For fishing lodges, your website isn’t just a digital placeholder—it’s your primary tool for converting interest into bookings. In today’s travel landscape, guests often decide where to stay long before they pick up the phone or send an email. And more often than not, it’s your website that makes or breaks that decision.
A proper website audit can reveal whether your site is helping—or hurting—your ability to attract and convert guests. At Thrive, we believe every lodge deserves a site that reflects its unique personality, builds trust quickly, and guides visitors toward taking action. That’s why we developed a framework specifically for evaluating lodge websites.
How Website Audits Differ from Brand Audits
While a brand audit typically includes your logo, print collateral, messaging tone, and even interviews with team members or customers, a website audit is more focused and tactical. It zeroes in on how your digital front door performs in the real world: does it clearly explain what you offer, does it feel trustworthy, and does it drive bookings?
A great website isn’t just about beauty—it’s about functionality, flow, clarity, and performance. Our audits evaluate all of these using five distinct categories.
Our 5-Part Website Audit Framework
Here’s a breakdown of the five areas we use to score fishing lodge websites, each with its own set of measurable criteria.
1. Clarity & Messaging
Visitors should land on your site and instantly know who you are, what you offer, and why they should stay with you. A strong homepage guides them through your trip types, amenities, and seasonal highlights, with clear calls to action like “Book Now” or “Request Availability.” Sites that fail in this area often suffer from vague copy, cluttered layouts, or a lack of trust-building info.
- Clear, benefit-driven messaging
- Purposeful homepage & user flow
- Robust content strategy (trip types, FAQs, lodge details)
- Strategic, well-placed CTAs for conversion (book, inquire, email signup)
2. Visual Impact
The quality of your design directly affects how visitors perceive the quality of your lodge. Authentic photography, inviting color schemes, and well-considered design choices build trust and help guests picture themselves at your location. We often see beautiful lodges let down by generic stock photos or outdated visuals that undersell the experience.
- Alignment with brand tone and quality
- Authentic photography that supports lifestyle and setting
- Use and placement of video (when applicable)
- Professional typography and spacing
- Cohesive, inviting visual hierarchy
3. Navigation & Structure
A well-structured site makes information easy to find—especially for guests on mobile devices. From clear menus to logical page groupings, this category evaluates how efficiently visitors can browse trip options, check rates, and find answers to common questions. Lodges lose bookings when users get frustrated trying to find what they need.
- Logical nav structure and clean hierarchy
- Easy to skim/read content
- Mobile-friendly layout and menu design
- Consistent layout patterns across the site
- Friction-free navigation
4. Performance & Accessibility
This is where your site either functions like a well-oiled machine—or doesn’t. We evaluate how fast the site loads, how smoothly it performs on different devices, and how easy it is for users to complete key tasks like submitting an inquiry. The best lodge websites combine visual appeal with technical excellence.
- Load speed and technical stability
- Mobile performance and cross-browser consistency
- Full site contained within a clear, primary domain
- Aesthetics enhance usability
- Clear, achievable conversion paths (inquiry, booking, etc.)
5. Visibility & Optimization
Even a beautifully built site won’t perform if no one can find it. This category looks at your website’s foundation for organic visibility—like SEO best practices, use of structured data, and local search signals. We also consider whether you’re showing up for competitive search terms that matter in your region.
- On-site SEO basics (title tags, headings, meta)
- Technical crawlability and indexation
- Use of schema/structured data
- Local SEO signals (NAP consistency, maps, etc.)
- Competitive keyword presence / baseline visibility
Note: While our recent audit of 100 lodge websites used a 1–7 scoring scale, Thrive is transitioning to a 1–10 scale for future audits to provide greater scoring clarity and flexibility.
What to Expect from a Thrive Audit
When you engage us for a website audit, we don’t overwhelm you with jargon or theory. We provide a straightforward scoring report, actionable recommendations, and a roadmap for turning your website into a more effective marketing and booking tool.
Want to see how your lodge’s website measures up? Reach out and let’s take a look together.