Shopify CRO Audit: What to Check, and in What Order
A Shopify CRO audit finds the point where shoppers give up between arriving and paying, and works out why. Start with the funnel in Shopify Analytics (add to cart, reached checkout, completed checkout), find the biggest drop, then look at the devices, landing pages and page types behind it before you change anything. Fix in that order and your time goes on the leak that costs most.
The checklist below is the whole audit on one screen. The sections after it take each line in turn, with the Shopify report to open and what a problem looks like. If you would rather have it run for you, ask us to run it.
Shopify CRO audit checklist
| Area | Where to look | Signs of a problem |
|---|---|---|
| Measurement | Session metrics against orders and sales | Conversion rate jumped or fell around 21 to 23 September 2026 while orders stayed flat |
| Funnel | Add to cart, reached checkout and checkout conversion rates | One stage falls much more steeply than the others |
| Devices | Sessions by device | Mobile converts far below desktop on the same pages |
| Landing pages | Sessions by landing page | High-traffic pages with few add to carts |
| Product pages | Top products, on a phone | Delivery cost hidden, unclear variants, button out of reach |
| Search | Searches with no results, searches with no clicks | Common terms returning nothing |
| Checkout | A test order as a new customer | Surprise costs, forced account, long forms |
| Speed | Core Web Vitals for product and collection templates | LCP over 2.5 seconds, layout shift above 0.1 |
| Trust | The store, seen as a first-time visitor | Missing contact details, vague returns, undated reviews |
What a CRO audit covers, and what it does not
Conversion rate optimisation is about the user experience after someone lands on the store: how easily they find a product, decide, and pay. Whether they arrive at all is a search question, and our Shopify SEO audit covers that side. The two meet on landing pages and site speed, so it is worth running them close together.
A CRO audit produces a ranked list of problems and the evidence for each. It is tempting to skip straight to fixes, or to copy a competitor’s layout. Both can change things that were working.
Before you start: Shopify changed how it counts sessions
If you are comparing this autumn with last year, read this first. Shopify rolled out a session measurement update between 21 and 23 September 2026. Sessions now carry on past midnight UTC instead of splitting in two, some sessions with no pageview are counted (a shopper going straight to checkout from a cart link, for example), and identified bot sessions are filtered out by default.
Conversion rate is worked out from sessions. So when the session count moves, conversion rate can move too, with no change in orders or sales. Shopify lists add to cart rate, reached checkout rate, checkout conversion rate and bounce rate among the affected metrics.
Two practical rules follow:
- Use data from after the update as your new baseline for anything session-based.
- Check orders, sales and customer numbers alongside session metrics. If sessions moved and orders did not, the change is probably in the measurement.
Step 1: Find where your Shopify store loses conversions
Open Analytics in your Shopify admin and look at three rates for a recent period after the update. If a metric is not on your dashboard, add its card.
| Stage | Shopify metric | What a weak number points to |
|---|---|---|
| Visit to basket | Add to cart rate | Product pages, pricing, stock or the wrong traffic |
| Basket to checkout | Reached checkout rate | Cart page surprises: delivery cost, minimum orders, distractions |
| Checkout to order | Checkout conversion rate | Checkout fields, payment options, account requirements, trust |
The stage with the steepest fall is where the audit starts. Resist judging these against an industry average. Rates vary widely with price point, product type and how much of your traffic is ready to buy, so your own trend is the more honest comparison.
Then split the same numbers two ways. Sessions by device shows whether the drop is a mobile problem. Sessions by landing page shows which entry points bring visitors who leave. A product page that converts well on desktop and poorly on phones is a layout problem; a landing page that converts poorly everywhere is often a traffic or promise problem.
Step 2: Landing pages that attract the wrong visit
A landing page converts poorly for one of two reasons. Either the page fails the visitor, or the visitor was never likely to buy. Check the second before redesigning anything.
Look at where the traffic to that page comes from and what it was promised. An ad for “free delivery” that lands on a page showing a delivery charge will leak. A blog post ranking for an informational search brings people who are reading, and few of them will buy. That is fine as long as nobody expects it to convert like a product page.
Step 3: Product pages
A weak add to cart rate usually leads here. Open your top product pages on a phone and work through:
- Price and delivery cost visible together. If delivery cost first appears in the cart or at checkout, that is where people leave.
- The add to cart button visible without hunting, and still reachable after scrolling through photos.
- Variant choices that make sense. Size and colour selectors that are unclear, or that hide out-of-stock options without saying so, stall people.
- Photos that answer questions: scale, texture, the product in use. A single photo on a white background often leaves those unanswered.
- Reviews, delivery times and returns stated on the product page itself.
- Stock messages that are true. A “low stock” banner should mean the stock is low.
If the store relies on apps for reviews, upsells or bundles, check what each adds to the page. Our guide to Shopify app bloat covers how to find the apps slowing a page down.
Step 4: Collections and on-site search
Shoppers who search usually know what they want, so a failed search is an expensive one. Shopify’s Searches with no results and Searches with no clicks reports show the terms people typed and either found nothing for, or ignored the results. Fix the common ones with synonyms, redirects or product copy that uses the customer’s own words.
