Website Conversion Audit Checklist: 30 Things to Check Before Hiring an Agency

Yes, you can audit your own site before you call anyone, and you should. Most of the easy wins on a Shopify or WooCommerce store are visible to the owner in an afternoon: a slow page, a buried price, a checkout that asks for too much, a phone number nobody can find. This checklist gives you 30 concrete things to verify yourself, grouped by category, so you walk into any agency conversation knowing what is already fixed and what is genuinely worth paying for.

This is the do-it-yourself version. It is not the same as the formal CRO audit an agency runs for you, which layers in session recordings, heatmaps, statistical analysis and a prioritised roadmap. Think of this as the pre-flight check you run first.

Key takeaways

You can find a meaningful share of conversion problems yourself with no paid tools, just your own phone, a browser, and a willingness to behave like a sceptical first-time visitor.
Start with measurement. If your tracking is wrong, every other decision after it is a guess.
The biggest leaks usually sit in three places: speed, checkout, and clarity of the offer.
Run every check on a phone first. Mobile is where most traffic and most friction lives.
When the same problems keep reappearing after you fix them, or you cannot tell whether a change helped, that is the signal to bring in help.

How to use this checklist

Open your site on your phone as if you have never seen it. Then open it on a desktop. Work through each category below and mark every item as pass, fail, or unsure. The fails are your starter list. The unsures are usually a measurement problem, which is why we start there.

Measurement and tracking

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it, and you cannot tell whether anyone else improved it either. Check these first.

Analytics is actually installed and firing. Open your site, then check your GA4 real-time report. You should see yourself appear within a minute. If you do not, nothing downstream is trustworthy.
Key conversions are tracked as events. Confirm that a completed purchase, a form submission, or a booking shows up as its own event, not just a page view of a thank-you page that visitors may never reach.
You can see conversion rate by device. Pull up sessions and conversion rate split by mobile versus desktop. A large gap tells you where the problem lives before you look any further.
You know your traffic sources. You should be able to say what share of visitors come from organic search, paid, social and direct. If every channel is lumped together, attribution and budget decisions are guesswork.
There are no duplicate or double-counted events. A purchase counted twice inflates your numbers and hides real problems. If your conversion rate looks suspiciously high, suspect this first.

Across the tracking work we have done, accuracy is the thing that quietly breaks most often. We have rebuilt over 167 tracking containers and watched more than $4.95M in ad spend get measured against them, and the recurring pattern is the same: the store looks fine, the numbers do not, and the gap is a tag, not the shop.

Speed and technical health

Speed is conversion. Google and Deloitte found that more than half of mobile visitors abandon a page that takes longer than three seconds to load, and that even a 0.1 second improvement in mobile speed lifted retail conversions measurably (Google / Deloitte, "Milliseconds Make Millions", 2019). Check these.

Your homepage loads in under three seconds on mobile. Test on a phone on mobile data, not office wifi. Count the seconds until you can actually tap something.
Run a free speed test. Use PageSpeed Insights or a similar free tool on your homepage and your best-selling product page. Note the mobile score, not just desktop.
Images are not oversized. Right-click and inspect, or just notice if images load in slow chunks. A single uncompressed hero image can dominate load time.
No broken links, 404s or mixed-content warnings. Click your main navigation and footer links. A padlock that is missing or a page that errors quietly kills trust.
The site does not shift around as it loads. If buttons jump while the page settles, visitors mis-tap and bounce.

For context, we once took a client store from an 11.3 second load time down to 1.9 seconds, and the conversion behaviour changed before any other work touched the page.

Messaging and clarity

A visitor decides in seconds whether they are in the right place. Read your homepage as a stranger.

It is obvious what you sell and to whom, above the fold. Within five seconds a first-time visitor should be able to say what you do and who it is for. If you have to scroll to find out, that is a fail.
Your main value proposition is specific, not generic. "Quality products, great service" says nothing. What makes you the right choice over the other tab they have open?
The primary call to action is singular and clear. One main next step per page, phrased as an action ("Shop the range", "Get a quote"), not a vague "Learn more" competing with five other buttons.
Pricing or how-to-buy is not hidden. If a visitor has to hunt for the price or how to start, many will simply leave instead of asking.

Navigation and search

People who cannot find a product cannot buy it.

