Ecommerce CRO Audit: What I Look at on a Shopify Store

Step 1: Understand the Business

Before touching Shopify, I want to understand:

• What do you sell?
• What's the average product price?
• Who's the customer?
• Where does traffic come from?
• Which countries matter?
• How frequently should customers reorder?
• What's the margin?
• What's the main growth problem?

A £50 fashion store and a £10,000 wellness product require completely different buying journeys.

Context matters.

Step 2: Check the Core Metrics

I start with my 8 Metric Method™.

• Conversion Rate
• Average Order Value
• Returning Customer %
• Bounce Rate
• Mobile UX & Speed
• Checkout Completion
• Refund / Return Rate
• Blended ROAS

This gives me the map.

Step 3: Walk Through the Website as a Customer

Then I stop looking at dashboards.

I shop.

• Homepage
• Navigation
• Search
• Collection
• Product
• Cart
• Checkout

I do it on desktop.

Then again on mobile.

The question throughout is simple:

“Is anything making buying more difficult than it needs to be?”

Step 4: Review the Homepage

Can I understand the brand quickly?

Is the value proposition clear?

Do I know what to click?

Are bestselling categories obvious?

Is there too much happening?

Does the page feel trustworthy?

A homepage doesn't need to explain everything.

It needs to get customers moving.

Step 5: Review Collection Pages

• Collections are often neglected
• Can customers filter?
• Sort?

Understand products from thumbnails?

• See prices?
• See relevant variants?
• Quickly compare items?

A collection page should help customers narrow down choices.

Step 6: Audit the Product Page

This is normally where I spend a lot of time.

• Photography
• Descriptions
• Price presentation
• Variants
• Sizing
• Delivery
• Returns
• Reviews
• Stock messaging
• Guarantees
• Add to Cart
• Mobile behaviour
• Product recommendations

Everything should reduce uncertainty.

Step 7: Look at the Cart

Does the cart clearly communicate:

• Products?
• Quantities?
• Price?
• Shipping?
• Thresholds?
• Important delivery information?
• Checkout?
• Is anything distracting customers?
• Can products easily be removed or edited?

Small UX issues become important this close to purchase.

Step 8: Check the Checkout

A customer reaching checkout is valuable.

I want as few surprises as possible.

• Unexpected shipping costs
• Duties
• Missing payment options
• Unclear delivery times
• Technical errors

These are expensive places to lose customers.

Baymard's research continues to show just how much ecommerce purchasing is abandoned around cart and checkout, which is why I give this stage so much attention.

Step 9: Review Email

The website doesn't operate alone.

I'll usually look at:

• Welcome emails
• Browse abandonment
• Cart abandonment
• Checkout abandonment
• Post-purchase
• Winback
• VIP
• Wishlist
• Campaign strategy

For ecommerce, the customer journey extends well beyond the website session.

Step 10: Prioritise

This is the important bit.

An audit producing 87 recommendations isn't particularly useful if nobody knows where to start.

I split opportunities into:

• High impact
• Medium impact
• Low impact

Then I consider the difficulty of implementing each one.

Something that takes 30 minutes and could fix a major checkout issue comes before redesigning the footer.

Every time.

CRO Isn't a Redesign

This is probably the biggest misconception.

Conversion Rate Optimisation doesn't mean making the website prettier.

Sometimes CRO means improving photography.

Sometimes it's rewriting shipping information.

Sometimes it's removing an app.

Sometimes it's changing email timing.

Sometimes it's fixing one broken mobile button.

The objective is not:

“Make the website look better.”

The objective is:

“Make it easier for the right customer to buy.”

Want Me to Audit Your Store?

If your Shopify store is getting traffic but you feel like it should be generating more sales, this is exactly the process I use.

I look at your complete customer journey, identify where you're losing revenue and prioritise the changes most likely to make a difference.

Book an Ecommerce Growth Audit

And before spending more money sending traffic to your store, let's make sure the store is doing its job.