A CRO audit answers two questions: where are visitors dropping off, and why. That is it. Most audits drown in checklists and never get to a decision. This one stays on impact.
Start with the money path
Map the few pages between a visitor arriving and converting. For most sites that is landing page, then product or pricing, then form or checkout, then confirmation. Everything else is secondary. Audit the money path first, because that is where revenue actually moves.
Find the leaks with data
- Funnel drop-off. Which step loses the most people? The biggest win is almost always at the leakiest step, not the prettiest page.
- Segment the leaks. A step that converts fine on desktop can collapse on mobile or on paid traffic. Always split before you conclude. (Why the aggregate misleads.)
- Speed and errors. Slow pages and broken forms quietly cap your ceiling. Check them early so you are not optimizing copy on a page that times out.
Then ask why
Numbers tell you where. People tell you why.
- Session recordings on the leakiest step.
- Heatmaps for dead clicks and ignored CTAs.
- A one-question exit survey: "what almost stopped you today?"
Score issues by impact and effort
List every issue you find. Rank each by traffic affected times drop size, divided by effort to fix. Do the cheap, high-impact items first. Resist fixing things on pages almost nobody reaches, however satisfying it feels.
Findings worth checking every time
- A message mismatch between the ad and the page it lands on.
- A primary CTA that is unclear or buried.
- Forms asking for more than the moment deserves.
- Proof that is generic ("trusted by thousands") instead of specific.
- One page trying to serve very different audiences at once.
Turn the audit into a system
An audit is a snapshot, and conversion rates drift as traffic and seasons change. The teams that compound their wins re-audit continuously, or let an always-on system keep testing and adapting so the funnel tightens between manual reviews instead of slowly going stale.
