A material study photographed in bright daylight. A half circle fan of clear turquoise glass blades opens on the right of the frame from a small pivot at its lower right, bound along its outer edge by a polished pearl silver rim, standing on a pale reflective floor. The left of the frame is empty pale mint.
  1. Home
  2. How we work
  3. Performance audit

The evidence first

Twelve dimensions,and a plan you can act on.

A written audit of what you have against the job you want it to do, compared to two comparable companies in your market, with the findings in the order they cost you money.

Delivered in days to set business days. The document is yours either way.

Request a performance audit Book a discovery call

Not sure where the problem is? Request the audit. Know what you are building? Book a discovery call.

HUREAL / Material studies

What it is

A document about your business,not about ours.

The first thing HUREAL produces is not a proposal. It is a written account of what your site does today, where the inquiries go and how long they wait, what loads slowly on a phone, what Google and the AI assistants can read, and what two comparable companies in your market do differently.

An audit worth paying for is one you could act on without hiring anybody.

That is the test it is written to pass. A section of it tells you what to fix yourself, in order, without us. Another tells you what needs a build and why. A third tells you what we would leave alone. If the document is only useful as a sales attachment, the first person who reads one will say so out loud, and they will be right.

Whether or not you go ahead with a build, the document is yours and it still works.

The twelve dimensions

Everything it looks at,and how to look yourself.

Twelve dimensions, each with a written finding and a place in the priority order. The mono line under each one is the version you can run on your own site this afternoon, and on your competitors', without contacting anybody.

  • 01 The job the site is doing

    What single decision the page is built around, and whether a stranger who lands there can make it without calling somebody.

    Run it yourself: open your busiest landing page and name that decision in one sentence.

  • 02 The inquiry path

    Where an inquiry goes after it is sent, who owns it, whether it reaches the CRM, and how long it waits before a person sees it.

    Run it yourself: send an inquiry through your own form and time the acknowledgement.

  • 03 Speed where it is actually loaded

    Measured on a mid range phone on a cellular connection, on the page a stranger lands on rather than on the homepage on office wifi.

    Run it yourself: load your busiest page on a three year old phone, away from the office.

  • 04 What one thumb can finish

    Whether the valuable action can be completed on a phone held in one hand, including the forms, the filters, the booking and the checkout.

    Run it yourself: complete your own most valuable action standing up, one handed.

  • 05 Crawling and indexing

    Whether the pages that matter can be reached, read and indexed, and whether the ones that should not be indexed are excluded on purpose.

    Run it yourself: search your own domain with the site prefix and count what comes back.

  • 06 AI crawler access

    Whether the major AI crawlers are allowed to reach the site at all, which a surprising number of sites block without knowing, and whether the content is in the HTML rather than behind script.

    Run it yourself: open your robots file and read it for the AI crawler names.

  • 07 Whether the answers are liftable

    Whether the pages answer real questions in a shape an assistant can quote cleanly, with the answer first and the depth after it.

    Run it yourself: ask an assistant a question your site should answer, and read what it says instead.

  • 08 Entity clarity

    Whether the facts about the business are the same everywhere a machine reads them: the name, the description, the location, the services, the profiles.

    Run it yourself: compare your name and description across every profile you own.

  • 09 Accessibility against WCAG 2.2 AA

    Keyboard, screen reader, contrast, text sizing and reduced motion, tested on the surfaces people actually use rather than asserted in a statement.

    Run it yourself: complete your most valuable path with the keyboard and no mouse.

  • 10 Content that earns its place

    Which pages a buyer reads, which exist for the company rather than for the buyer, and which question a buyer asks that nothing on the site answers.

    Run it yourself: sort your pages by entries and read the bottom ten out loud.

  • 11 Measurement that agrees with itself

    Whether the click, the recorded conversion and the number in the monthly report are the same event, and whether anybody could tell if they stopped being.

    Run it yourself: trace one real inquiry from the click to the line in the report.

  • 12 Two comparable companies

    What two companies selling something similar in your market do differently, which of it matters, and which of it is fashion. Named to you in the document, never on a public page.

    Run it yourself: run the eleven above on two of them and write down the three differences.

Dimension twelve is the one that changes the other eleven. A finding with no comparison is an opinion about a standard nobody agreed to, and a comparison against a company in a different market is a story. Two companies, selling something similar, to people like your customers.

Without contacting anybody

The list aboveis the whole method.

Nothing is held back. What the audit adds is somebody running all twelve properly, on your site and on two others, writing the findings in the order they cost you money, and attaching the arithmetic.

What the audit does not do: promise a result, project an uplift, or print a percentage. The arithmetic is run with your numbers and shown, so you can check it rather than believe it. What it does do: tell you what to fix without us, what needs a build and why, and what we would leave alone.

What arrives

Eight sections,two of them about doing it without us.

The document is written to be read by somebody who has to explain it to a board, so the order is what it costs rather than what it is called.

  • A finding per dimension

    Twelve written findings, each naming what was looked at, what was found, and what it is costing.

  • The priority order

    The findings sorted by what they cost you rather than by how easy they are for a vendor to sell.

