Prudent online business management includes periodic digital auditing – whether you’re a small businesses self-managing digital profiles or a large corporation using trusted agencies to manage your digital presence.
A digital audit is a powerful tool. It helps businesses understand their online performance, what works well and ways to improve. Not all digital audits are equal. Therefore, independence in auditing is crucial to ensuring transparent, reliable and trustworthy advice.
Independence is the cornerstone of the auditing profession
Independence is a foundational feature of professional auditing. Auditors must be independent of the entity being audited. Fresh, unbiased eyes can help your business and your agency achieve new levels of growth and success in your digital campaigns. Even if you have a fantastic internal team or a digital agency that produces reliable, quality work, periodic independent digital reviews are important.
Independent digital auditors understand industry best practices. They will be able to assess whether your practices, campaigns, settings, structures and formats all operate in accordance with best practices, and advise how to make changes where necessary.
Unbiased Digital Audit Reporting Eliminates Subconcious Bias
There are many factors that can sway findings in the reporting of digital performance. As such, it is difficult to know whether advice about your business’s online status is accurate. Agency motivations, unconscious bias, varying areas of expertise, and a narrow lens can all impact the nature of the findings and recommendations, as well as the extent of the impact the execution of the advice will actually have on your online growth.
It is natural for an agency to want to report its successes to clients and validate its hard work in the hope of securing future business. It may unconsciously favour data that demonstrates that good work is being done. The presented data, despite being true, could lack big-picture context, compromising its reliability.
Whole Picture Auditing
Digital audits should consider the entire digital footprint of a business to be able to make a truly accurate assessment. Specialists in website auditing, or SEO auditing may miss vital analysis of the interconnections between different online facets, each dependent on the other to truly thrive. A holistic approach includes elements such as competition analysis and targeted audience analysis too.
An independent digital audit comes with no strings attached. Independence in auditing removes any traditional conflicts of interest or hidden agendas because the findings and recommendations have no financial consequence to the auditor.
Independent digital audits will give your business the confidence and knowledge required to make smart business decisions, streamline operations and achieve the strongest results possible across your entire digital footprint. To learn more, contact Independent Digital Audit.
