In-Depth Website Audit
A website can look right and still be the constraint.
The In-Depth Website Audit is an automated commercial website audit from the Commercial Transformation Index (CTI). It applies AI-assisted commercial intelligence, bounded to the public evidence your website already gives buyers, search engines and AI systems, to establish what is limiting the site commercially, why, what it is likely to cost and what to change first.
It diagnoses the website and the commercial signals it carries. It does not assess the wider system that website feeds.
How a commercial diagnosis is formed
- 01 Evidence Your public pages, sealed as the complete factual basis
- 02 Signals 200+ observable inputs and 60 derived measures
- 03 Interpretation Material findings, weighted by consequence and joined by dependency
- 04 Sequence P1 to P3 order across three 30-day windows
What it is
What is the In-Depth Website Audit?
An automated commercial website audit. It begins from the observed public evidence gathered by the Free Website Audit, adds structured commercial interpretation to it, and returns a diagnosis: what is limiting the site commercially, what each finding is likely to cost, how the findings depend on one another, and the order in which to change them. AI contributes the interpretation, bounded to that evidence, and every conclusion is limited to what the evidence can support.
It is the second of the four CTI assessment routes. It reaches the same three domains as the free audit, Website examined directly with the ICP and Positioning signals read through it, and it does not assess the seven domains a website cannot show. Where the free audit measures and reports, this one interprets, connects, weighs and sequences.
From evidence to commercial decision
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Observed evidence
200+
observable inputs
Technical, commercial, performance, AI-readiness and technology signals measured on your public pages. The same governed evidence base the Free Website Audit reads, and the whole factual basis for everything below it.
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Derived intelligence
60
derived measures
Commercial scores and bands, AI readiness across seven dimensions, evidence confidence, performance ratings and component states, calculated from those inputs.
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Material findings
19
analytical variables applied to every material finding
Where the In-Depth Website Audit begins. Up to twelve findings and five strengths, each carried through interpretation, the evidence and contradictions behind it, consequence, journey stage, materiality, priority, effort, intervention and expected effect.
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Commercial decision layer
Relationships, consequence, materiality, P1 to P3 priority, dependencies and a 90-day sequence
The findings are connected to one another, weighed against each other and placed in an order you can act on. This is the part a measurement report cannot produce.
The Free Website Audit measures and reports. The In-Depth Website Audit interprets, connects, weighs and sequences.
What the decision layer contains
- Relationships dependencies between findings and contradictions between pages, stated as evidence-grounded hypotheses
- Ten commercial impact areas buyer comprehension, self-selection, demand quality, trust and buying confidence, conversion path, sales burden, positioning precision, message consistency, commercial friction, AI discoverability readiness
- Seven buyer-journey stages awareness, understanding, self-selection, trust, qualification, conversion, and findings that run across the journey
- Four materiality levels, three priority tiers, three sequence windows a P1, P2, P3 order with effort and dependencies, and a 90-day sequence with the reasoning behind each phase
- Counted honestly each layer is stated on its own. The inputs and the measures are the evidence the audit works from, not a score, and no layer is added to another to make a larger number
The problem
A polished website can still be creating commercial friction.
Websites that lose commercial value rarely look like they are losing it. They are well-built, well-photographed and internally approved. What they often fail to do is state a named problem, describe a specific buyer, or give a reason to choose that a competitor could not claim in the same words. None of that is visible in a design review.
A surface audit reports what is on the page. The In-Depth Website Audit reports what the page is doing to the business: which findings are causes and which are symptoms, what each one depends on, and what to change first so the rest of the changes are worth making.
How the diagnosis is formed
From what the website exposes to what should change first.
Commercial intelligence, applied to the public commercial surface of the business. Every material finding passes through the same seven steps, so the report reads as one argument rather than a list of observations.
Move across a step, or focus it, to see what it establishes.
- 01
Evidence
Your public pages, sealed as the complete factual basis. Nothing is added from outside them.
The same 200+ observable inputs and 60 derived measures the Free Website Audit reports, fixed before interpretation begins.
- 02
Interpretation
What each observation implies for buyer understanding, positioning, ICP, conversion, trust and machine readability.
Every interpretation cites the evidence it rests on, and states where the evidence cannot support a conclusion.
- 03
Relationships
How findings connect: which ones depend on another, and where pages contradict each other.
Dependencies and contradictions are stated as evidence-grounded hypotheses, never averaged away or asserted as certainties.
- 04
Consequence
What each finding is likely to cost, and where in the buyer journey the cost falls.
Ten commercial impact areas and seven buyer-journey stages, with the mechanism through which the cost arises.
