'What a client portal should show, and what it should hide'

Most agency reporting is a PDF attached to an email on the first of the month. It gets opened, skimmed, and filed somewhere the client will never find it again. When their business partner asks what the agency is actually doing, the client has nothing to show them.

A client portal fixes that by giving the owner somewhere to look whenever the question comes up. It also exposes everything about how you work, so it is worth deciding carefully what goes in it.

Why the emailed report stops working

A monthly report is a snapshot. It answers "what did you do last month" and nothing else, and it arrives on your schedule rather than when the client is wondering. By month four it is the same document with different numbers, and nobody reads past the first page.

What a client actually wants to know is simpler and more persistent: is my website getting better, what is still wrong with it, and did the things you fixed stay fixed. A portal can answer all three at any time, which is exactly when the client is likely to ask.

What to show

The score over time. One number per check, drawn as a line. A year of work reads as a direction, and a dip after a redesign reads as something you caught rather than something you caused. If you only show one thing, show this.

What is still open, in plain language. The findings you have not fixed yet, written for the owner rather than for a developer: "visitors on phones wait more than four seconds for the main image," not a metric name. Showing the open list is uncomfortable the first time and builds more trust than anything else on the page, because it proves you are not hiding the bad news.

Every fix, with its proof. What you fixed, when you checked it again, and what the check found. A fix with a recheck date beside it is evidence; a fix in a list of tasks is a claim. See how to prove a website fix worked for what counts as a recheck.

When it was last checked, and when it will be checked next. A portal with a stale date is worse than no portal. A visible next check tells the client the work is ongoing without you having to say so.

Your name. Your logo, your colours and your agency name, with the software's brand nowhere on it. The client hired you, not a tool. Our guide to white-label audit reports covers why the branding matters more than it looks.

What to hide

Other clients. Obvious, and the thing that matters most. A client login should reach the sites you shared with that person and nothing else: not your other clients, not the prospects you are pitching, not the list of businesses in their town you have audited. Test it before you send the first invitation.

Your sales notes. Inside your own tools a finding often carries how you would sell it, what it is worth to you, or which service it leads to. None of that belongs in front of the client. They should see the problem and its fix, not your pipeline.

Raw tool output. Status codes, JSON and stack traces make a portal look technical and make the owner feel stupid. Keep the detail available for whoever asks, and keep it off the first screen.

Checks that did not run, dressed as passes. If a measurement could not be taken this week, say so. A portal that turns every unreadable check into a green tick is one the client will eventually catch out, and then nothing on it is believed.

How often to tell them

A portal is somewhere the client goes. A progress email is what reminds them it exists. Weekly suits a site you are actively working on; monthly suits a care plan. Send it under your own name, and send it only when something was actually measured in that period: an update about a month nobody checked is the emailed PDF again, with extra steps.

Keep the email short. The headline change, the fixes confirmed, anything new that needs attention, and a link to the portal for the rest.

A portal is a retention tool, so price it like one

Clients rarely cancel work they can see. A portal that shows the score climbing and the fixes holding is the strongest argument for turning a one-off audit into a monthly retainer, and it costs you almost nothing once it is set up. It belongs in the retainer, not as an extra.

How SiteAssay does it

From the Pro plan up, you can give a client a login to the client portal. It shows only the sites you share with that person, under your agency's name, logo and colour: the score over time, the findings still open, and every fix you made with its recheck. It never shows your other clients, your prospects or how you would sell a finding. The number of client logins each plan allows is on the pricing page.

On a monitored site you can also send each client a progress email, weekly or monthly, built from the scheduled audits and sent as your agency. A period with no finished audit sends nothing. Keeping clients shows how the pieces fit together.