How often should you audit your website?

Use change and risk—not the calendar alone

There is no universal audit interval. A frequently updated ecommerce site, a lead-generation site with paid traffic, and a small informational site have different exposure. Set the cadence around how often the website changes and how costly an undetected problem would be.

Monitor critical availability and conversion paths continuously where practical, then schedule broader reviews to catch gradual drift in content, accessibility, search foundations, performance, and trust.

Create three review layers

A useful program separates lightweight monitoring from release checks and deeper periodic audits. That keeps routine verification manageable without pretending one automated scan covers the entire experience.

• Ongoing: uptime, form delivery, checkout, security alerts, and critical errors.
• After meaningful releases: affected templates, journeys, analytics, accessibility, metadata, and redirects.
• Periodic: representative manual review across performance, accessibility, search, content, trust, and conversion.
• After business changes: pricing, locations, services, policies, ownership, or contact details.

Keep comparable evidence

Record the date, page set, device, environment, method, and owner for each review. Compare like with like, confirm important automated findings manually, and retain the evidence needed to verify that completed work actually improved the experience.