  • Two comparable companies

    What they do differently, which of it matters, and which of it is fashion. Named in your document and never on a public page.

  • The arithmetic

    Run with your numbers, shown as a calculation you can check, never as a projection you have to accept.

  • What to fix without us

    The items worth doing that do not need HUREAL, written so your own team or your existing developer can act on them.

  • What needs a build, and why

    With the reason stated as a cost rather than as an ambition, so you can disagree with it specifically.

  • What we would leave alone

    The parts that are working, including the ones a vendor would normally propose replacing.

The document, drawn

your-company/audit/report Eight sections

What is in the document

Published so a buyer knows what arrives. A designed representation of the artefact, not anybody's report.

  • 01

    What the site is being asked to do, in one page.

    Written first because a finding needs something to be a finding against.

  • 02

    The twelve dimensions, one written finding each.

  • 03

    What is costing the most, in order.

  • 04

    Two comparable companies, and what they do differently.

  • 05

    The arithmetic, with your numbers, shown as a calculation.

  • 06

    What to fix without us.

    Its own section so it cannot be buried in a recommendation to hire somebody.

  • 07

    What needs a build, and why, stated as a cost.

  • 08

    What we would leave alone.

    Kept in including the parts a vendor would normally propose replacing.

Two of the eight sections are about doing this without HUREAL. They are in every audit, they are the reason the other six can be trusted, and they are the sections that make the document worth its price to somebody who never hires us.

Request it

One address,and what you want it to do.

Delivered in days to set business days. The document is yours either way.

What this form does. It reaches HUREAL and nothing else. We use what you write here to run your audit and to send you the result, and to reply to you about it. We do not sell it, we do not share it with anyone outside HUREAL, and you can ask us to delete it at any time. How we handle personal information.

If the work in question lives on a subdomain, a portal or an app, name that instead. The twelve dimensions apply to whichever surface is doing the job.

If you leave this blank we choose two companies selling something similar to people like your customers, and the document says why those two.

Already know what you are building? Book a discovery call

What happens next. You get an immediate acknowledgement that references the address you actually sent rather than a generic receipt, and a personal reply from the person who will write the audit. Nothing is added to a sales sequence, and the audit is written whether or not a build follows it.

Questions about the audit

Questions peopleask before requesting it.

  • How long does the audit take?

    The turnaround in business days is confirmed in writing when you request it, before any work starts, so you know when the document arrives.

  • Is this just a sales document?

    Two of its eight sections are about doing the work without HUREAL: what to fix yourself, and what we would leave alone. They are in every audit. The test the document is written to pass is that it is useful to somebody who never hires us, and if it fails that test the first reader will say so.

  • We did not build the site. Can you still audit it?

    Yes, and that is the normal case. The twelve dimensions are about what the surface does rather than about how it was made, and improvement work on a system HUREAL did not build is an ordinary engagement.

  • Do you need access to anything?

    Most of the twelve run from outside with no access at all. Two of them are better with it: the inquiry path is clearest when we can see where a test submission lands, and the measurement check needs read access to whatever you report from. Both are optional and the document says which findings were made without them.

  • Will you tell us to rebuild?

    Only where the arithmetic says rebuilding costs less than repairing, and then you get the arithmetic rather than the assertion. The section titled what we would leave alone exists because the answer is frequently that most of it is fine.

  • Which two companies do you compare against?

    Two selling something similar, in your market, to people like your customers. You can name them in the request, and if you leave it blank we choose and the document says why those two. They are named in your document and never on a public page.

  • Do you promise an improvement?

    No, and nobody honest does. What is committed to is the method: twelve dimensions, a written finding against each, a priority order, and arithmetic you can check. A promised number in this category is a number somebody is going to have to explain away later.

  • What if we want the build straight away?

    Then the discovery call is the faster door: it leads to a written proposal with a fixed scope, price and timeline instead of a diagnosis. The audit is for the case where the problem has not been located yet.

Two doors

Start with the evidence,or start with the scope.

Request a performance audit

For when you want the evidence before the decision. Twelve dimensions, two comparable companies, and a prioritised plan with the arithmetic attached.

Request a performance audit

Book a discovery call

For when you already know what you are building. A discovery call with the people who own the outcome, then a written proposal with a fixed scope, price and timeline.

Book a discovery call

Not sure where the problem is? Request the audit. Know what you are building? Book a discovery call. If neither is right for you, we will say so, and tell you what is.

Or run it yourself. The twelve dimensions are published in full further up this page, each with the version you can run on your own site and on two competitors this afternoon, without contacting anybody.

Back to the twelve

What every HUREAL engagement commits to, in writing

  • A fixed scope, price and timeline, agreed before any code is written.
  • A working build, reviewed at every phase, running in your own accounts.
  • Full ownership of the code, the content and the data, with admin access from day one.
  • A named contact who is accountable for the work.
A material study photographed in bright daylight. A tall fan of clear turquoise glass fins rises on the right of the frame with a polished pearl silver ribbon curving through it, standing in a shallow film of still water. The left of the frame is empty pale mint.

The diagnostic, given away.

HUREAL / Material studies