- 05
Materiality
How much each finding matters, weighed by evidence breadth, journey position and commercial mechanism.
Four levels, from low to critical. Never a monetary figure, because public evidence cannot support one.
- 06
Priority
Each intervention placed once, as P1, P2 or P3, with its effort and its dependencies named.
A change that unlocks others is placed before one that only improves itself.
- 07
Sequence
The order of change across three windows, with the reasoning behind each phase.
0 to 30, 31 to 60 and 61 to 90 days, assembled from the priorities so the order can be argued with.
The AI layer
AI-assisted commercial intelligence, bounded to observed evidence.
Deterministic measurement establishes the evidence. AI is used to interpret it: to connect observations across pages, identify patterns, test commercial relationships between findings, interpret likely consequence, establish materiality and help sequence the response. It is anchored to the evidence gathered from your public site, and it is checked before anything reaches you.
- 01
Bounded to your evidence
The interpretation works only on the sealed evidence from your audit. It does not browse, search or bring in outside knowledge about your organisation.
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Connects and tests
It connects observations across pages, identifies patterns, tests commercial relationships between findings and interprets their likely consequence.
- 03
Cites or is rejected
Every claim must cite the evidence it rests on. Unsupported claims, invented outcomes and contradictions that are averaged away are rejected rather than released.
- 04
Validated before release
Each report passes structural, grounding, quality and value checks before it reaches you, and states its own confidence and limits.
One relationship, three domains
Website, ICP and Positioning are diagnosed together.
A website is where a customer definition and a market position become visible. When the site underperforms, the cause can sit in either of those upstream domains as readily as in the surface presenting them, which is why the three cannot always be diagnosed independently.
- ICP
An imprecise definition of the right customer produces language that addresses everybody, and a buyer who cannot recognise themselves does not stay to read on.
- Positioning
A difference that cannot be checked gives a buyer little to compare on except price, however well the pages present it.
- Website
The site inherits both. Rebuilt without a change to either, it tends to reproduce the constraint it was given, in better typography.
This is why the audit reads three CTI domains rather than one surface, and why a finding is traced upstream before it is reported. It does not add domains of its own: journey, message, proof and machine readability are lines of enquiry into these three.
What is examined
Six lines of enquiry, each traced to what it costs.
Every finding is observed evidence: something the site does, states or omits. Each line is a commercial question, the evidence examined to answer it, what CTI is attempting to establish, and the decision the answer informs.
Move across a line, or focus it, to see the question, the evidence, what it establishes and the decision it informs.
- Journey
The path a buyer takes toward action
Every route from arrival to enquiry, examined for where intent is created, where it is lost, and where the site asks for more than the reader is ready to give.
The question beneath Can a buyer move from understanding to action without friction, and does each ask match the stage they have reached?
Evidence examined Calls to action and their hierarchy, forms, conversion paths and the consistency of the ask across pages.
What CTI establishes Where in the journey commercial friction is created, and what it is likely to cost in conversion and sales burden.
The decision it informs Whether the conversion path needs restructuring before more demand is added to it.
- Message
What the site actually argues
Whether the argument holds: a named problem, a described buyer, a stated difference and evidence that the difference is real.
The question beneath Is the proposition stated the same way on every page that carries it, and where does a claim outrun the evidence behind it?
Evidence examined Value proposition statements, category language, generic phrasing, and contradictions between pages.
What CTI establishes Whether buyers can comprehend the offer quickly, and where message inconsistency undermines it.
The decision it informs Whether the messaging needs to be settled before pages are rewritten or a campaign is briefed.
- ICP and qualification
Who the site is built for, and who it filters out
The customer the website addresses, how quickly a buyer can tell whether they are that customer, and whether unsuitable enquiries are discouraged before they reach sales.
The question beneath Can the right buyer recognise themselves within a page, and can the wrong one rule themselves out?
Evidence examined Audience, role, industry, stage and geography signals, pain and use-case language, qualification and exclusion signals.
What CTI establishes How precisely the site enacts a customer definition, and the lead-quality risk that follows when it does not.
The decision it informs Whether demand quality is a website problem or a definition problem that sits upstream of it.
- Positioning
Why a buyer should choose you
Differentiation examined for specificity and support, because a difference a competitor could claim identically moves the decision toward price.
The question beneath What is the stated basis of difference, can it be checked, and how does it hold against the alternatives a buyer is weighing?
Evidence examined Differentiation claims, mechanism and outcome language, comparison signals and the proof carried alongside them.
What CTI establishes Whether the position is precise enough to be chosen on something other than price.
The decision it informs Whether positioning should be resolved before a rebuild, or the rebuild will reproduce it.
