CRO audit: what to check and how to run one

What a CRO audit is, and what it is not

A conversion rate optimization audit looks at one page, or one path through a site, with a single question in mind: what stops a visitor who could convert from converting? Everything it notes has to point at something on the page, with a reason it matters and a change that would fix it.

It is not an analytics report. Analytics tells you where people drop off; the audit tells you why the page may be losing them there. It is not an A/B test either. The audit gives you the list of changes worth making or testing, and a test tells you which of them moved the number. And it is rarely a redesign brief: most good audits end in small, specific changes to the page you already have.

When to run one

• Before you put paid traffic on a page. Every visit costs money, so fix what you can already see.
• When the conversion rate drops and nothing changed in where the traffic comes from.
• After a redesign or a theme change, which often moves buttons, reviews and delivery information without anyone noticing.
• Once a quarter on the pages that carry most of the revenue or the leads.

What a CRO audit checks

The areas are the same on any kind of site. What changes is the goal each one is judged against: a purchase, a lead form, a sign-up or a booking.

1. The first screen

Can a new visitor tell what this is, who it is for and what to do next, without scrolling? Look at the headline, the main image and the first call to action, on a phone first. If the headline could belong to any company in your category, it is not doing its job.

2. The call to action

The button that matters should be the strongest element on the screen after the product or the headline. Check its contrast against the background, what competes with it (badges, banners, a second button of the same weight) and whether its label says what happens next.

3. Trust at the moment of doubt

Reviews, guarantees, return terms, security and delivery details work best where the visitor hesitates: next to the price, the button or the form. In the footer they do almost nothing.

4. Friction in forms and checkout

Count the fields and ask which ones you really need. Look for forced account creation, costs that appear only at the last step, payment options missing on mobile and error messages that do not say how to fix the error.

5. Attention and visual hierarchy

Where does the eye land in the first seconds? Discount badges, faces and large images pull attention. That is fine when they lead the eye to the offer and the button, and a problem when they pull it away.

6. Mobile against desktop

Many pages hide on mobile exactly what persuades on desktop: the reviews, the delivery terms, the size guide. Audit both and compare what each one shows before the first scroll.

7. Speed and technical blockers

A slow first paint, a layout that jumps while it loads or a JavaScript error in the checkout costs more than any wording change. Check Core Web Vitals and the browser console on the page you audit.

8. Measurement

Before you change anything, make sure the conversion is tracked correctly on that page. An audit that ends in changes you cannot measure leaves you guessing a second time.

Every point to check, area by area, is in the CRO audit checklist.

How to run a CRO audit, step by step

Step 1: Pick one page and one goal

Start with the page where the most money or leads are decided: a best-selling product page, the pricing page or the landing page of your largest campaign. Write down the one action the page exists for. Every finding will be judged against it.

Step 2: Pull the numbers

From your analytics, take the page's sessions and conversion rate for the last 30 to 90 days, split by device and by traffic source. A page that converts well on desktop and poorly on mobile already tells you where to look first.

Step 3: Look at it like a first-time visitor

Open the page on a phone, in a private window, from the kind of link your visitors arrive from. Give yourself five seconds, then write down what the page is about and what you would press. Repeat on desktop.

Step 4: Go through the checklist

Work through the eight areas above. Mark each point as pass, fail or not applicable, and take a screenshot of every failure while you are on it.

Step 5: Check behaviour, if you have it

Heatmaps and session recordings show where people click, how far they scroll and where they stop. Microsoft Clarity is free and enough for this. Use them to confirm or reject what you found, not as the starting point. Our heatmap analysis guide covers how to read them.

Step 6: Write each finding with its evidence

One line for what is wrong, one for why it costs conversions, one for the change. "The button is weak" is an opinion. "Add to bag has a 1.6 to 1 contrast on a sand background and is the third heaviest element on the screen" is a finding someone can act on.

Step 7: Rank by impact and effort, then ship

Order the findings by how many visitors meet the problem and how close it sits to the decision. Ship the top three, measure for a few weeks, test the ones you are unsure about with an A/B test, and come back for the next three.

What a useful audit report looks like

A report is only useful if someone can act on it the same day. Each finding should say where on the page the problem is, what it is, why it matters for this page's goal and what to change, ideally with a before and after. Here are three findings from the sample report on KYMA, our demo store:

The same report scores the page from 0 to 100, shows where attention goes on desktop and mobile, and orders five to seven changes by expected impact. You can get one for your own page with the free CRO audit.

Three ways to get it done

They are not exclusive. A sensible setup is a tool for the first pass on every important page, your own judgement on what it finds, and an agency or a testing programme for the changes that need proof.

CRO audits by type of site

The checks stay the same, the goal changes. A store is judged on the path from product page to paid order: see the e-commerce CRO audit. A lead generation page is judged as a whole, from the headline to the submitted form: see the lead generation CRO audit. SaaS pricing and sign-up pages, booking sites and content sites each have their own page under CRO audits by website type.

If your store runs on a specific platform, the platform pages cover what that platform gets wrong by default: Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Magento, Wix, Squarespace and Webflow.

Mistakes that make an audit useless

• Auditing the whole site at once. Twenty pages audited lightly produce a list nobody acts on. One page audited properly produces three changes that ship.
• Opinions without evidence. "I do not like the colour" is not a finding. Point at the element and say what it costs.
• Checking desktop only. For many sites most visits come from phones, and the problems are different there.
• Fixing things in the order you found them. Rank first, or the easy cosmetic fixes crowd out the ones that matter.
• No baseline. Write down the conversion rate before you change anything, or you will not know what worked.

Run a CRO audit on your page

EyeCaptain runs this audit for you. It reads your site to learn what you sell and to whom, captures the page on desktop and mobile, measures where attention goes and how visible your call to action is, and returns the findings ranked by impact, each with a before and after. The first audit is free, with no card. Start from the form at the top of this page, or read how the AI CRO audit works first.