What a conversion audit
actually checks
“Conversion audit” covers everything from a consultant reading your homepage for an afternoon to a checklist run by a plugin. This page sets out what one is worth doing well: the five categories a page gets scored against, how issues are weighted into a score, and — just as usefully — what an audit cannot tell you.
Not sure what to look for? Start with why your website isn't converting — it covers the five issues an audit will find most often.
The five categories an audit scores
A conversion audit is not a list of best practices applied blindly. It is a diagnosis: every issue has to be evidenced against something actually on the page. These are the five categories every page is scored against, and what separates a pass from a fail in each.
Value proposition
Most common failureWhether a first-time visitor can tell what is on offer, who it is for, and why it is worth their attention — before scrolling.
Fails when
The headline describes a category or an aspiration (“the future of digital growth”) rather than a specific outcome.
Passes when
The headline names the result the visitor gets, in their words, and the subheading says who it is for.
Calls to action
Highest quick-win potentialWhether the next step is obvious, singular, and phrased as something the visitor gains rather than something they perform.
Fails when
“Get started” or “Submit” with no indication of what happens next, or five competing buttons of equal weight.
Passes when
One primary action, stated as an outcome (“Start free — no card needed”), visible without scrolling.
Trust signals
Decides borderline visitorsWhether proof appears at the moment of doubt, rather than in a testimonials section far below the decision point.
Fails when
Reviews and logos sit under the pricing table, after most visitors have already left.
Passes when
A specific, concrete proof point sits next to the primary action — named, detailed, and relevant to the offer.
Friction
Costs the most committed visitorsEverything between intent and completion: form length, forced account creation, unexpected costs, slow or unstable mobile rendering.
Fails when
Six required fields before any value is delivered, or a cost that only appears at the final step.
Passes when
The minimum asked up front, with anything optional deferred until after the visitor has committed.
Message match
Invisible but decisiveWhether the page confirms the expectation that brought the visitor there — from an ad, a search result, or a link.
Fails when
The page ranks or advertises for one phrase and the headline uses entirely different language.
Passes when
The first thing read echoes the words the visitor searched or clicked.
How the audit reaches a score
Each issue found is weighted by how much conversion it plausibly costs, not simply counted. A page with two serious problems scores worse than a page with six cosmetic ones, which is the opposite of what a checklist would tell you. Every issue also has to quote text found on the page — if it cannot be evidenced, it is dropped rather than reported.
- The page is fetched and its real content extracted — headings, buttons, body copy, meta description
- Each of the five categories above is assessed against that content
- Every candidate issue is checked for a verbatim quote from the page; unevidenced ones are discarded
- Remaining issues are weighted by impact and confidence to produce a score out of 100
Takes 20–30 seconds. The homepage audit is free and needs no signup.
What an audit will not tell you
Worth being straight about the limits. An audit reads your page, not your analytics — so it cannot tell you whether the real problem is your traffic source, and it cannot know your margins, your sales cycle, or what your buyers said on the last call. It will not run an A/B test or prove causation. What it does is remove the guesswork about which parts of the page are working against you, so the changes you test are the ones most likely to matter.
If your conversion rate dropped suddenly rather than always being low, the cause is more often a traffic or tracking change than the page itself. Start with the site-wide diagnosis in that case.
Audit a page now
Paste your URL below. Takes 30 seconds. No signup needed.
You'll get a score out of 100, the single biggest problem, and a ranked list of what to fix — each one quoting the exact text on your page.
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