Who the report is for
Your contact at the client probably isn't technical. They want to know three things: is the website healthy, is it bringing in business, and what are we paying you for? Every section of the report should answer one of those. If a chart doesn't, leave it out.
A one-page structure that works
- A two-line summary. "A good month: the site was up 99.98% of the time, visits from Google rose 12%, and we fixed the slow contact page." If they read nothing else, they've read this.
- Is the site healthy? Uptime and any outages (with what caused them), speed on phones, and the security certificate. Use a simple good / needs attention signal rather than raw scores.
- Is it bringing in business? Visits or clicks from Google compared with last month and the same month last year, the searches it's found for, and enquiries if you track them.
- What we did this month. The fixes and improvements you made, in plain words. This is the section that justifies your fee, and the one most reports forget.
- What's next. Two or three things planned for next month, and anything you need from them, such as photos, prices or approval.
That's it. Put the detail, such as full keyword lists, page-by-page audits and technical findings, in an appendix or a separate technical report for whoever wants it.
Writing it so it gets read
- Plain words. Say "the page took 4 seconds to show on a phone", not "LCP of 4,100 ms".
- Compare honestly. Show last month and the same month last year. Seasonal businesses look terrible against last month in their quiet season.
- Explain the bad months. A drop with a reason ("Google's data shows fewer searches for 'garden centre' in November") builds more trust than a report that only shows good news.
- One chart, not ten. A single trend of visits from Google over the last 90 days says more than a page of pie charts.
- Your brand, your name. Clients should see your logo and the person who looks after them, not the tool you use.
Sending it
Send on the same day every month, as a PDF they can forward, with the two-line summary in the email itself. A link they can open on their phone, or a client login showing the same figures, helps the ones who'd rather look themselves.
Doing it for every client without the copying and pasting
Building these by hand from five tools takes hours per client. TideStat writes a monthly report for each site from the checks it already runs: health, uptime, speed, Google figures, what was fixed (confirmed by the checks) and what's next, in your branding, with an optional AI summary written from the month's real results. It's sent automatically, and clients can also see the same figures in a read-only login.