- Machine readability
What search engines and AI systems can read
Whether the proposition can be found, extracted and understood by the systems buyers ask before they reach you.
The question beneath Is the offer stated in a form a machine can extract accurately, and where would it currently be incomplete?
Evidence examined Technical discoverability, machine readability, structured data, entity clarity, authority, citation readiness, freshness.
What CTI establishes How ready the public evidence is for machine discovery and interpretation, dimension by dimension.
The decision it informs Which readability gaps to close first so the proposition survives being summarised by a machine.
- Trust
Evidence that survives scrutiny
The proof available to a buyer who has not met you, assessed for specificity rather than volume.
The question beneath Can a claim be checked, and does the site show operating substance rather than reassurance?
Evidence examined Named case studies, quantified outcomes, testimonials, accreditations and where proof is missing from the pages that need it.
What CTI establishes Whether trust is being earned on the page or deferred to the sales conversation.
The decision it informs Which proof to gather or surface before asking buyers to commit.
Beyond the free audit
What changes when the same evidence is examined deeper?
The Free Website Audit answers "what can buyers, search engines and AI systems already establish about your business?" It observes and reports bounded evidence and findings. The In-Depth Website Audit answers "what is limiting your website commercially, and what should change first?" It interprets the same governed evidence through deterministic and AI-assisted commercial intelligence, connects the findings, weighs consequence and materiality, and sequences the response.
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Evidence
Free Website Audit A representative sample of your public pages, measured automatically: 200+ observable signals.
In-Depth Website Audit The same sealed evidence. No extra pages are crawled; the difference is entirely in what is done with them.
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Measurement
Free Website Audit Sixty derived measures: commercial scores and bands, AI readiness across seven dimensions, evidence confidence, performance ratings.
In-Depth Website Audit The same measures, carried in full and used as inputs rather than as the result.
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Interpretation
Free Website Audit Findings named and tied to the page they were observed on, with why each matters.
In-Depth Website Audit AI-assisted commercial intelligence: what each finding implies for buyer understanding, positioning, ICP, conversion, trust and machine readability, with the evidence cited.
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Relationships
Free Website Audit Findings reported individually.
In-Depth Website Audit Dependencies between findings and contradictions between pages, stated as evidence-grounded hypotheses.
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Consequence and materiality
Free Website Audit Findings ranked by severity.
In-Depth Website Audit Each finding weighed by commercial materiality, placed in the buyer journey and mapped to the impact areas it affects, with what happens if it is left unchanged.
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Priority and sequence
Free Website Audit A starting order of priority actions.
In-Depth Website Audit A P1, P2 and P3 order with effort and dependencies made explicit, a target state for each material issue, and a 90-day sequence with the reasoning behind each phase.
Prioritisation
The order of the fixes matters more than the list.
Most audits produce a list ranked by severity, which quietly assumes every item is independent. They are not. Rewriting a conversion path before the positioning it presents is settled produces a better-executed version of the same problem.
The In-Depth Website Audit orders findings by four things at once: the dependencies between them, which constraint is holding the others in place, the commercial materiality of each, and where in the buyer journey its consequence falls. Effort is weighed against that, each intervention is placed once as P1, P2 or P3, and the 90-day sequence is assembled from the order with the reasoning stated. The order is an evidence-grounded judgement rather than a calculation, which is why the reasoning is shown: so it can be argued with rather than accepted.
What you receive
A commercial-intelligence report you can hand to whoever does the work.
The audit produces the decision, not the delivery. Most organisations take the sequence to their own team or to a partner already working with them. Six parts, no overlap: open any of them to see what it contains.
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01 Executive commercial diagnosis The commercial posture of the site in one reading: what is strongest, what is limiting it most, and the priority for leadership.
- Overall commercial posture and strongest characteristic
- Primary constraint and largest opportunity
- The leadership priority, tied to the findings it rests on
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02 Material findings, with their evidence Up to twelve findings, each traced to the page and text it was observed on, so it can be challenged rather than accepted on trust.
- The condition observed and its commercial interpretation
- Where pages contradict each other, stated rather than averaged away
- Where the evidence cannot support a conclusion, said plainly
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03 Consequence and materiality What each finding is likely to cost, where in the buyer journey the cost falls, and how much it matters.
- Ten commercial impact areas, one to five per finding
- The buyer-journey stage each finding sits in
- Materiality from low to critical, with what happens if it is left unchanged
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04 Strengths to protect Up to five established commercial strengths, so that change does not remove what is already working.
- The strength, the evidence that establishes it and its commercial meaning
- The impact areas it currently supports
- What to preserve while the priority constraints are addressed
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05 Interventions, prioritised What to change for each issue, described specifically enough for your own team or an existing partner to act on.