On collection pages, check that filters work on mobile, that sort order puts sellable stock first, and that the page shows enough of each product to choose from. If your collections also have indexing problems, our guide to duplicate collection URLs covers the SEO side.
Step 5: Cart and checkout
Baymard Institute keeps a running average of published cart abandonment studies, 70.22% across 50 studies at its last update. A large part of it is browsing. In Baymard’s survey of US online shoppers, 42% said they had abandoned a cart because they were just browsing.
Among the rest, the reasons Baymard records are the ones an audit can do something about:
| Reason shoppers gave (US survey, excluding “just browsing”) | Share |
|---|---|
| Extra costs too high (delivery, tax, fees) | 40% |
| Delivery was too slow | 20% |
| Did not trust the site with card details | 19% |
| Site wanted them to create an account | 18% |
| Checkout too long or complicated | 17% |
| Website had errors or crashed | 17% |
| Could not see or work out the total order cost up front | 12% |
Source: Baymard Institute, read 29 October 2026. These are US figures, so treat them as a guide to what to check rather than a forecast for a UK store.
Go through your own checkout as a new customer, on a phone, with a real card, and judge the shopping experience as a stranger would. Note every field you are asked to fill, every point where a cost appears for the first time, and whether guest checkout is offered. Then compare it with what your delivery and returns pages promise. Check which express payment buttons appear and where: Shopify’s accelerated checkouts such as Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay can show as buttons on product pages, letting a returning customer skip the cart, as well as in an Express Checkout section at the start of checkout.
Step 6: Speed and stability
A slow page loses shoppers before any of the above gets a chance. Google’s Core Web Vitals give three thresholds to aim for, measured at the 75th percentile of real visits:
- Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, for loading.
- Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less, for responsiveness.
- Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, for pages that do not jump about as they load.
Check product and collection templates separately, on mobile. Watch for review widgets or banners that load late and push the add to cart button down the page just as someone reaches for it. Our site speed guide goes further into the Shopify specifics.
Step 7: Trust
Trust problems seldom show up as one bad number. A store that converts returning customers well and new visitors poorly is one sign. Look at it as a stranger would:
- A real business name, address for returns, phone number or email, and a clear returns policy.
- Payment options people recognise, shown before the checkout.
- Reviews from customers, with names and dates. This social proof does most work on product pages, near the price.
- Nothing that looks broken: dead links, placeholder text, out-of-date offers.
Turning findings into changes
Rank what you found by two things: how much traffic passes through the problem, and how confident you are about the cause. Keep an eye on average order value (AOV) as well as conversion rate, because a change that lifts one can lower the other, such as a discount banner that brings more, smaller orders. A hidden delivery charge on your best-selling product page goes to the top. A hunch about button colour goes to the bottom.
Clear faults, such as a broken mobile layout or a checkout error, should simply be fixed. Questions of judgement, such as a new product page layout, are better tested if you have the orders to get a reliable answer.
When an A/B test makes sense
An A/B test shows half your visitors the current page and half a changed version, then compares how each converts. Shopify’s own guide to A/B testing recommends running a test for at least two full business cycles, which usually means two to four weeks. It says testing is worth it for stores that can reach the required sample size in that time, and that low-traffic stores will likely get more from user testing or talking to customers.
If you do test, keep it out of Google’s way. Google’s guidance on website testing says not to show Googlebot different pages from the ones people see. It also says to point test variants back at the original with a canonical tag, and to use 302 redirects rather than 301s for redirect-based tests.
On a smaller store, make the change, watch the funnel stage it was meant to help, and be ready to roll it back.
Tools for a Shopify CRO audit
You can run most of this audit with what you already have. Add tools only when a question needs them.
| Tool | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Shopify Analytics | Funnel rates, sessions by device and landing page, on-site search reports |
| Google Analytics 4 | Traffic sources and paths in more detail, if it is installed and tracking purchases correctly |
| Heatmaps and session recordings (Hotjar, Microsoft Clarity and similar) | Where people tap, how far they scroll, where they hesitate |
| PageSpeed Insights | Core Web Vitals from real Chrome users, where Google has enough data for the page |
| A phone and a real card | What the checkout actually feels like to a new customer |
Recordings are the most useful of the optional tools for a smaller store, because they show why a page underperforms when there is not enough traffic to test anything. Check your cookie banner covers them before you switch them on.
How often to run a CRO audit
A full audit makes sense before a redesign, after a theme or platform change, and whenever one funnel rate drops and stays down for a few weeks. Between those, a monthly look at the three funnel rates and the no-results search report is a sensible routine. Each audit becomes the baseline for the next, so keep the notes.
Doing it yourself, or having it done
Everything above can be done in-house by someone who knows the store. The harder parts are being objective about your own pages and knowing which findings matter most, which is where an outside audit earns its fee.
Our conversion rate optimisation work is quoted per project, priced on the size of the site and the traffic it already gets. Below roughly a thousand sessions a month there is not enough data for CRO to mean much, and we will tell you to spend the money on traffic first.
What to do next
If you want a second pair of eyes on the numbers, ask us to run this audit on your store’s own data. We also keep a list of ecommerce CRO agencies in the UK if you want to compare options. Or start smaller: send your store address for a free SEO audit, which covers where the store ranks and what is technically holding it back, including speed on a phone.