For Stoute Web Solutions, My Web Audit has meant an 80% close rate — and a 100X ROI

On the outskirts of Portland, OR, just off the I-26 freeway, Paul Stoute runs the digital agency that bears his name. The zoo is down the road one way, with the rocks and minerals museum up the other. And all of it—zoo, museum, and Stoute Web Solutions—lies nestled in millions of acres of national forest.

It's an odd place, in other words, to run a business so focused on technology—but that hasn't held Paul back. He and his team of employees and contractors are celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, providing an in-demand mix of web design, SEO, PPC, maintenance, care, admin, and more.

One thing has changed over the years, however… A key process that used to take four hours of unpaid time per lead now consumes 15 minutes or less—all thanks to My Web Audit.

"We now average around an 80% closing rate—and get a nearly 100X return on investment on what we pay for My Web Audit every year."

How Paul uses My Web Audit

Paul explains his process before MWA.

"We would do an entire site audit—entirely manually. Spending so much time going through that whole process, making sure we checked all the boxes. To put it simply, it was a pain."

"But every time we would get a new lead, we'd do an audit that would take three or four hours' worth of time. We'd type it up in a Google Doc—bullet point, bullet point, bullet point all the way down the list."

"Then we'd deliver it to the client on a call. We'd walk them through all the areas of opportunity that we could fix quickly, giving them the quick rundown. But we'd have to say, 'OK, we covered 10 things, but as you can see in this document, there are another 75 items to address—we just can't go over them because it takes too long."

"So on top of the three to four hours to audit a site, we'd have an hour-long review call, but we wouldn't even be exploring all the opportunities. And if we didn't manage to close the deal, we'd just lose all that time."

My Web Audit changed all of that.

"Now running an audit takes us about 15 minutes at the top end—and that's with reviewing all of the manual checkpoints and everything. And we can do things we just couldn't before, like Wordpress website security."

"We're also able to train our team on it—we can pass off the audit to a virtual assistant and have them tackle the entire audit process for us. If things are complicated, I'll step in, but with MWA, we've eliminated our whole previous process."

"That has really opened things up, letting us incorporate audits into a paid week-long discovery intensive. We start with a conversation over the phone to get an idea of their goals."

"If those goals align with how we could help them, and we think it would make sense to try to win the business, we run a full discovery session that includes the audit. They have three major conference calls through that timeframe, where we help them identify their unique value proposition, what their KPIs are for the next 12 months, and so on."

"For example, we run an ROI report in MWA based on what we think their growth could be because of a new web design, or better SEO, or whatever the case might be. Then we plug in their current traffic and estimate future traffic based on what we've seen work in the past."

"Finally, we consider the budget they've identified and let them know, 'Well, you told us your budget was $10,000, but you won't be able to meet your goal because that doesn't buy enough ads."

"But a large part of the process looks at quick wins with My Web Audit. What can we do here? And, more importantly, what should we do first?"

What MWA has done for Stoute Web Solutions

Since My Web Audit, Paul has gone from spending the equivalent of $750 of unpaid time on a lead to charging twice that for paid discovery.

Even better, the authority that Paul builds with the audit and discovery paves the way for closed deal after closed deal.

"It's tough for them to say no at that point. They know that we can do the work because we're literally outlining the entire proposal."

"We identify all their needs—needs that they didn't even think of. We even create goals for them. In effect, we're handing them a blueprint for success and saying, "Oh, by the way, we can execute that blueprint at the same time. It really helps us sell."

Then, once a company has become a client, Paul uses an MWA audit again at the 12-month mark.

"We have an annual audit process where care plan clients will receive an audit. We tell them, "Here's where we started at the beginning of the year, and now here's where we are at the end. We checked off all these boxes, but we still have gaps here and here. Then we set up a game plan for the coming year, whether we're going to do a new redesign, set them up with an SEO plan or contract, start running paid ads to their funnels, or whatever they might need."

"We're always trying to be their partner in success, rather than just a service they can stop using whenever they feel like it. My Web Audit helps build that case."

Why Paul loves MWA

With everything that My Web Audit has done for Stoute Web Solutions, it's no surprise that Paul recommends MWA unreservedly.

"We average around an 80% closing rate—and a nearly 100X return on investment from what we pay for MWA every year."

"I cannot say it enough. You have to try it. Just jump in and run it with some of your leads and clients."

"It's transformed our business."