- The intervention, its rationale and the expected directional effect, never an invented percentage
- P1 immediate, P2 next or P3 subsequent, once per issue, with effort stated
- Dependencies between interventions named, so nothing is fixed in the wrong order
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06 Target state and 90-day sequence The state to move toward for each material issue, and the order to move in across three windows.
- A recommended target state for each material issue
- Actions sequenced across 0 to 30, 31 to 60 and 61 to 90 days
- The reasoning behind each phase, so the sequence can be argued with
Before you commit
Check whether this is actually your next step.
If the evidence points past the website, this is the wrong instrument and the questions beside this will say so. The reading names the CTI route most likely to answer your question: the free audit, this one, a whole-system assessment or a validated audit. A recommendation that always names the product it sits on is not a recommendation.
Is an In-Depth Website Audit the right next step?
Four questions about what you already know.
If the evidence points past the website, the honest answer is a different route. The reading names the CTI route most likely to answer your question, from the free audit to the validated one.
Progress: Question 1 of 4
How it runs
Five automated stages, from public evidence to a private report.
No one at CTI analyses your website by hand and no working session is part of the product. The evidence is measured deterministically, interpreted by AI-assisted commercial intelligence bounded to that evidence, validated against CTI's output rules, and released to you once it has passed CTI's publication check.
- 01
Start from your Free Website Audit
The In-Depth Website Audit begins from a completed Free Website Audit, so the public evidence already exists before anything is interpreted.
Observed evidence
- 02
Evidence is sealed
Your pages, the measured signals, the findings, technology and performance evidence are fixed as the complete factual basis. No access to your site, analytics or systems is needed.
Public pages only
- 03
The evidence is interpreted
AI-assisted commercial intelligence interprets that evidence, and only that evidence: it connects findings, weighs consequence and materiality and proposes an order, with no browsing and no outside knowledge about your organisation.
AI-assisted
- 04
The output is validated
Every finding must cite the evidence it rests on, contradictions must be stated, and unsupported claims are rejected rather than released.
CTI output rules
- 05
The report is released
Once it has passed CTI’s publication check, you are emailed a private link to the report, held for you to open when you are ready.
Private report
Who it is for
Four situations this audit is the right instrument for.
Each is a commercial decision about the website itself, where a list of visible findings is not enough and the question is why, what it costs and what to change first. Where the question is about the commercial system behind the site, the Commercial Maturity Assessment or the Full CTI Audit is the better route, and the check above will say so.
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The site was rebuilt and enquiries did not change
A rebuild carries the previous positioning and journey forward unless something changes them. The audit establishes which of the two the new site inherited, so the next change is not a third version of the same problem.
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A rebuild or repositioning is being scoped
A diagnosis before the brief is what stops the next site reproducing the current constraint at greater expense. The sequence becomes the brief, with the evidence behind each line.
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The right buyers arrive and do not enquire
When the audience is right and the outcome is not, the constraint is likely to sit on the site, in comprehension, self-selection, trust or the conversion path. That is the condition this audit is built to diagnose.
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Search engines and AI systems cannot state what you offer
If the proposition cannot be extracted from the public pages, buyers who ask a machine first never reach you. The audit establishes which readability gaps to close, and in what order.
Before you request it
Questions people ask about the In-Depth Website Audit
If the answer you need is about scope across the wider commercial system, the assessment comparison sets out what each of the four CTI routes can and cannot establish.
What is an In-Depth Website Audit?
The In-Depth Website Audit is an automated commercial website audit from the Commercial Transformation Index (CTI). It takes the public evidence gathered by the Free Website Audit and interprets it commercially: what is limiting buyer comprehension, self-selection, trust and conversion on the site, what each finding is likely to cost, and what to change first. It returns a private report with a diagnosis, evidence-traced findings, a prioritised sequence and a 90-day order of change.
How is the In-Depth Website Audit different from the Free Website Audit?
Same evidence, different depth. The Free Website Audit observes and reports bounded evidence and findings. The In-Depth Website Audit interprets the same governed evidence through deterministic and AI-assisted commercial intelligence: it connects findings and states the dependencies between them, interprets what each implies for buyer understanding, positioning, trust, qualification, conversion and machine readability, weighs consequence and materiality, and sequences the response. It also adds a commercial profile, a buyer-journey view, a priority matrix, the strengths to protect, a target state and a 90-day sequence.
What does a commercial website audit analyse?
