pressure.
Want to see what we find?
Tell us about your business. We'll check all six areas and send you a written report.
Request your free audit