A professional CRO audit identifies specific conversion problems with data to back them up. But before you spend money on one, there are things you can assess yourself in about an hour — things that are often glaringly obvious once you look with fresh eyes.
Work through this checklist as a customer, not as the person who built or manages the store. The goal is to notice friction, confusion, and missing information — not to evaluate technical quality.
Homepage audit (10 minutes)
Open your homepage on your phone and ask:
- What does this store sell? Can you tell within three seconds, without scrolling? If it's not immediately obvious, that's a problem.
- Is there a clear primary action? Where do they want me to go? Is there one obvious next step, or am I being asked to do multiple things at once?
- Does anything feel off-brand or inconsistent? Mismatched fonts, different button styles, imagery that doesn't fit the brand — these erode trust without customers being able to articulate why.
- Is there any social proof above the fold? Review count, star rating, customer count, press logos — something that tells a new visitor other people trust this store.
- Does anything look broken? Overlapping text, images not loading, layout issues on your screen size.
Product page audit (15 minutes)
Find your three best-selling products and go through each one on mobile:
- Is the price visible without scrolling? On mobile, the price and add-to-cart button should both be visible in the first screenful without any scrolling.
- Are product images high quality and showing what matters? Is there a lifestyle shot? Are details visible? For apparel, is there at least one image on a model?
- Are variants clear? If the product comes in sizes or colours, is it obvious which ones are available and which are sold out? Are size guides accessible?
- Does the description answer the main question? Think about what the primary objection is for this product — "will it fit?", "is it worth the price?", "is it authentic?" — and check whether the page actually addresses it.
- Is there social proof on the product page? Reviews, ratings, or user-generated content near the buy button?
- How quickly does the page load? Count seconds from tap to fully loaded. More than 3 seconds on mobile is a problem.
Navigation audit (10 minutes)
- Can you find what you're looking for in two taps? Browse as a customer looking for a specific type of product. If it takes more than two taps to get to a relevant collection, the navigation is too deep or poorly labelled.
- Do collection pages have enough products? A collection page with two or three products looks sparse and undermines confidence. Consider restructuring collections to ensure each has a meaningful number of relevant products.
- Is there a search? For stores with more than 50 products, a working search is essential. Test it — does searching for a product type or category return relevant results?
- Does the footer contain what it should? Contact information, returns policy link, privacy policy, social links. A footer that's hard to find or incomplete reduces trust.
Cart and checkout audit (10 minutes)
Add a product to cart and go through checkout without completing it:
- Is the cart easy to find? After adding to cart, is it clear what happened and how to get to the cart? Cart icon in the header should be obvious and show item count.
- Does the cart show the total including shipping clearly? Is there a shipping estimate or free shipping threshold indicator?
- How many steps is the checkout? Count the pages from "Proceed to checkout" to the payment screen. Shopify's default is two pages (information then payment). That's the right number — avoid apps that add extra steps.
- Are alternative payment methods visible? Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay — these should be visible early in the checkout, not buried. They're especially important on mobile.
- Is the checkout branded? Does the checkout match your store's visual identity? Generic-looking checkout reduces trust at the exact moment customers are about to enter card details.
Speed check (5 minutes)
Go to Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev), paste your homepage URL, and run the analysis. The mobile score is the one that matters.
- 90–100: excellent
- 70–89: good, minor improvements possible
- 50–69: needs attention, likely affecting conversions
- Below 50: significant problem, investigate urgently
Note the specific issues it flags — particularly Largest Contentful Paint (how long until the main content loads) and Total Blocking Time (JavaScript blocking the page). These point to where the problem is coming from.
What to do with what you find
After going through this checklist, you'll have a list of observations. Some will be things you can fix yourself — rewriting product descriptions, adding review counts to the homepage, reorganising navigation. Others will need a developer.
The most common developer-level fixes surfaced by this kind of self-audit are speed issues (usually caused by apps or unoptimised images), mobile layout problems (elements overlapping or not fitting on small screens), and product page structural issues (buy button position, variant display).
If you find significant problems in multiple areas — particularly speed below 50 or a product page that fails the basic readability tests — a professional audit will give you a prioritised fix list with specific recommendations rather than general observations. The CRO Audit covers every page with data-backed findings and a two-sprint action plan.
