How to run a conversion rate optimization audit

Before you start: choose the action

Pick the one action this audit is about: a purchase, a sign-up, an inquiry. One audit, one action. Then write down the steps a visitor takes to get there, in order. For a shop that might be product page, cart, checkout, order placed.

1. Measure: find the step that loses the most people

Measure first. A survey or a redesign aimed at the wrong step costs time and teaches you little. Count the visits that reach each step, in order, and note the step with the biggest drop. Look at phones and computers apart: a step can lose people on one and not on the other.

2. Diagnose: find out why

Once you know the step that loses the most people, diagnose it: watch the visits at that step, read the page’s heatmap and errors, and check how fast it loads for real visitors.

• Recordings. Where on the page do people stop, go back or give up?
• Heatmap. What do people click that does nothing?
• Errors. Does a script fail at this step, on which browser?
• Speed. How long do real visitors wait for this page?

3. Decide: one change

Write the change as one sentence a developer could act on, and name the evidence beside it. One change at a time, so you can tell which one worked.

4. Check: measure the same step again

Then change one thing and measure the same step again. Compare the same step over the same number of days, before and after. If the drop has not moved, undo the change or go back to step 2 with the next cause.

5. Write it down

The audit is finished when someone else could read it and agree. Keep six lines: the action, the steps and the visits at each, the step that lost the most, what you saw there, the one change, and the date you will measure again.

What a CRO audit is not

Surveys and replays answer different questions. A survey tells you what people say. A replay shows what they did. An audit of what people did does not replace asking them. For a full redesign, brand and positioning work, or research with real customers, hire a consultant. More on that: when to hire a CRO consultant.

The same four steps in Convertlyft

• Measure. Funnels of up to 6 steps, counted in order. The step that lost the most people is marked in amber. Compare with the period before, see one device at a time, or export the steps as CSV. Traffic shows visits by entry channel and campaign tags.
• Diagnose. Every visit is recorded, on every plan (up to a safety limit of 50,000 new recordings per site per day), and funnel steps link to the recorded visits that reached them. Recording pauses once you pass twice your plan’s visits and starts again on the 1st. Heatmaps show all, rage, dead, error and first clicks, plus a scroll map. Stuck spots list clicks where nothing happened and clicks made again and again. JavaScript errors are grouped into issues, each with the visits that hit it. Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP and CLS, with FCP and TTFB) come from real visits.
• Decide. What to do lists to-dos, each with the measurement behind it and one change to make where there is one. The Monday report arrives at 07:30 in your site’s time zone.
• Check. You make the change: you, your developer or your AI tool. Then press I fixed it; the next check marks it Confirmed fixed or Came back.

See it on demo data: a sample funnel report. How the tools differ by job: CRO tools. The step-by-step view: funnel analysis.