The 27-point CRO audit checklist we run before touching a single design element

There's a right order to fix a website. Get it wrong and you spend three months redesigning a hero section that was never the bottleneck. Get it right and you find the one broken thing that's silently eating 15% of your revenue in the first afternoon. This is the 27-point audit we run before proposing a single design change.

Layer 1 — Measurement integrity (points 1–6). Before trusting any conversion number, verify GA4, server-side tracking, and the checkout funnel events are all firing correctly. Half the CRO problems we're asked to solve turn out to be broken tracking, not broken UX. Fix measurement first or every downstream test is noise.

Layer 2 — Traffic quality (points 7–11). A 0.8% conversion rate on cold paid social traffic is normal. A 0.8% conversion rate on branded search traffic is a five-alarm fire. Segment conversion rate by source, device, and returning-vs-new before deciding what needs fixing. Often the fix is the ad targeting, not the site.

Layer 3 — Funnel leak detection (points 12–17). Map the exact drop-off between product page → add to cart → checkout start → checkout complete. The single biggest leak on 70% of stores we audit is between add-to-cart and checkout-start — usually a broken mini-cart, forced account creation, or a shipping surprise. Fix the biggest leak first.

Layer 4 — Above-the-fold clarity (points 18–22). Only after the funnel is patched do we look at hero sections, value props, and CTAs. Our above-the-fold framework covers the exact three questions every hero must answer in 5 seconds.

Layer 5 — Trust and risk reversal (points 23–27). Reviews, guarantees, return policies, security badges, and payment options. These are the last-mile confidence signals that convert the 'almost bought' visitor. Audit them, benchmark against category leaders, and close the gaps.

The one rule that separates good CRO from theater

Never A/B test above-the-fold changes before you've fixed the funnel leaks. A hero test that lifts add-to-cart by 8% is meaningless if the checkout is losing 40% of add-to-carts to a broken shipping calculator. Order matters more than creativity in CRO.

Our CRO retainer runs this exact 27-point audit quarterly on client stores, then implements the winning tests. Or scope a one-time CRO audit if you want the full diagnostic without the ongoing engagement — we'll send back a ranked opportunity list within 10 business days.