The commercial argument the website makes and how it holds up. The audit examines who the site is written for, the positioning it states, the consistency of its messaging, the offer and the path a buyer takes toward action, the proof and trust evidence available, how well the site qualifies the right enquiries, and how readable the proposition is to search engines and AI systems. Visual design is assessed only where it changes a commercial outcome.
How many signals does the In-Depth Website Audit analyse?
The same evidence base as the Free Website Audit: 200+ observable inputs and 60 derived measures, because it reads the same sealed public evidence. What it adds is the analytical layer. Every material finding, up to twelve of them alongside up to five strengths, is carried through 19 analytical variables: its condition, interpretation, evidence and contradictions, dependencies on other findings, commercial consequence, impact areas, buyer-journey stage, severity, materiality, what happens if it is left unchanged, the intervention, its expected effect, priority, effort and confidence. The observable and derived layers overlap in the governed count, so CTI states them separately rather than adding them into one inflated figure.
Is the In-Depth Website Audit automated?
Yes. The evidence is collected and measured automatically, the commercial interpretation is produced by AI working only on that evidence, and the output is validated against CTI rules before it is released. No consultant reviews your website by hand and no working session is part of the product.
Does a person review the audit?
Not as analysis. The interpretation is automated and validated against CTI output rules. Before a report is released it passes a governed publication check that confirms it met those rules, and you are then notified by email. Nobody rewrites findings, adds opinion or holds a session with you.
Does the In-Depth Website Audit use AI?
Yes. The In-Depth Website Audit uses AI-assisted commercial intelligence, bounded to observed evidence. Deterministic measurement establishes the evidence; AI is used to connect observations across pages, identify patterns, test the relationships between findings, interpret likely consequence, establish materiality and help sequence the response. It is given only the sealed evidence from your audit, with no browsing, no search and no outside knowledge about your organisation. Every claim must cite the evidence it rests on, it must state where the evidence cannot support a conclusion, and outputs that break those rules are rejected rather than released.
How long does the In-Depth Website Audit take?
It starts from a completed Free Website Audit and runs automatically from there. Because the report passes validation and a publication check before release, no fixed turnaround is promised. You are emailed when your report is ready and it is held privately for you to open.
Does it need access to my website, analytics or admin?
No. It uses the public evidence already gathered by the Free Website Audit: your pages as a buyer, a search engine and an AI system read them. No login, plugin, analytics access or change to your site is needed, and the audit states plainly that public evidence cannot establish internal conversion, pipeline or revenue performance.
Does the In-Depth Website Audit analyse SEO?
It carries the technical discoverability evidence from the Free Website Audit, which is the part of search that public evidence can establish: access, indexability, metadata, structure and readable text. It is not a keyword ranking or backlink report, and it does not give generic SEO advice. Its question is whether your commercial proposition can be found, understood and acted on.
Does the In-Depth Website Audit analyse AI readiness?
Yes. AI readiness measures how ready your public evidence is for machine discovery and interpretation across seven dimensions: technical discoverability, machine readability, structured data, entity clarity, authority and evidence, citation readiness, and freshness and provenance. The In-Depth Website Audit treats AI discoverability readiness as one of the ten commercial impact areas a finding can carry.
Does it test whether AI systems mention or recommend me?
No. Observed AI visibility, meaning whether AI services mention, recommend or cite your organisation, is a different measurement and is not part of the In-Depth Website Audit. The audit establishes how readable and extractable your proposition is, not what any AI service currently says about you.
Does the In-Depth Website Audit analyse ICP and positioning?
Yes, as the website makes them visible. The audit interprets who the site is built to serve, whether a buyer can judge their own fit quickly, the positioning and category the site claims, whether the claimed difference can be checked, and where pages contradict each other. Website is the CTI domain examined directly; ICP and Positioning are read through it.
Does it analyse competitors or compare me with a market?
Not by default. A comparison appears only where CTI holds a governed cohort large enough to support it, with the population stated beside it. Where no defensible cohort exists, the report says so and shows a recommended target state instead of a weak comparison.
What do I receive from the In-Depth Website Audit?
A private report: an executive commercial diagnosis, the strengths to protect, the material issues with their evidence and commercial consequence, what each costs if unchanged, the recommended interventions, a priority matrix, a target state and a 90-day sequence of change. The report states its confidence and its limits, and every finding can be traced to the page it came from.
When should I use the Full CTI Audit instead?
When the question is about the commercial system behind the website, or when the answer has to survive external scrutiny. The In-Depth Website Audit diagnoses the website and the customer and positioning signals it carries. The Full CTI Audit reviews evidence across all ten commercial domains and the relationships between them, and returns a validated Commercial Maturity Band and CTI score for investment, diligence or transformation decisions.