Methodology

How BEAT decides what comes first.

The method behind every priority: what BEAT reads, how it qualifies the evidence, how your objectives weigh in — and when it declines to conclude.

The reasoning chain

From your objectives to a management decision.

  1. 01

    Your objectives

    You state what the company is trying to achieve: growth priority, business pressure, desired outcome, priority journey, acquisition mix and urgency. This is the frame every reading is weighed against — the same weakness can matter a great deal to one company and very little to another.

  2. 02

    Observe the digital system

    BEAT reads what is publicly observable about the business: site performance, search and AI visibility, conversion architecture, messaging, trust and reviews, technology and measurement setup — and the competitors you choose to track. When you connect Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads or Meta, those measurements join the reading.

  3. 03

    Qualify the evidence

    Every reading is labelled by how it is known: measured, derived, model-assessed or unknown. A missing value stays missing; it is never turned into a zero or a middle score.

  4. 04

    Diagnose

    BEAT names the dominant friction, the key evidence behind it, the explanations it considered and rejected, and a falsification condition — what would have to be true for the diagnosis to be wrong.

  5. 05

    Prioritise

    The priority is the most credible loss, not simply the lowest score: how far a dimension falls short beyond normal variation, how reliably that reading is known, whether connected data confirms it, what you declared matters, and where it sits in the customer journey. A missing input is treated as neutral and named. If nothing is credible enough, BEAT abstains.

  6. 06

    Decide, monitor, learn

    A 30- and 90-day roadmap turns the priority into decisions. A weekly re-read watches your site and competitors and speaks only when a move is reliable. When your team records what it acted on, BEAT reports what followed — never that its recommendation caused it.

Evidence basis

Every reading says how it is known.

Measured

What it means
Read directly from a source, without interpretation.
Example
Page speed, review rating and volume, a connected analytics figure.

Derived

What it means
Computed by fixed rules from measured inputs.
Example
A conversion-readiness score built from the observed page structure.

Model-assessed

What it means
A judgement made by an AI model reading the page. Useful, but shown as a judgement.
Example
Messaging clarity, visual hierarchy.

Unknown

What it means
BEAT could not read it, or it is not connected. Shown as unknown — never as zero.
Example
Paid performance with no ad account connected.

Where a score mixes measured inputs and model judgement, it is flagged as including model judgement.

Discipline

What BEAT will not do.

  • ×Show a missing value as zero, or an unmeasured one as “moderate”.
  • ×Present a model’s judgement as a measurement.
  • ×Recommend an action it cannot tie to a named piece of evidence — it abstains instead.
  • ×Pass a verdict on a channel it cannot see.
  • ×Claim that a recommendation caused a result. It reports what followed, and how confounded that is.
  • ×Send a weekly alert because a score wobbled. Moves smaller than normal scan-to-scan variation are ignored.

Scores

The score is computed. The interpretation is written.

The BEAT Growth Index™ and its drivers are computed by fixed rules from the readings — not generated by AI — so they are comparable over time and between your company and the competitors you track, which are read by the same engine.

AI is used to read pages and to explain the numbers in plain language. It does not produce the score, and its output is labelled as interpretation wherever it appears.

Limits

What public signals can and cannot tell you.

Public signals describe what a visitor, a search engine or a competitor can see. They do not show what happens inside your funnel. Until you connect data, conversion impact is inferred from the structure of your pages and labelled as inferred.

Connecting sources changes that: hypotheses are confirmed or contradicted by measurement, and the briefing says which of its conclusions your data could not settle.

Data

How your data is handled.

Before you connect anything, BEAT works only from what is publicly visible and what you tell it. Connections are read-only and can be removed at any time. BEAT is operated by KARYENDA, a Belgian company; our Privacy Policy lists the processors we use and how data is handled.

Test the method on your own company.

Your first briefing is free, needs no integration, and shows its evidence basis throughout.