Main navigation is short and uses plain words. Categories should match how customers describe things, not your internal naming.
Search exists and returns sensible results. Search your top three products by the words a customer would use, including a common misspelling. Empty or junk results are lost sales.
A visitor can get from homepage to a product in two or three clicks. Count them. Every extra step sheds people.
There are clear paths back. Breadcrumbs or obvious category links so a visitor never feels stranded on a dead-end page.

Product pages

This is where the buying decision is made or lost.

Photos are large, clear and show the product in real use. Multiple angles, zoom that works, and at least one image showing scale or context.
The description answers the obvious questions. Sizing, materials, what is included, dimensions, compatibility. If a customer would email to ask, the page should already answer it.
Price, availability and delivery expectation are visible without scrolling. "When will I get it and how much is shipping" is the question that stalls most carts.
The add-to-cart button is unmissable. Strong colour, above the fold on mobile, and it does something visible when tapped.
Reviews or ratings are present on the page. Around 93% of shoppers read reviews before buying, and most check them again right before they commit (Capital One Shopping, 2024). A product page with no social proof is asking for blind trust.

Cart and checkout

Roughly seven in ten carts are abandoned, an average of 70.2% across studies, and the leading causes are extra costs shown too late, forced account creation, and a checkout that feels long or untrustworthy (Baymard Institute, 2024). Check yours.

Complete a real test purchase end to end. On your phone. Note every moment you hesitate or feel friction. That hesitation is what your customers feel too.
Total cost, including shipping, appears before the final step. Surprise fees at the last screen are the single most cited reason people abandon.
Guest checkout is available. Forcing account creation before purchase loses buyers who would happily come back later.
The checkout asks for the minimum. Every non-essential field is friction. If you do not need it to fulfil the order, question why it is there.
Trust signals sit at the point of payment. Secure-payment marks, accepted card logos, and a clear returns or guarantee line right where money changes hands.

Trust and social proof

Especially for a brand a visitor has not bought from before, trust is the deciding factor.

Real contact details are easy to find. A physical address, a phone number and an email. For NZ and AU stores, local contact details reassure local buyers.
Reviews and testimonials are genuine and specific. Named, dated, and ideally tied to products. Generic praise reads as invented.
Returns, shipping and guarantee policies are clear and easy to reach. Hidden or vague policies make cautious buyers walk away.

Mobile experience

Most ecommerce traffic is mobile, so most friction is mobile. Run the whole checklist on a phone, and confirm these specifically.

Tap targets are big enough and not crowded. Buttons and links should be easy to hit with a thumb without zooming.
Forms and the keyboard behave. The right keyboard appears for email and number fields, and the page does not jump as you type.
Nothing important hides behind a sticky bar or popup. Test that a popup can actually be closed on a small screen, and that it does not cover the buy button.

Forms and lead capture

For service businesses and any store that captures enquiries, the form is the conversion.

The form is short and asks only what you need now. Every extra field lowers completion. You can ask for more later.
Submission clearly works and confirms success. Submit a real test enquiry. Confirm you receive it, and confirm the visitor sees a genuine success message, not a silent reload.

When to stop DIYing and bring in help

This checklist surfaces the visible problems. It will not tell you which fix is worth the most, or whether a change actually moved the needle, because that needs clean data over time and proper testing. Bring in help when:

You have fixed the obvious things and conversion has not moved, so the problem is deeper than the surface.
Your numbers and your gut disagree, which usually means a measurement problem you cannot see from the front end.
The same issues keep reappearing after launches or theme updates, which points to a structural cause.
You are about to spend real money on traffic and want the destination watertight first.

That is the point where a proper audit pays for itself. If you would like a second set of eyes, you can book a free conversion audit with us, and if the problems turn out to be ongoing rather than one-off, that is what our conversion rate optimisation work is built for.

FAQ

Can I really audit my own website without any paid tools? Yes, for the visible problems. Your phone, a browser, a free speed test, and your analytics real-time view cover most of this checklist. Paid tools and an agency add the layer you cannot see yourself: session recordings, statistical testing, and a prioritised roadmap.

What should I check first? Measurement. If your analytics is wrong or your conversions are not tracked correctly, every later judgement about what to fix is a guess. After that, check speed and checkout, which is where most of the lost revenue tends to hide.

What is a good conversion rate for my store? For ecommerce, averages sit around 1.9% to 3% depending on how sessions are counted, with stronger Shopify stores reaching 3% or higher (industry benchmark aggregators, 2025). Treat these as a rough yardstick only. Your own trend over time, comparing like with like, matters far more than a global average.

