duediligence.digital – Web Copy

Digital investment risk minimized by duediligence.digital

Whatever the size of your potential investment, our due diligence services will help to provide clarity of its true value. Unreliable information and spurious claims for an online business will be replaced by a concise, bespoke report, creating a clear path to an informed, data-driven business decision.

Find out how we uncover the true value of a potential online investment here (link to page detailing standard assessment).

Understand Your Investment

Before buying a web-based business it is paramount that its true value is understood. At duediligence.digital, we know what to look for. Our in-depth research strategy cuts through opaque language and misrepresented figures to establish a verifiable valuation of the online credentials of a potential investment. You don’t have to guess if your decision makes financial sense, you will know. Our comprehensive digital investment analysis enables you to make an informed, data-driven investment decision.

Online Assessment

Our online assessment examines all web-based dimensions of the subject business. Our experts undertake a complete media audit, resulting in statistically reliable information, enabling a fully informed online investment decision. We forensically examine web data to flag potential pitfalls, analyse risk and identify competitive advantage to provide critical information early in the process; efficiently using time invested considering an online acquisition, writing an LOI or committing to a purchase.

Security and Income Validation

As with any business, the value of a website is intrinsically linked to the amount of profit it generates, making reliable financial validation a vital part of the purchasing process. We examine website earnings at source to validate or reject income claims, preventing costly investment errors.

Standard

A comprehensive website analysis: evaluating its health for both current digital marketing activities, as well as prospective future use. This evaluation will include aspects such as whether the chosen platform is the most effective for a particular field and any identifiable scaling concerns.

Utilising a Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) Audit we measure current performance against specified goals such as lead generation, database capture and conversion rates. A formal audit report will be provided, including recommendations from our comprehensive analysis.

Click here to see what’s included or download a sample report.

Advanced

Almost half of web-based business transactions contain inaccurate figures. Genuine mistakes on the part of sellers and brokers account for most of these instances. However, approximately one in five cases are a deliberate attempt to deceive the buyer into over-paying using inflated, misrepresented or fraudulent figures. Once a sale has been agreed, we work with the seller to establish the veracity of their revenue and traffic claims. Our findings and recommendations are presented in a clear, succinct report.

Click here to see what’s included or download a sample report.

Brand

Due Diligence to protect and future-proof your Brand: safeguard your competitive position. We carry out expert technical audits and comprehensive digital activity analysis. We use this data to assess your Brand’s Google web presence and visibility, through:

• Auditing of links and technical content
• Checking penalty risk scores, visibility value and any threats to competitive standing

This service provides written reports detailing specific risks to your Brand’s website, steps to eradicate those risks and highlighting any Pay Per Click investment required.

Click here to see what’s included or download a sample report.

READ MORE SECTIONS

Standard

We will provide a comprehensive Website Due Diligence analysis service, including:

• Website technical status and ease of navigation
• Platform suitability and future scalability assessment, which would have a bearing on any future plans for expansion.
• Industry-standard Content Management System (CMS) assessment
• Industry-standard Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) for website effectiveness. This will establish how efficiently tasks such as database capture and lead generation are being performed.

In addition, we will examine and analyse the following areas:

1. Technical Performance & Content

Site configuration

CMS strength and extensibility

Content analysis

Mobile/Tablet integration

1. Conversion Rate Optimisation

Usability/ease of navigation

Conversion benchmarking, bounce rates and visits

Content strategy

Lead generation

• Additional Features

Potential Trademark violations – trademark ownership and brand/domain protection. A website or domain name containing a registered trademark can represent a risk as the trademark owner could claim ownership of the domain name, or, even take legal action against the website.

Evidence of falsified analytics – overselling of a website’s efficacy and value. This can be the case with websites that only use self-hosted tracking solutions. Reliable traffic information can only be verified via third party analytics software as analytics gathered by self-hosted packages are easy to forge.

Third Party Dependence – highlighting critical dependencies on third party services where continuation of supply is not guaranteed

1. Traffic & Marketing Assessments

Many newly-acquired online businesses fail within a year due to traffic reduction and subsequent revenue loss. Our assessment will provide essential early warning of potential traffic reductions by analysing both historical and current traffic sources for their quality, sustainability and critical dependencies. The variety of traffic sources to the website, such as organic, referrals and direct traffic will be analysed, together with the quality of the link profile, to build a picture of the website’s overall stability and sustainability.