How is this different from a CRO audit an agency runs? This is a self-audit of what is visible from the front of the site. An agency audit adds behavioural data, testing, and prioritisation, and tells you which fix is worth the most rather than just what is broken. The two work well together: run this first, then an agency starts from a cleaner baseline.

How long should a self-audit take? Plan for an afternoon. Run it once on mobile and once on desktop, complete a real test purchase or enquiry, and write down every point of hesitation. The list of hesitations is usually more useful than the list of pass or fail marks.

Sources

Baymard Institute, "Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics" (2024). Average cart abandonment of 70.2% and leading causes. https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
Google / Deloitte, "Milliseconds Make Millions" (2019) and Google mobile speed research (2017). Mobile abandonment above three seconds and conversion impact of speed. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Capital One Shopping Research, "Online Reviews Statistics" (2024). Share of shoppers reading reviews before and during purchase. https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/online-reviews-statistics/
Industry ecommerce conversion benchmark aggregators (2025), summarising Shopify and broader ecommerce conversion rate ranges. Example: https://cleancommit.io/blog/whats-a-good-shopify-conversion-rate-2025-benchmarks/

First-party Enderon figures cited (124% Black Friday conversion lift, 11.3s to 1.9s load time, 167+ tracking containers, $4.95M+ ad spend tracked, 98% tracking accuracy) are drawn from our own client work.

Key takeaways

You can find a meaningful share of conversion problems yourself with no paid tools, just your own phone, a browser, and a willingness to behave like a sceptical first-time visitor.
Start with measurement. If your tracking is wrong, every other decision after it is a guess.
The biggest leaks usually sit in three places: speed, checkout, and clarity of the offer.
Run every check on a phone first. Mobile is where most traffic and most friction lives.
When the same problems keep reappearing after you fix them, or you cannot tell whether a change helped, that is the signal to bring in help.

How to use this checklist

Measurement and tracking

If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it, and you cannot tell whether anyone else improved it either. Check these first.

Analytics is actually installed and firing. Open your site, then check your GA4 real-time report. You should see yourself appear within a minute. If you do not, nothing downstream is trustworthy.
Key conversions are tracked as events. Confirm that a completed purchase, a form submission, or a booking shows up as its own event, not just a page view of a thank-you page that visitors may never reach.
You can see conversion rate by device. Pull up sessions and conversion rate split by mobile versus desktop. A large gap tells you where the problem lives before you look any further.
You know your traffic sources. You should be able to say what share of visitors come from organic search, paid, social and direct. If every channel is lumped together, attribution and budget decisions are guesswork.
There are no duplicate or double-counted events. A purchase counted twice inflates your numbers and hides real problems. If your conversion rate looks suspiciously high, suspect this first.

Speed and technical health

Your homepage loads in under three seconds on mobile. Test on a phone on mobile data, not office wifi. Count the seconds until you can actually tap something.
Run a free speed test. Use PageSpeed Insights or a similar free tool on your homepage and your best-selling product page. Note the mobile score, not just desktop.
Images are not oversized. Right-click and inspect, or just notice if images load in slow chunks. A single uncompressed hero image can dominate load time.
No broken links, 404s or mixed-content warnings. Click your main navigation and footer links. A padlock that is missing or a page that errors quietly kills trust.
The site does not shift around as it loads. If buttons jump while the page settles, visitors mis-tap and bounce.

For context, we once took a client store from an 11.3 second load time down to 1.9 seconds, and the conversion behaviour changed before any other work touched the page.

Messaging and clarity

A visitor decides in seconds whether they are in the right place. Read your homepage as a stranger.

It is obvious what you sell and to whom, above the fold. Within five seconds a first-time visitor should be able to say what you do and who it is for. If you have to scroll to find out, that is a fail.
Your main value proposition is specific, not generic. "Quality products, great service" says nothing. What makes you the right choice over the other tab they have open?
The primary call to action is singular and clear. One main next step per page, phrased as an action ("Shop the range", "Get a quote"), not a vague "Learn more" competing with five other buttons.
Pricing or how-to-buy is not hidden. If a visitor has to hunt for the price or how to start, many will simply leave instead of asking.

Navigation and search

People who cannot find a product cannot buy it.

Main navigation is short and uses plain words. Categories should match how customers describe things, not your internal naming.
Search exists and returns sensible results. Search your top three products by the words a customer would use, including a common misspelling. Empty or junk results are lost sales.
A visitor can get from homepage to a product in two or three clicks. Count them. Every extra step sheds people.
There are clear paths back. Breadcrumbs or obvious category links so a visitor never feels stranded on a dead-end page.

Product pages

This is where the buying decision is made or lost.

Photos are large, clear and show the product in real use. Multiple angles, zoom that works, and at least one image showing scale or context.
The description answers the obvious questions. Sizing, materials, what is included, dimensions, compatibility. If a customer would email to ask, the page should already answer it.
Price, availability and delivery expectation are visible without scrolling. "When will I get it and how much is shipping" is the question that stalls most carts.
The add-to-cart button is unmissable. Strong colour, above the fold on mobile, and it does something visible when tapped.
Reviews or ratings are present on the page. Around 93% of shoppers read reviews before buying, and most check them again right before they commit (Capital One Shopping, 2024). A product page with no social proof is asking for blind trust.

Cart and checkout

Complete a real test purchase end to end. On your phone. Note every moment you hesitate or feel friction. That hesitation is what your customers feel too.
Total cost, including shipping, appears before the final step. Surprise fees at the last screen are the single most cited reason people abandon.
Guest checkout is available. Forcing account creation before purchase loses buyers who would happily come back later.
The checkout asks for the minimum. Every non-essential field is friction. If you do not need it to fulfil the order, question why it is there.
Trust signals sit at the point of payment. Secure-payment marks, accepted card logos, and a clear returns or guarantee line right where money changes hands.

Trust and social proof

Especially for a brand a visitor has not bought from before, trust is the deciding factor.

Real contact details are easy to find. A physical address, a phone number and an email. For NZ and AU stores, local contact details reassure local buyers.
Reviews and testimonials are genuine and specific. Named, dated, and ideally tied to products. Generic praise reads as invented.
Returns, shipping and guarantee policies are clear and easy to reach. Hidden or vague policies make cautious buyers walk away.

Mobile experience

Most ecommerce traffic is mobile, so most friction is mobile. Run the whole checklist on a phone, and confirm these specifically.

Tap targets are big enough and not crowded. Buttons and links should be easy to hit with a thumb without zooming.
Forms and the keyboard behave. The right keyboard appears for email and number fields, and the page does not jump as you type.
Nothing important hides behind a sticky bar or popup. Test that a popup can actually be closed on a small screen, and that it does not cover the buy button.

Forms and lead capture

For service businesses and any store that captures enquiries, the form is the conversion.

The form is short and asks only what you need now. Every extra field lowers completion. You can ask for more later.
Submission clearly works and confirms success. Submit a real test enquiry. Confirm you receive it, and confirm the visitor sees a genuine success message, not a silent reload.

When to stop DIYing and bring in help

You have fixed the obvious things and conversion has not moved, so the problem is deeper than the surface.
Your numbers and your gut disagree, which usually means a measurement problem you cannot see from the front end.
The same issues keep reappearing after launches or theme updates, which points to a structural cause.
You are about to spend real money on traffic and want the destination watertight first.

FAQ

Sources

Baymard Institute, "Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics" (2024). Average cart abandonment of 70.2% and leading causes. https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate
Google / Deloitte, "Milliseconds Make Millions" (2019) and Google mobile speed research (2017). Mobile abandonment above three seconds and conversion impact of speed. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/
Capital One Shopping Research, "Online Reviews Statistics" (2024). Share of shoppers reading reviews before and during purchase. https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/online-reviews-statistics/
Industry ecommerce conversion benchmark aggregators (2025), summarising Shopify and broader ecommerce conversion rate ranges. Example: https://cleancommit.io/blog/whats-a-good-shopify-conversion-rate-2025-benchmarks/

Website Conversion Audit Checklist: 30 Things to Check Before Hiring an Agency

Key takeaways

How to use this checklist

Measurement and tracking

Speed and technical health

Messaging and clarity

Navigation and search

Product pages

Cart and checkout

Trust and social proof

Mobile experience

Forms and lead capture

When to stop DIYing and bring in help

FAQ

Sources

More from the blog

Website Conversion Audit Checklist: 30 Things to Check Before Hiring an Agency

Key takeaways

How to use this checklist

Measurement and tracking

Speed and technical health

Messaging and clarity

Navigation and search

Product pages

Cart and checkout

Trust and social proof

Mobile experience

Forms and lead capture

When to stop DIYing and bring in help

FAQ

Sources

More from the blog