This service will include analysis of:

• level of engagement from new visitors – linked to site quality and value perception
• keyword rankings – used both to identify opportunities from traffic growth, as well as indicating potential Google penalty sensitivities
• paid traffic – highlights where paid traffic may have been used to boost figures without declared costs in financial assessments

1. Revenue & Monetisation Checks

Comprehensive analysis of the source, quality and short and long-term sustainability of the website’s revenue sources, including:

• Transferability of revenue accounts – not all revenue streams transfer to the new ownership, for example, specific agreements that the seller has negotiated with a service provider relating to reduced fees, or revenue sources unavailable in certain countries, but we will identify the risks
• Google AdSense Compliance; Google AdSense accounts are not directly transferable to a new owner, but are essential to prevent the removal of a business from the AdSense service. Whilst creating a new account is straightforward, it has implications for the resale value of the business, as historical transaction details do not transfer to the new account.
• Revenue Metrics – assessed against industry-standard benchmarks, identifying a Seller’s inaccurate, inflated or fraudulent claims, often indicated by a much higher than average conversion rate.

1. Operations & Maintenance Assessments

This comprehensive service examines all costs of running the potential investment’s day-to-day and maintenance activities, providing reinforcing evidence of the value of a business and including:

• Skills required by the Operation – enabling appropriate outsourcing by skill type, where not currently part of the Investor’s portfolio
• Outsourcing cost estimation

• Seller Information

We will perform a check of the seller’s other business interests, such as other businesses or domain names owned by the seller which may be positioned to compete with the business for sale, highlighting the potential for conflicts of interest or hidden links, revenue providers and game-changers, which may later become apparent.

• Domain & Server Assessments

Understanding of Rights of Ownership, past and present owners and recent changes.

• Any relevant ownership restrictions
• Any blacklist or spam listing for previous history of unsolicited emails or unethical practices. These activities can have a serious detrimental effect on the future profitability of a website as they may, for example, have a negative impact on the deliverability of emails in the future.
• Age of website, for example with regard to risk associated with new websites hosted from established domain names. Traffic and revenue streams to new websites are inherently unstable, increasing the chances of a sudden decrease in activity in these areas in comparison with established sites.

Advanced

Almost half of web-based business transactions contain inaccurate figures. In addition, approximately one in five cases are a deliberate attempt to deceive the buyer into over-paying. Once a sale has been agreed, we work with the seller to establish the veracity of their revenue and traffic claims. Our findings and recommendations are presented in a clear, succinct report (for assessment with an appropriately qualified accountant), which will include:

1. Income Verification – substantiation of valuation and profit claimed

• Verification through sales or other income streams
• The reliability and sustainability of the revenue source, with consideration given to issues specific to the business such as seasonality, as well as the possibility of the source being replaced.
• The reliability and stability of difference revenue sources. Direct sales to consumers and Cost per Click (CPC) Adverts are, for example, considered a relatively safe source of revenue.
• Revenue levels solely through Business being sold, unsupported by any additional interests held by the Vendor

1. Expenditure Verification – substantiation of business costs

• Identification of Business funding from undeclared sources
• Comparison with similar businesses to identify any funding anomalies

• Traffic Level Verification – claimed traffic and sales expectation
• Whilst not directly correlated with the sales price of a business, there is a substantial link between traffic volumes through a web-based business’s website and its sales potential. The sustainability of traffic sources can depend on a number of factors, including whether the traffic results from organic searches, referrals or is direct traffic resulting from such activities as offline advertising and marketing. All these factors will be taken into account and analysed, and a traffic distribution assessment produced.
• Comparison with similar businesses to identify any traffic volume anomalies

1. Claimed Traffic Source Verification – identifying discrepancies between claims and volumes from verifiable sources.

1. Mailing List Verification – verification of health, quality and existence of mailing list

Brand

Due Diligence to protect and future-proof your Brand: safeguard your competitive position through expert technical audits and comprehensive digital activity analysis. We use this data to assess your Brand’s Google web presence and visibility and reducing risk, by:

• Conducting comprehensive audits of links, content and technical data to understand the nature of the web-based business and if it has any unique identifiers.
• Checking penalty risk scores, visibility value and any threats to competitive standing
• Detailing site-specific risks and identifying urgent tasks required to eradicate those risks
• Providing action plans to alleviate identified risks

This service provides written reports detailing specific risks to your Brand’s website, steps to eradicate those risks, including highlighting of any Pay Per Click investment required to maximise the search channel to drive visibility, traffic and sales. We will also put together an action plan, which will help underpin current activities and provide a launchpad for your brand’s online future.